This afternoon I joined my friend Lynne at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall for A Day of Service and Celebration in Honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I’d thought I’d gone so as to spend some time with Lynne—whose wise counsel re writing is always helpful—and because Nikki Giovanni was to be the keynote speaker. But when I teared up singing “Lift Every Voice,” I realized, “Patricia, you’ve been hungering and thirsting after this kind of righteousness.”
So, yes, it was teary afternoon, a powerful afternoon: seeing and listening to those beautiful, talented young people of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. Nikki Giovanni’s passionate and wry enlargement of the Rosa Parks story. Listening to Dr. King’s words read aloud. And how wonderful to hear the crowd roar when Chief Justice Roderick L. Ireland, MA’s first African American Chief Justice—and one of the readers—was introduced!
AND, if that weren’t enough, I had a personal satori, as Lynne would say: A couple of days ago another Friend/friend who’s interested in leadings, asked me: “Civil rights, the criminal justice system and climate change? How do those fit together?”
My answer was something about being open to Spirit and believing that working on climate change was what was being asked of me right now. (And, oh, yeah, while keepin’ on keepin’ on re criminal justice, too.)
But, hey, what did MLK have to say about interconnectedness, huh? That concept that’s so much at the heart of the climate change movement? Dr. King said this from the Birmingham Jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
So that’s why the Transition Towns movement/permaculture/working on global warming issues so powerfully speaks to me, huh?
Nice to know.