Presidential address: Martin Luther King Day

On this gray day in Washington and throughout much of the nation, it is my duty to talk about Martin Luther King. Dr. King’s career began ten years after World War II, when America saved itself and the West from Fascism, Nazism and the Japanese military state.

We were ecstatic.

We percieved ourselves to be the shining light of freedom, but Dr. King made it clear that millions of Americans were not free, that America could not and would not shine until these people were free.

He led. He hoped and prayed America into a stormy and bright future. He felt pain and death were worth the essential price black Americans would and should pay to free themselves and to create a free nation for their children.

Dr. King loved America. He ached to be part of the promise he had been denied as a black man.

He was claiming his American citizenship, his right and sacred duty to stick up for others and himself. He was claiming his black manhood while refusing to hate his white brothers.

He loved the promise of America so much, all he wanted was his white brothers to be men, to let him be so he and them could glory in the freedom America brags about but had been stifled for so many since the birth of our nation.

Dr. King, he lived the ideals of our independence. The ideals are the goodness of God and the necessity of freedom.

He referred to them as a majectic sense of values. They were values black America exemplified in its struggle to be free, for black Americans had to be majestic or America would not be majestic if black freedom came violently.

We wonder today how King could have had such faith in God and America and peace after all that black Americans had been through and were going through. We must remember that most Americans of his age and older were not cynical. They had lived through the depression, fought in World War II and World War I, got beaten in labor strikes and were beaten by police and rednecks for being black.

What kept them optimistic and hopeful was their religious beliefs and their belief in America. Religion is about God. America is about work.

Americans believed that here work will make you free. In other countries without America’s promise of the future, work makes you a slave.

Dr. King had the old school work ethic. He could not have had his faith or his drive without it.

Somewhere America lost its work ethic. Not our drive. Our work ethic.

Work was no longer something you prayed to God to do well. Success was no longer pursued with a request to God to be satisfied with a humble home and a simple marriage.

Dr. King could talk about and live non-violence because as hatefilled as our country was, there was still an acknowledgement of the necessity of simplicity and humbleness. He believed this simplicity and humbleness could be tapped into by his philosophies of peace and non-violence, that America could redeem itself from its racism.

He felt that black Americans could rise to the ocassion by being simply and humbly committed to non-violence and love. He felt that the simpleness and humbleness of so many white Americans in their interactions with white people could be directed toward their black brothers and sisters because of the godly and American example of black people.

A lot of people think that Dr. King’s dream failed. We can look at statistics and say yes, the dream failed. But if the dream has failed it’s because America is arrogant and because black America squandered its real pride for false pride.

When he talked about non-violence King was not merely being poetic. He said that non-violence means no self-destruction.

Look at the destruction black America has done to itself since Dr. King lost the struggle among black activists to influence black youth. Young blacks were encouraged to be dishonest, disrespectful, profane, violent.

He had challenged young black men to look into their souls, to proclaim themselves free, to find their manhood. Today that challenge applies to all Americans.

We need to look into our souls and ask why we have such low standards, as a country and as individuals. We need to ask if we are willing to demand change from our government and business as well as from ourselves.

We are perishing. We do not love ourselves or each other. We do not love America, otherwise we would not be cynical and arrogant.

It is tragic what has happened to black America, but that is no reason for the dream to die.

It is time for Americans to cultivate something that will attract and produce a great leader. Simplicity could be one thing. Not being greedy could be another. Honesty. An unshakeable faith in God.

An unshakeable faith that we have great beauty and goodness in us that came from God. This could be our truth we desperately want to bring out, as desperately as black Americans wanted to be free from white oppression.

My fellow Americans, you are not free. It will take great will power to begin to free the nation.

We can begin by not spending so much money. We can begin by not deluding ourselves that we deserve prosperity. We can begin by not allowing the media to tell us we do not have enough stuff, but need more.

This is easy. What is not easy is getting beyond defeating our selfishness to defeating the selfishness of those who love you to be afraid, who spy on you, who want to know everything about you.

These people control a large part of the government. They want to arrest anybody for any reason. Dr. King would understand this.

All the cameras and the satellites spying on you are playing the role of God. They see everything like God. But unlike God, there is not love behind them. Only evil eyes.

You wil not be rewarded for behaving well. You might be punished for no reason. If you do a good deed, you might be arrested because your act is threatening.

As time passes, hopefully you will grow to hate our surveillance technology to the extent black Americans hated slavery and Jim Crow. The more positive you force yourself to appear when questioned by authorities, the more you will understand slavery and the more you will appreciate Dr. King’s struggle: How to turn a phony smile into a respectful refusal.

The nation will require courage to do this. Like Dr. King and the civil rights activists, you will get beaten and arrested.

Like them, you have to be courageous – sticking up for your rights, the rights of your fellow Americans and the rights of future Americans.

Are you sick of being afraid? Do you want to trust yourself and your neighbor? Do you want to feel beautiful and good and see beauty and goodness in your fellow Americans?

I too have a dream. I dream that America will regain its soul, that a great group of leaders will rise out of the ashes of our consumerism and camera by camera, computer by computer lead Americans in the risky business of dismantling our police state, no matter what the price.

