The Love Letter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963 (Part 2)
Approaching this second paragraph in Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham City Jail,” I sense an honest, sincere love and respect — for all. To me, this is a love letter. Dr. King expresses his love for his fellow clergymen, for people of color, for society in general, and even for those who oppress. Some may stumble at that, but only love prompts anyone to shed light into the darkness of those oppressing them for the purpose of establishing a relationship. Only love takes the time to arrange such an analysis of situations with the goals of love and peace and mutual happiness. Only love would carry someone through so many years of relentless work and even more relentless criticism, attacks, and hatred in response to that work.
In imitation, those motivated by hatred may proclaim some sort of love is involved, but it is perverted and will never be with the same ends of unity and understanding. Those who hate, oppress, and reject the nuanced blend of soul and mind exhibited in this letter may sometimes call their hatred love — love for their own ways of life, their own race, their own brand of religion. When they pass off as love actions that denigrate, destroy, and enslave others, that’s not love for all.
If anyone calls words and actions love but must hate others, destroy others, or prevent others’ Heart-goals of happiness in order to express such “love,” it is false, because it is limited. Such love doesn’t make anyone or anything great, especially a nation. Such love is veiled hatred. Such love attempts to redefine the word, perverts it, and confuses it. Such love infects rather than inspires. Such love, unfortunately, lived in Dr. King’s time. Perhaps more unfortunately, such hatred-called-love abounds in our time.
Dr. King knew the values embedded in the foundational documents of America. He worked to appropriate those for African Americans and other minorities to claim freedom. He understands that true social, civil, and legal freedom for people of color would mean freedom for everyone. That awareness marks love, for he knows that it will benefit the oppressors, too.
On page one of the nineteen pages, the second paragraph of the letter continues to show the spirit of Dr. King and his Heart-energy in employing logic and rationale — not a disingenuous rationalization. He answers the accusation of “outsiders coming in” to stir up trouble. He lays out the scope of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s work that extended to eighty-five locations, Birmingham being one.
The leadership of the Conference there asked for help, if they deemed it beneficial. King assented and explains to the white clergymen he addresses: “So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here.” This logical, firm refutation of one of the objections in the open letter from the clergymen exposes one underlying sentiment of the time: African Americans who desired freedom were considered agitators and threats to the white power base. His wise words shed light on it.
Dr. King continues with his Heart-energized soul-light once he has given the mind’s logic — a balanced blend evident when Heart is engaged rather than Ego. That first sentence of this paragraph reveals an expression of his soul’s purpose: “Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.” Understanding and feeling this, he could only have one response: love, go, act, and shed light: “I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town.” His purpose must show itself in loving care for others.
I will leave this here for tonight, but before ending, I make some applications to myself and to those who would take it for themselves. When anyone discovers self and creates purpose, this is Heart-energy, Heart-work. Such awakening and spiritual consciousness helps us discover personal truth and produces fulfillment, significance, and self-love. When anyone awakens like that, the issue and the consequences flow to others. Why? Each creature in this Universe contains the essence of Spirit and is inherently valuable. To not awaken is to live primarily under Ego-energy, and when that predominates, ugliness, unhappiness, or both will result: hatred, racism, or any variety of ill will.
And there sat Birmingham. And here sits America now. This current call for some fairy-tale nation with a superiority complex thrown in the face of minorities here and the world abroad is unnecessary if we are acting on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. We do the work, live the spirit, and evolve in “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Angry, hateful, boasting efforts to prove we are better will automatically erode, deny, or outright destroy those “certain unalienable rights.”
Dr. King exemplifies someone who awakened, created purpose, and lived it. Someone who expanded and came closer to fulfilling the spirit and unforeseen blessing of those founding documents, which weren’t always lived back then but must continue evolving, lest they die. Lest we die. Evolving, progressing, facing challenges, and responding with Heart are good things. Genuine love.
(All King quotes from http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undecided/630416-019.pdf)
