MLK Day at WRA

Today's Comments by Mr. Morris resonated with me:

Good morning.  On the occasion of this day I would like to share an excerpt from a speech, a poetic meditation that Martin Luther King delivered at nearby Oberlin College upon receiving an honorary degree in 1965.  

In a voice far, far richer than mine, he spoke these words:

All I'm saying is simply this: that all humankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  

For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be - this is the interrelated structure of reality.  [The English poet] John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: 

No man is an Island, entire of itself; 

every one is a piece of the continent, a part of the main …  

any one's death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind;  

and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

[King followed Donne’s lines with these words:] And by believing this, by living out this fact, we will be able to remain awake through a great revolution.  

MLK's legacy continues if and whenever we act upon it.  


With his --and Donne's-- poetic, prophetic vision, we can see an ultimate community --
we can see each other, and all others, as sharing one fate, one destiny.  


Today, tomorrow, Wednesday, GoMAD day, every day.  
Thank you.




MLK's Last Speech: