Why (The King of Love is Dead)

I love Martin Luther King Jr. I think he is the most phenomenal leader ever, and I use the present tense because he has continued to lead decades after his death. I love his thoughtful, passionate, measured, insistent approach to demanding justice. I strive to be like him in my own life as much as I can.

Most years on this day, I watch his I have a dream speech, but this year, I stumbled on the audio of a talk he gave in London in 1964 before being the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

There are a lot of great nuggets in the nearly hourlong speech, but here are a few of my favorites (possibly slightly paraphrased):

1) When Jesus said love your enemies -- I'm grateful he didn't say like your enemies. It's very difficult to like your enemies but loving them is possible and more powerful.

2) Love the person doing the evil deed and hate the deed.

3) If a man hasn't discovered something he would die for, he isn't fit to live.

4) And quoting a preacher: "We ain't what we want to be, we ain't what we outta be, we ain't what we gonna be, but thank God, we ain't what we was."

Amen Martin. And thank you, once again, for inspiring me to take action for justice.

On one of the commercial breaks from the address, they played this Nina Simone song, written after he was shot:

What's gonna happen now, in all of our cities?
My people are rising, they're living in lies
Even if they have to die, even if they have to die
At the moment they know what life is

Even at that one moment that ya know what life is
If you have to die, it's all right
'Cause you know what life is
You know what freedom is for one moment of your life

But he had seen the mountaintop and he knew he could not stop
Always living with the threat of death ahead
Folks you'd better stop and think, everybody knows we're on the brink
What will happen now, that the King is dead?

We can all shed tears, it won't change a thing
Teach your people, will they ever learn?
Must you always kill with burn and burn with guns
And kill with guns and burn, don't you know how we gotta react?

But he had seen the mountaintop and he knew he could not stop
Always living with the threat of death ahead
Folks you'd better stop and think, everybody knows we're on the brink
What will happen, now that the King of Love is dead?

What has happened, and what will continue to happen, is that people will continue to work for the ideals for which Martin Luther King Jr. fought. I, for one, need to step up my game...