Although of course, you end up becoming yourself…
I usually read his Letter from a Birmingham Jail but, as I find myself exploring on the day we have chosen to celebrate the life of Dr. King, I find this text about this great man speaking to me powerfully.
We never start out to be who we end up becoming, even my short life so far illustrates this seeming law of human nature, but allowing ourselves to be created is a confusing and sometimes uncomfortable journey. Becoming who you are seems to be one of those things like loving, acting unaffected, and going to sleep where the harder you try the harder it is.
We tend to forget this about our heroes and, in some ways, it may be one of the things that keeps us from living a heroic life. Heroism as a goal is too often misguided romanticism, which often turns dark and breeds cynicism. But if we truly do become ourselves, layer by layer, choice by choice, we should strive to live creatively and faithfully where we are.
Foster awareness, learning, curiosity, compassion, dedication — explore the questions, follow the hints, run after your intuition and when the time comes take the risk that is uniquely yours to take. Although of course, as D.F.W. says, you end up becoming yourself…
When I reflect on the life and witness of Martin Luther King, Jr., one thing that strikes me is obvious: he didn’t start out to be who he ended up being. He didn’t set out to be a visionary leader, intent on making an impact on the country and culture of his day. He allowed himself to be created. Slowly, layer by layer, choice by choice, he became himself. He didn’t choose “leader of a mass civil rights movement” from a list of vocational options. His identity emerged gradually from within as he yielded to the guidance of the community and listened and prayed and read and participated and took the risks of creativity that were uniquely his to take.
Underneath who we think we are, who people expect us to be, are as-yet-undiscovered aspects of our true identity—layers waiting to be uncovered. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the minister of a local church, husband and father, a dedicated preacher who devoted hours to preparing sermons that were theologically sound and probing. This was a good fit for him. He wasn’t searching for a new identity. But he found himself interested in the writings of Henry David Thoreau about civil disobedience and Gandhi’s thoughts about nonviolence. He became interested in some folks who were questioning the color barriers in their town and were beginning to devise ways to stand up to them. He didn’t have answers, only questions. He followed the questions, exploring the hints that came layer by layer, thus becoming more of himself.
Thus it was surprising, and yet not surprising at all, that within hours after a seamstress named Rosa Parks had “sat down for what she believed” he had been named spokesperson for a fledgling resistance movement. When he got home and told Coretta what had happened, he said he knew at a gut level that he was being asked inwardly to move beyond words and ideas and to put theory into practice. He said he knew he could no longer stand by and do nothing because to do so was to be a perpetrator of the evil he deplored.
Twenty minutes later the same young man who had a reputation for giving sermons only after hours of preparation was standing before a crowd of about 4,000 people speaking extemporaneously of the challenges and opportunities that lay before them. Part of what he said was this:
Sometimes a person gets tired…. We are here this evening to say to those who have mistreated us so long that we are tired—tired of being segregated and humiliated, tired of being kicked by the brutal feet of oppression…. We come here tonight to be saved from the patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.
King knew he had a calling—to be a preacher and a father and a citizen. What he discovered little by little was that these dreams would be fulfilled far beyond his imagination. What about us? Are we still becoming ourselves? Are our deepest callings still unfolding, beyond our imagination? Or have we become too patient with being less than we really are?
Kayla McCLurg - via Inward/Outward
“
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
HOWARD THURMAN - The Mood of Christmas
“I, too, can feel the ground shaking. Many of us hear its deep rumblings. Any moment now, the earth will crack open and we will stare into its dark center. Into that smoking caldera, we will be asked to throw most of what we have treasured, most of the techniques and tools that have made us feel competent. We know what we must do. And when we finally step forward to do it, when we have made our sacrificial offerings to the gods of understanding, then the ruptures will cease. Healing waters will cover the land, giving birth to new life, burying forever the ancient, rusting machines of our past understandings. And on these waters we will set sail to places we now can only imagine. There we will be blessed with new visions and new magic. We will feel once again like creative participants in this mysterious world. But for now, we wait. An act of faith.”
MARGARET WHEATLEY - Leadership and the New Science pg. 47
“Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”
FAHRENHEIT 451 - via MMM
“There is more beauty in truth even if it is dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak; this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.”
STEINBECK - East of Eden
