Well, happy 2023.
I mean that sincerely but also, on this MLK day, I have to say I’ve been stunned by the overwhelming grayness of the day. I don’t intend that that should be symbolic; I’m just stating a fact: it was EXTREMELY gray today.
With that, I don’t have a lot to say except that one of items on my “to-do’s” for 2023 is to reinvigorate this venture right here, so I’m going to try to post more. See, it only took me 15 days (or half a month or 1/24 of the year) to even do this…so we can probably see where 2023 is in the standings right now.
That’s okay. This is the year of let’s just make progress. It doesn’t matter how much progress.
me
Check me out on Medium
That said, I’ve been doing a little writing over on Medium and would love to have you join me over there or least peruse what I’m writing. Here’s a link to my latest essay called:
What Do You Want: The Answer Will Set You Free
It totally will. Follow me over there for some more “think pieces.” I’m challenging myself to just start to put ideas to paper and it’s a good forum for that.
So all of this to say: more to come here. Stay tuned.
A Little MLK Seems Appropriate
And now for a major shift in the quality and caliber of thinker, let’s remember MLK as I think he should be remembered today.
I’ll leave you with a little MLK quote that I think is overlooked because of his “I have a dream” ubiquity.Just for context, MLK Jr. was a true radical in that what he was proposing was intended to shake the core and foundations of a way of life, not just for white people or black people but all people in the United States and beyond. Looking back through the rosy lens of history, we see him a famous, radiant, and tragic celebrity. He is that today, but then he was sweating and bleeding and fighting for the rights of his family–specific and broad–to live in a place that wouldn’t threaten or harm them.
Today, we revere him so highly it’s almost easy to forget he was a real man, with real fears, fighting real threats in this place that often really hated him and his message. Because of his “I Have a Dream” speech and other “meme-able” and historical statements (“I have been to the mountaintop…”) we think he was an idealist. I mean, he was. But he was a strategist, a highly emotionally intelligent political actor, thinker, and risk-taker. He saw a different world but didn’t believe it was just within our human grasp. He was never unaware of just how much he would suffer, and likely die, to put the message out.
Because of that, I’m moved by reflections he gave to Ebenezer Church congregation on Christmas which Jamelle Bouie highlighted in his NYTimes essay today: a reminder to us in this present world of how much we think has changed and how much it seems to stay the same:
This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we see its ominous possibilities…
Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world…“We must either learn to live together as brothers,” “or we are all going to perish together as fools.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967 “A Christmas Sermon on Peace.”
Indeed.
My Tent on the Beach 