Happy Martin Luther King Day

I agree, Bryan.
And I submit that our pro-life view must also cause us to speak out against our country’s culpability for the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today’s a good day to read and listen to MLKing’s 4/4/67 speech against the Vietnam war. It’s a powerful statement of justice and equality. Here are two paragraphs:

“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.”

Sorry to disappoint you, FW, but I spent my only day off this week with my wife and 4 children and helped around the house a little. This is a very important part of my God-given vocation and I guess we could say it is connected somewhat loosely to my dedication to promoting the sanctity of human life, though not seen beyond my own household. But still, that’s something, isn’t it?

Hope you did whatever you wanted to do today.

In my other vocation as undershepherd, many local people know of my public stance of protest against the United States’ unjust abortion laws. I try to be pretty open about that and educate as many people as I am given the opportunity about the sin of extinguishing innocent human life and how our civic laws and our caring actions in our various vocations can reflect these important human concerns.

Sorry, wasn’t much of an “activist” today.

“consider the lilies of the field. they toil not, neither do they spin or become activists……”

That is absolutely classic.

My mother actually had an interesting thought on this today. She was telling me about a news story she saw which quoted MLK Jr.: “Anyone can be great because anyone can serve.” She really thought this was a wonderful legacy. She pointed out that, for all his failings, MLK Jr’s legacy is service. What a great legacy that would be to hold.