Someone mentioned some months ago that imaging a better America where all people can be treated with compassion and respect was just essentially living in a dream world.” To imagine and hope and work for such a world is just foolishness and a waste of time,” he said. “The way this country is going there is no hope for a better tomorrow and all this talk about it is just a way of trying to make people feel better. The truth is it ain’t never going to happen. Things will only get worse before they get better and rest assured the higher ups don’t give a damn about you. They only care about themselves.”

What this man was saying is that I should stop dreaming of a better world where love, charity, prosperity and justice can prevail for every citizen in society. What he was saying in essence is that I should give up all hope of ever living in that kind of society; and that I should stop deluding my children and confusing the people in my church that such a world is still possible and that I should just “snap out of it!”

Living in a dream world does not mean denying the truth of reality and giving up hope. It means keeping at the forefront of our consciousness  and being the ideals that life can become better; that society can get better and that while my community may never become Mister Rogers Neighborhood, to use his words, I can still hope and dream and work to make that world a living reality and help make my dreams and the dreams of others come true. And even if the dreams don’t come to reality in the matter and manner that we desire, we should never stop dreaming.

It’s good to live in our dream worlds and visit them every now and then; to remind us that a better world is possible and that there are still many good people and great things happening in our country today. Former University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins once said that America is not a perfect place but it is still one of the best places on earth. While some people may not be living their dreams, many people are living their dreams and many good things are still happening to many people in this country. Living our dreams are not predicated only on wealth and other things that we dream of in our society.

The great Howard Thurman once observed, “ So long as a man has a dream in his heart, he can never lose the significance of living.” For Thurman dreams add value and meaning to our lives. He urges us to keep them hallow and to strive for their realization each day.

In the movie Collateral directed by Michael Mann, the cab driver, played by Jamie Foxx, tells his rider, a lawyer played by Jada Pinckett, that he has a getaway that he goes to each day. It is his paradise or dream land, which is a picture of an island with white sands and palm trees that he has on the  sun visor of his cab. Paraphrasing one of his lines, he says something like, “Whenever things get difficult I just go to my getaway.” In other words, he imaginatively transports himself to the serene and tranquil place where he is at perfect peace with himself and the world around him. 

It is his dream to one day own his own limousine service called “Island Limos” where the experience is so enjoyable that riders don’t want to get out of the limo once their fare  is up. In that experience his clients will live their dreams and not want to come exit that reality. He is living in a dream world to be sure and although the harsh realities of driving a cab daily confront him, he will never give up that dream as long as he has breath in his body. In a gesture of kindness before Pinckett exits his cab, Foxx gives her the little post card of his dream place and she thanks him for it.

We should never put an expiration date on our dreams. We should never stop dreaming and should always be willing to share our dreams with others, even if they tell us to stop living in a dream world and even hate us like Joseph’s brothers did in the Bible when he told them his dreams. We should not stop hoping and working for a better world. We should always be ready to give hope and live hope for something better and greater than ourselves; a place for which we all long that will bring peace, joy and happiness for every living soul.

Keep living in your dream world! There is nothing wrong with having your dreams. Oh rest assurred that reality will always wake you up and bring you back to yourself, but never stop dreaming and longing to become the person or create the world that exceeds your greatest dreams and imaginings.

Dreams are the stuff that life is made of and the stuff of life that one day can come true.  So keep striving. Keep dreaming. Keep longing and working for that kind of world and never give up your deepest hopes and greatest dreams that you and the world can become what your greatest dreams say that you can become. Keep living in your dream world and keep striving to make that dream world a significant part of your daily reality.

In the December 19, 2011 issue  of the National Review with a picture of Gekko on its cover, Kevin D. Williamson wrote a telling article titled  Greed 2.0 explaining the nexus between Wall Street and Washington. 

Let’s be real. Corporations are in the business to make profits for their shareholders. It is their nature to make more and more money and as much money as humanly and corporately possible.  Anything less than this is a trivial pursuit and an abdication of the central responsibility of business enterprise.

Gekko’s statement that financial ”greed is good” is a declaration of independence; a statement of cold hard facts and truth about the harsh realities of business. The corporate engines and leviathans of capitalism are out to make all the money they can to gain hegemony over their competitors,  satisfy their investors and expand their global reach.

But even with all of this egotistical”dog eat dog getting and taking” by corporations in competing for profits there is a social corollary to all of this. It is the hope that more altruistic and charitable social results will prevail such as jobs, prosperity for many and the overall improvement and empowerment of society and its workers. Here everybody wins and not just the owners and rulers who are “giftedly greedy.”

While greed can be good and there can be, in the words of Ayn Rand, “virtue in selfishness,” it is also important to remember that greed can  be destructive and dangerous when it  runs willy nilly; when it jeopardizes the health of workers; when it is recklessly pollutes the environment, buys out the American political process; pimps politicians, circumvents regulations; ransacks democracy and abbreviates and abolishes the sacred rights of every day people in a free society. Greed is not good when it becomes so predatory or vulturistic that it runs roughshod over people, is devoid of remorse or conscience and destroys the life, health and future of every living person.

Financial greed can be good when money made is also money shared to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, care for the sick and elderly, educate the unlearned, employ the jobless, rebuild society and push the frontiers of science, medicine and industry into new vistas of invention and discovery, advance culture, the arts and the humanities and make more money.  Greed can be good when it creates greater equality in society. Greed can also be good when we possess a genuine hunger to get all the education that we can and work hard to make ourselves more humane persons.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism once said, “Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.” German sociologist Max Weber in the classic work, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” delineates the acetic values inherent in the Christian religion and Capitalism. The twin concerns is saving and serving; making money to better oneself and using money to better serve society.

I am not anti-capitalist. There is nothing wrong with making a living or becoming wealthy. Money talks in our society and for many of us who are fortunate to get some of it now and again  it usually says “goodbye.” The problem is when persons have made all the money that they can, destroy others in the process and then confiscate the last penny of  the last man to satisfy an alpha urge to gobble up everything in its greedy wake in a demented effort to have it all.

In a nation which prides itself as being religious are we not under some religious and moral imperative to share some of those resources with others in need? Should I not share my wealth with the poor who must daily fend for crumbs and bread or just greedily keep it all to myself and then throw away my left overs rather than give it to others who are sick and starving?   Now that I have made all the money that I can what becomes of those who are left behind and struggle each day for bread and meat? I think that I lose something of my soul and compassion for my neighbor when neither my conscience nor my heart moves me to help someone else in need after my greed has gotten me more than I truly need.

When everything that a man does is in pursuit of more and more financial wealth while others have less and less of it, it should give us great pause about this notion of greed being good. I am afraid that this ”greed is good at the expense of everyone else in society” philosophy is  undermining an ethic of responsiblity and alienating us further from each other.

Furthermore, it is utterly paradoxical that politics can be used to protect the rule and interests of the wealthy in America while appearing to turn a mean heart and a deaf ear to protect the needs of the poor. Part of the problem is greedy politicians who would rather see people starve to death than up the ante of their corporate sponsors by challenging them to pay their fair share in taxes. And if one could poll many people in the fiscal elite of our country, numbers of them would not begrude paying more in taxes by giving something back to society.

In a world driven by materialism where “getting and spending lays waste our powers,” where the worth and measure of a person’s life are often determined by the quality and quantity of his material possessions, the result is often an insatiable drive to reap more and more until there is nothing left for anyone else in society or no one else left in society. 

Do our possessions possess us or do we possess our possessions? Perhaps we should create a society where compassion, love, empathy, justice and other respectable qualities truly possess all of us so that we become a more caring and compassionate society.    

Greed is good when one can make money to honestly enrich oneself. Greed is good when money earned can also be money shared to help those who cannot fully enrich or help themselves. The saying still rings true. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime.” The problem is that some people in this country are so greedy that they neither want to give a fish or teach others how to fish.

Greed is good when I am driven and hungry for more in order to help myself and when I am hungrily driven to help someone else with greater needs. Then and only then will the power, benefits and effects of greed run full circle to help not only myself but help others who truly need it most.

Then and only then can the statement, “Greed is good,” be perhaps unilaterally applied across all sectors of society because it means that every person in society will become the beneficiaries of it when it is used and shared with the purpose of serving the best interests of every citizen in society.

With Bashir and Ratigan, Matthews and Maddow, Sharpton and Shultz, O’Donnell,  Henderson, Capehart, Eugene Robinson, Michael Eric Dyson, Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris Perry, Alex, and a host of other great, razor sharp minds, all other national networks pale in comparison.

I miss Keith Olbermann in the MSNBC format, the Edward R. Murrow of political commentary, although I can now catch him on Current TV, and for even deeper analysis of those current political events that MSNBC and other networks do not cover, I turn to Link TV and Free Speech TV where I can see and hear Amy Goodman and Thom Hartmann.

