Give us this day

Bill Maxwell has an excellent reflection on the King holiday and what it means for blacks and whites and the future of all Americans. It is a similar feeling I have about the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth and so many of my great heroes, and a sentiment that would serve us when honoring any man or woman of greatness.

To honor King, live up to him

Too often people of all backgrounds and beliefs, myself included, prefer the easy way to the harder but better way. And, every time, it has consequences. King stood for something different during a time of great injustice in this country. Our words in his memory or in the memory of any of our great leaders mean little if they are not backed by deeds that take their legacies seriously.

The challenge of humanity is to live up to those legacies that show us a better way to improve ourselves and our lot together. There is and never will be any amount of force or power that will compensate for our failures, in this regard. At best, aggression and force are necessary to defend ourselves or others when no other options really do exist. At worst, aggression is the product of lazy and self-centered impulses at moments when we are unwilling to be better and more genuinely responsible to one another, as someone who has given way to those impulses more times than I can remember.

The challenge of humanity is to be bigger than our more rash, impatient, and self-centered impulses might otherwise offer. Dr. King called on all Americans and all people, black, white, and every other hue that humanity has to offer, to be bigger than our bitterness might call us to be. It was the same message of Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddha, Mohandas Gandhi, and so many of our greatest men and women. Love in the face of hate. Self-sacrafice in the face of avarice and greed. And thoughtful reflection in the face of recklessness and easy answers.

It is the sage advice of those who have paved paths of success and opportunity as much as decency and justice for humanity.

Those who follow it reap its rewards. Those who fail to miss its opportunities.

And no amount of force will ever make that not so.

And, more than most, this man's legacy reminds us of how an important wrong was righted by that wisdom.

Even as our self-centered impulses suggest otherwise.

May we have the wisdom to know the difference.