I was asked to give the keynote address to the snow-rescheduled NAACP celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Maine State Prison today.
Theme of talk: Martin Luther King Jr. and Friendship --
What do we have to fear? Some points for conversation
Some excerpts:
I thanked them. They thanked me. And we went our ways. In friendship.
What do we have to fear? Some points for conversation
Some excerpts:
Dr King said the victory, what winning would look like, is “friendship and understanding.”
So I ask myself -- and you might have this conversation with yourself: What is it I, or we, fear?
For me, three things come to mind:
1. We fear that we’ll look foolish, be played, be laughed at, be betrayed.
2. We fear that others will try to own us, buy and sell us, hurt our loved ones, steal our names, detour our integrity, inhibit our future.
3. We fear that we will learn that we, too, are afraid, a little cowardly, full of excuses, full of bullshit, inclined to hide inside our anger, blame, shame, resentment, and even what we think of as hatred.
These three fears that come to mind arise in all environments -- here in prison, out on the streets, in shopping malls in Tucson Arizona, in the desert stretches and devastated alleys of Iraq, the harsh hiding mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the difficult rhetoric and harsh insensitive words of our countrymen, and in the quiet hours of human life lived anywhere throughout this world, time and history. We’re fragile. We’re uncertain. We’re trying to figure out who we are and where we’re going.
Martin Luther King Jr. understood fear. He was no fool. But as often as he must have considered the absurdity of speaking a truth he felt and believed in to a society and power structure he knew to be threatened and frightened about the injustices they hid behind, -- he kept moving through his own fear. He moved through his life, his philosophy, his faith, his demonstrations, campaigns, and causes -- until there was no place else to go. I suspect this “no place else to go” is the surrender and submission to friendship and the conversation it requires. You do what you can, you do your best, and -- at end -- you come to realize that friendship is what remains when everything else falls away.
...
Dr. King presents us with the invitation to enter the conversation.
There’s a line in the introduction to A Course in Miracles that says: “The opposite of love is fear, but that which is all-encompassing can have no opposite.”
Imagine, living in a world with no opposite!
Our job in life, and Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong model of this, is to ‘be-there.’ We’re meant to show up in our lives, in difficult places, and bring the truth of who we are to the situation -- and by doing so to help others through the difficulties.
The philosopher Martin Heidegger said that ‘being there” (in German, Da-sein) is the word that means a human being. A human being is someone who “is there.” They are there, as they are, are they there. This willingness to be present is the goal of friendship. And friendship is a vehicle of life....
I think it’s a worthy conversation, this “friendship.” We have many needs. Mostly we need conversation and friendship.
Kahlil Gibran wrote On Friendship in The Prophet:Your friend is your needs answered.I’ll end my remarks with 3 possible antidotes to the absurdity we often experience around us. (“Absurdity” defined as “utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, untrue; contrary to all reason or common sense; something laughably foolish or false. The quality or condition of existing in a meaningless or irrational world.”)
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
1. Invite others to participate with you to discover meaning from its hiding place.
2. Create a community of genuine friendship where to speak and to listen is the norm, is respected, is a radical foundational reality.
3. Recognize that no one can own you -- that you are free: free to see things differently; free to be kind; free to feel; free to think; free to speak to one another about things that matter.
Try friendship. A friend is someone you can be silent with. A friend is also someone who will speak when speaking is called for.
Here’s a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. It is a quote that can cut both ways. He said:“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”Dr King leaves us today with a riddle, a koan, to sit with, and ponder, in our own presence.
I thanked them. They thanked me. And we went our ways. In friendship.