What I like about MSNBC is that the political commentators are in a class of their own compared to the talkings heads of other news organizations. After listening to extended broadcasts of one news station, which is largely slanted toward the corporate interests of the ruling oligarchs, I stopped tuning into the station because I got tired of feeling like I had to dumb down or tune in on another frequency because so much of opinions were just out of this world and just did not line up with the facts.

MSNC’s all star line up includes college professors, a Rhodes Scholar, a Pulitzer Prize Winner, people with political experience in the Halls of Congress and on Capital Hill, a minister and Civil Rights activist and a whole host of other heavies more precious than gold who can think and hold their own against anyone, anywhere at anytime and still have a gift for” keeping it real” and “making it plain.”

MSNBC  may have heralded a paradigm shift in news journalism for having among its cast political commentators and newspaper columnists who are also  political and community activists. They just don’t work from the warm and comfy environment of the studios, but actually get out there among the people to stand in the cold and wind and rain to support the struggle for equality and justice. This makes a powerful statement to the average viewer. These individuals actually care about the every man and woman in America and are not just delivering the news from inside the towers but also transporting their hides to the hard front lines where  John and Jane Q citizen struggle each day to speak truth to power. 

Moreover, they write books worth reading such as John Kennedy Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews, Dylan Ratigan’s Greedy Bastards, Eugene Robinson’s Disintegration, Al Sharpton’s “Go and Tell Pharoah, Michael Eric Dyson’s I Might Not Get There With You,  and other works by such authors as Richard Wolfe and other guests, which  I have devoured for a greater understanding of what is and has been happening in American politics today.

Who doesn’t love big Eddie? He is a front line, grid iron, outdoors man who knows what it means to take it to the opposition and who passionately advocates and defends middle class Americans, the rights of workers and unions and protests the injustices done to everyday, working people. What a breath of fresh air at a time when the power and fiscal elite are running roughshod over the average American.

And what about Reverend Al? The man who has borne his stripes and seen his share of pain but through sacrifice and service has reinvented himself and has become one of the most respected voices for Civil Rights in our era? Reverend Al has a keen understanding of things and his mental acuity, forensic skills and common sense, which is not common, will not only amaze you but set you on your heels and probably has had some of his more staunch opponent guests sighing relief at the first commercial break in his broadcast.

And then there is Rachel whom I have been listening to since her days on Air America whose cognitive prowess, prescient analysis, lazer focus and nuanced commentary reveal the shades and tints of  issues in ways that are unlike others in her media galaxy.

There is Lawrence O’Donnell getting desks for school children in Africa and who brings years of experience working in the Senate and truly understands how the American political system really works. He is knowledgeable, caring and knows what he is talking about. His passionate no non sense, cut to the chase, political forays are the result of years of working on the beltway in Washington.

And what about the fast talking inimitable Chris Matthews with his hard ball commentary and staccato style of rapid questioning that covers more ground in a single sentence and segment than a speeding bullet. Matthews is the Usain Bolt of modern political commentary.

There is Melissa and Malika, both strong, charming and brilliant, Jonathan also, brilliant,who always has a profound and deep understanding of the real issues and conveys them with a feeling of compassion and caring. There is Michael Eric “the poet of prose,” Dylan who often has me shouting “yes” at the television set and the ever so dashing Martin Bashir, interlocutor par excellence of the King’s Speech, purveyor of the punctilious, master of calm, the hard stare and the polite, silent extended pause when guests dribble out the absurd to the ridiculous.

MSNBC should be credited for assembling such a sumptuous potpourri of great minds and talents. I could go on and on about how these various individuals are all very similar but all very different. I appreciate watching news programs where the commentators are not just spewing out talking points for political purposes but have an affinity for the truth and a passion for giving thoughtful, prepared, informative analyses that are grounded in reality, are worth hearing,  do not let their guests off the hook with the hard questions and do not waste viewer’s precious time.

In a world where people often don’t say what they mean or mean what they say and at a time when political pundits tell the public things that they know are light years from the truth and planet earth, MSNBC is where I sometimes put my eyes and ears for serious political analysis and commentary.

I grew up in a time when parents were prison wardens; hard task masters who did not have much time for play. Children were seen and not too much heard. But I am also part of the boomer generation that spent a whole lot of time playing. Fun was our primary vocation and when I look back, I long for those days when we just had pure, open, crazy and innocent fun. Even my son seems a little bit too serious at times. He tells me that my jokes are not funny but occasionally will display a half moon grin when I say or do something real comical.

