Tomorrow is January 15, 2021 / Infinite hope

 

Tomorrow Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been 92 years old.  The message he carried does not die.  Last night I had a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep due to a flood of fearful thoughts arising from tangled roots in the past, strangling the present and threatening any peace of mind and heart in the future.  As I tossed and turned, I remembered being a child and having the same troubling experience of sleeplessness again and again without the hope that came into my life when I was nearly 40 years old.  

In an unforgettable moment in 1987 came the realization that I was not alone and had never been alone and that there was at least one person, a Lummi woman who was ten years younger than I was and who had experienced severe trauma in her life and who carried a message of hope, a woman who had come to know that she was not alone, that she was part of a community that I now think of as the beloved community.  

Last night when I suddenly became aware that I was not alone in facing fearful thoughts, I was able to fall asleep and stay asleep.  I dreamed that a man I know who is in his fifties and who has survived against all odds told me with deep joy that he was going to be a father.  

This morning I found these sustaining quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Our goal is to create a beloved community, and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.

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We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. 

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Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.

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I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.

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This day before Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday is an opportunity to revisit this Lummi story of infinite hope:

(Note:  When you click to start the video, it will not start but will direct you to click on a link to YouTube)