"A time comes when silence is betrayal."

[WebeBlue]

When I run out of steam, sometimes I turn back to the leaders I admire from our history. Here is a not well known speech from Rev. Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967, and those words hold true for today's times. With Rumsfeld on board for 4 more years and his announcement yesterday that troops to be in Iraq another 4 years or more; with the 2004 election compromised and riddled with fraud; with the religious right promulgating belief sets that have little to do with Christ consciousness, I find the need of strengthening words.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

snipped........

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

snipped.....

http://www.ssc.msu.edu/~sw/mlk/brkslnc.htm

[bluedonkey]

1. Thank you

for posting this.Dr King is always an inspiration.
I'd wish I had his patience,tho.

[Dhalgren]

2. Thanks, I needed this.

[Quakerfriend]

3. Thanks

Tears are all around. It all seems to happened so fast.