Do any of you readers remember dem days?  The days of shooting marbles, root the peg and honey bee hunting; da days when an all day sucker actually lasted all day; da days when you had to be in the house by the time the street lights came on and had better not move from the front step until your mama gave you permission.

 I used to do something real funny that my friends did not appreciate. When we played hide and go seek I usually went home. There, no body could find me, as I wolfed down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while occasionally peeking out of my living room window to see if anybody would come to my door looking for me. Some of them never found me out until my friend Irving busted me sneaking out onto the front porch to see if anybody was out there. He said that he would tell the others if I did not make him a sandwich.

Dem was da days; the days when my best friend and I fought for a whole city block because he told me that there was a  job waiting for me at Awry’s Bakery sticking my face in dough making gorilla cookies or the time when I wore my Zorro suit to school-Don Diego was da man, and got caught marking z’s on the school locker with my plastic chalked tipped Zorro Sword. Dem was da days when we played the dozens. Talk about my daddy and that wasn’t too bad. Talk about my mama and we would get it on!

Dem was the da days; da days of Popeye the Sailor Man, Bluto and Olive Oil. Man, I could never see what Popeye saw in Olive. My main man was Wimpy who would “gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger patty today.”

And what about those summer days of playing tag and playing baseball; watching girls jump rope and play jacks and hopscotch; days when parents were so revered and feared that they could look you into silent submission with what I now call the lazer stare and make you have an out of body experience.

I remember when my father stared at me for ten minutes straight without blinking after I had done something super stupid. My world nearly came to an end. My mother had this Bela Lugosi, Shock Theater stare, man, that put you in this medieval trance like state where you could have a virtual experience of the ”"beating ”before you actually got it. The stare was often enough to put you in freeze frame and ruin the rest of your day. You knew that you were finished when they both stared at you bug eyed at the same time from different corners of the same room.

But dem was da days; da days of white lies and play acting; the days where passing gas brought shame and ridicule to your reputation.  I remember when I pooted loudly and unexpectedly in my home room class. My classmates talked about me for what seemed like an eternity: three days and three nights. No longer Carlyle Fielding Stewart III, I was now “Scooter the Pooter.” Nobody wanted to touch  or come near me. It was sad,  I mean totally sad dat dey could do me dis way, but dem was da days.

Dem was da days of two for one penny candy; where a person’s wealth was measured by how many jelly beans , mint julips or wax lips he had in his pockets; where chewing ten or twenty pieces of Bazooka Joe bubble gum at one time was a show of talent; da days of Gunsmoke and Peter Gunn; Howdy Doody and Sky King; da days of Good Humor and Mister Softie, da days of the Lone Ranger and Tonto, the Cisco Kid and Poncho.

As I grew older I still had fun. I hit a stage in my life when I wanted to be Willie Mays. As the center fielder for the Mohawks who played out of the Kronk Recreation Center, I lived, dreamed, ate and slept baseball.  I carried my baseball glove everywhere I went. I had hundreds of baseball cards and got mad at a friend who tried to get me to swap my Willie Mays card for Steve Boros and Clay Darymple.

But dem was the days. Da days when you wanted to be somebody. James Brown was another hero that we all wanted to be like. I had a friend who wanted to be James Brown so badly that he looked and dressed and walked and talked like James Brown. He even had concerts in his basement that renditioned all of James’s hits. So enthralled with James was he that when he conversed with you on some days he would only respond to you in the lyrics and titles of James’ songs.  When you asked him how he felt, he shook his leg real quick like James and said, “I feel good!” When you asked him how he was going to recover from a recent set back, he said, “Papas Gotta Brand New Bag and when he got into trouble with his father he said, ”Papa Don’t Take No Mess!”  One day when I saw him on the way to school, I shouted to him from across  the street  “Say it Proud, You’re  Black and You’re Loud!” He chased me  four city blocks and finally catching up with me,  and laughing uncontrollably, slapped the stingy brim from my big bald head and said, don’t ”Try Me!”

But dem was da days; da days of fun and long days in the sun. How I long for dem days. When our children tell us that we play too much, they just don’t know what it means to really play and have some real fun. We could teach them a lesson or two on how to ”give it up and turn it loose” with some real slap happy, down home humor. Some kids take life too seriously today. Many of them have no choice. It would be nice if  kids today could just loosen up and play without a care in the world. What a blessing to have a father that “plays too much.” But that’s the world we all long, work and live for: da days of innocence and pure joy; da good ole days. Oh how I long for dem.