Friday, June 29

Dear Jim,

It’s a hot morning in Sacto. I’m writing to you at my favorite coffee shop where I’ve written to you so many times in the last year.

I need the place. I’m lucky it’s here for me to regroup, or to smile on the world when I’m inspired.

That’s the way I feel about you. You were there when I was down. You were proud of me when I was up.

A guy just sat down at my table. He has an 8” x 5” x 11” bible. We looked at each other. I said hi. He didn’t. I’m sure he feels he is on a spiritual path.

I’m trying to be on one, to be the passionate truth seeker I was as a kid, to be born again, this time without arrogance.

So I’ve sought you with these letters. I needed you to help me make changes I ache to make, to feel great before I die.

It’s been an incredible year. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t written to you.

I’m scared. Next year I have to make it on my own. If I become great, you won’t be here to laugh with as we sit on the lawn in the back of Sis I’s breathing the country air.

It will be sad for me. It will be sadder for you. You always admired me – your younger brother with unforgettable passion.

There’s lots of regrets. With all our pain, I wish I had prayed for you, for us, for me.

Dave

Friday, February 16

Dear Jim,

I’ve got two Fuji’s in the window to finish ripening. Somehow I remember you used to have bowls of fruit on your table. I think you meditated on them. You loved the still life’s of fruit of the old European guys that we saw in museums.

I don’t meditate on the Fuji’s, but I love to glance at them. There is nothing rich or subtle in the appearance of most apples. I remember you telling me that an orchard man in Wenatchee said that when he was a kid, his dad grew apples to taste good; but nowadays he doesn’t carry on his dad’s tradition. He grows apples to look good so they will sell. But that’s just it, they don’t look good. They look flashy. They look phony.

Even though I don’t meditate, I am becoming more centered. When I am doing something, I look at my hand or I look at the door knob as I turn it. I want to get to where I naturally meditate. Just have Fuji’s sitting around so I can contemplate them.

In the seventies or early eighties there was an article in Harper’s. It was about a guy in Vermont who lived in the mountains with his wife and kids. The guy would contemplate for two hours at a time.

Dad used to do that every morning before Mass for an hour. What a great combination – meditating then going to Mass. And of course he prayed before meditating.

I’ve thought of taking a yoga class or doing Tai Chi, but it doesn’t feel right. I would like to go to a meditation group where the leader doesn’t talk about peace and tranquility and all that Eastern shit, but says ”Contemplate Justice, Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Love, Lust, Hate, Fear, Confidence, Youth, the peak of your powers, falling apart.”

You are going to find peace and tranquility whatever you meditate on. It always amazes me that the chic seekers of Eastern wisdom don’t give the slightest shit about Western values. Except Prosperity.

Wednesday was Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. What an interesting combination.

I didn’t get ashes. I hardly ever have. Dad can’t remember if he got them this year or not. I think getting ashes is an admittance that you are a sinner.

I’m usually self-conscious so I do not get them. Maybe next year I’ll swallow my self-consciousness and do it. It’s a way to acknowledge we are a bunch of sinners without getting hysterical or saying ”I was a…” But we are still sinners even if we don’t have our old bad habits.

Then there is St. Blaise Day. I used to like getting my throat blessed. In these disgusting times, it would be good to get my throat blessed as I ask God to help me not to speak profanely or with hate.

The other day I got together with my friend I lived with for eleven years. She is going through a very difficult time.

She’s a year older than I am but is always sick. Her sister is 73, an invalid. But as pale and stressed as she looked, there was something good I noticed: ”Your eyes look great. The colored parts are real luminous and your whites are really clear.”

She prays and meditates. She prays to St. Anne. She did yoga every day for at least fifteen years, but hasn’t done it lately. She listened to the same yoga tape every day. It broke after I moved out.

February is her favorite month. She loves camellias. They are looking good this year.

February has always been my least favorite month. This year, even with all the sun and wind, I have not gotten as many headaches or been as down as I usually am.

I remember a lot of times coming home in the daytime in February to go to bed because I felt so bad. Do you remember, I guess it was the late eighties, when a friend of mine moved from Sacto to the Marina? You and I and her spent a sunny drought year Sunday afternoon in February on the Marina Green.

I felt like shit. I had a sinus headache all day. I couldn’t eat. When the outing was over, you and I went to mom’s and dad’s. I was in bed the rest of that day and at least all of the next. I wondered what dad thought of me.

Tonight is the crescent moon. I’ll have to step outside to watch it.

I’ve been thinking a lot the last few years about our cousin who committed suicide. It’s something I struggle with. I was too self-important to attend his funeral. After mom died and I was grieving for her by writing her letters, I decided to write to each of our dead family members. I wrote to him. I assume I apologized to him for missing his funeral.

He was a gem like you. Everybody loved him. I’ve told some of the family that the two best of our generation died young.

Mom thought he was gay. She thought he might have killed himself because of it. When I think of him, I remember thinking that something wasn’t right, even though he was a great guy and full of goodness. I wonder if he was pissed off at our aunt and uncle and our cousins.

That was a tragedy. If I ever see our cousins, I will apologize for not being there for them.

That’s it for now Jim.

Thanks for letting me get this off of my chest.

Love,

Dave