The late Coretta Scott King has been quoted as saying: "The greatest birthday gift my husband could receive is if people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds celebrated the holiday by performing individual acts of kindness through service to others."
Martin Luther King's statement "Life's most persistent and urgent question: What are you doing for others?" is answered by this statement from another great humanitarian: "We should measure our love for God by our love for man;and our sense of Science will be measured by our obedience to God, — fulfilling the law of Love, doing good to all; imparting, so far as we reflect them, Truth, Life, and Love to all within the radius of our atmosphere of thought." (from "Love Your Enemies" in Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy ).
In celebration of Martin Luther King's life, I have posted some of his quotes taken from spiritualityandpractice.com , quotationspage.com and time.com:
ON RELATIONSHIPS: "No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent."
ON BOLDNESS: "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up."
ON FREEDOM: "Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial."
ON VIOLENCE: "Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."
ON LOVE: "Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it."
ON NONCOMFORMITY: "This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Dangerous passions of pride, hatred and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless Calvaries. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a
nonconforming minority."
ON SILENCE: In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
ON NON-VIOLENCE: Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Enough said. In honor of Martin Luther King, may we all find more ways to be kind and so scatter that mustard seed of peace more widely. Happy day.
photo by time.com
To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.
No comments:
Post a Comment