Throughout the nation the January 15 birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been celebrated on the third Monday of January since its official designation as a national holiday. The historic holiday is customarily celebrated with symbolic marches, speeches and other special observances, championed this year with release of the highly acclaimed movie, “Selma” that highlights the life, struggles and ultimate impact of Dr. King’s nonviolent approach to ending the shameful legal treatment of Blacks in the deep south.
I find it most pathetic that most of the deep wisdom and self-sacrifices of this unique individual is basically confined to quotations from his “I have a Dream” speech, delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during the nation’s first massive protest march on Washington against segregation. Throughout his comparatively brief sacrificial life span, however Dr. King has penned innumerable literary gems that are becoming more evident each passing day of our brief lives.
Among them, “If we do not have goodwill toward men in this world we will destroy ourselves by misuse of our own instruments and our own power. Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete!” Instead we continue to bury our heads in the proverbial sands of time and spend multi-$billions in sophistication of weapons of war.
“All along the way of life someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate,” Dr. King penned. “In the final analysis, all life is interconnected. All humanity is involved in a single process and all men are brothers.”– Not our brother’s keeper, for in order to be a keeper, someone has to be kept (not a mutual amiable position)–but our brother’s brother!
Other more unfamiliar pearls of the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. include:
“Every man is somebody because he is a child of God. And so, when we say, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ we’re really saying that human life is too sacred to be taken on the battlefields of the world.”
“Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood,.. Morals cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated.”
This brings us full force into the dire necessity of the spiritual education of children at earliest age when hearts and minds are pure and unsullied. Through spiritual education they become disciplined through the Love of God rather than through fear of consequences.
“Good behavior and high moral character must come first,” the Baha’i Holy Writings stress. “For unless the character be trained, acquiring knowledge will only prove injurious. Knowledge is praiseworthy when it is coupled with ethical conduct and a virtuous character; otherwise it is a deadly poison, a frightful danger…Children must be constantly encouraged and made eager to gain all summits of human accomplishment so that from earliest years they will have high aims, conduct themselves well and be of powerful resolve and firm of purpose in all things.” It is through such powerful resolve and firm purpose that one determines to live inward in order to make life better for one’s self or outward in order to make life better for others.
Such was the sacrificial life of Dr. MLK, Jr. who forewarned us: “Now the justice of God is upon us and we must learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools…I believe that unarmed troops and LOVE will have the final say.”