I asked this man why he thought that spiritual things did not involve our participation in politics since so much of political decision making affects us at every level of our daily lives. I said to him that politics should be a moral enterprise and that everything from the way we make decisions politically to the budgets that we develop each year says a lot about our moral priorities as a nation.

When Jesus spoke of caring for the least of these, he was not referring to them as isolated entities in society. He did not have a compartmentalized approach to the practice of spirituality that separated a person’s spirit from the other aspects of his life such as what he was to eat and drink and how he would make a living.  Jesus believed that society had a moral and spiritual obligation to help those who could not help themselves.

Jesus’ understanding of  ”spiritual things,” to use this man’s terms, involves the totality of the individual and society and how its wealth and resources create a world where each person can be fully integrated into society in order to properly care for themselves, families and communities, which in the long run makes for a healthier and happier society.

Thus the politics of obtaining physical bread to feed the body each day is  just as spiritual as the ethics of consuming the Word of God as spiritual bread to feed the soul each day. “Spiritual things” include mental health, physical, emotional, financial and ecological well being, the capacity to access material resources that promote social and physical wellness and enjoying the basic rights of individuals to live as free and healthy persons in society.

I challenged this gentleman to broaden his understanding of the word, “spiritual” and after further discussion, I discovered that what he was trying to say is that he did not think Christians should become involved in politics because of its corrupting influences and how too often too many of them sell their souls to the devil for personal gain. The higher moral and spiritual principles that should guide their thinking, govern their actions and enhance their personal relationships as Christians are often abandoned for personal wealth and power once they assume political office. 

The result then is that too many politicians seem more concerned about keeping their jobs and towing the line of their political parties than addressing the greater needs of the people they have been elected to serve.  Too many of them have lost moral authority and spiritual efficacy.

On the other hand, there are numerous persons who see themselves more as pubic servants than as politicians. They set fine examples of servant leadership in the public realm. They do care about people. They are concerned about the wellness of persons and society in totality. They know that society can be well and whole if all of its citizens are made well and whole. They understand that to be spiritual is not to be detached from the daily needs and concerns of the lives of every day citizens and they do have a moral and spiritual obligation to see that each person in society is cared for so they can have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These public servants who happen to be spiritual view politics as a kind of moral and spiritual enterprise that ensures that each citizen has bread and justice.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr reminds us that love on the individual and personal level has its moral equivalent in the practice of justice on the collective social level. Every true Christian’s understanding of the practice of Christian spirituality should focus on developing loving interpersonal relations but also seeing that citizens receive a  “love” from society in the form of  justice. This model of spirituality is much more holistic than we care to admit.

Christians should therefore become involved in politics as a spiritual expression of their social concern for the wellness of persons in society. They can achieve this without losing their souls to the devil and abandoning the higher altruism to which they have been called and chosen as Christians and as public servants.

A genuine concern for the total life of all persons in American society is what we need in American politics today. Being “spiritual” means precisely having a concern for the political process and how we can engage the enterprise in meeting the needs of all persons in society while keeping in tact our moral and spiritual integrity.

The Tea Party members who now have political currency do not represent all Republicans. When we speak of  Republicans we talk as though they all share the same ideological views . We paste them all together because we have not seen or heard many dissenting voices from the predominant views of the Tea partiers. The more moderate voices of the Republican Party appear all but muted and seem to defer to those more strident voices; those who shout the loudest and fight the hardest even if it means driving our nation off of a moral and financial cliff into the deep abyss . This “I got mine and you ain’t never, ever, going to get yours,” philosophy in the Kabooke Theater of American power politics has us all scratching our heads about why other Repubican voices of reason are not rising to the fore. 

Mitt Romney is a case in point. In a party whose recent political tactics have included swiftboating the opposition, attacking opponents on their strengths and making those strengths  weaknesses, and a wide variety of other political gambits, Mitt Romney’s mild mannered, tepid approach seems to convey a voice of moderation. It also appears that as we approach the Iowa caucuses that some of the same devices used against democrat opponents are being leveled at him by members of his own party.

For example, Romney has been said to be a flip flopper; a political chameleon whose true shades and stripes are not genuinely known; that he is really more moderate than conservative; that nobody really knows where he stands on issues nor does he really know where he really stands on his own issues. Much of this criticism is directed at Romney because the extreme right wing elements of the party view him as a threat to their power. Their political mantra of gridlock and stalemate has created a leglislative inertia that makes us the laughing stock of the world. While Mitt is less noisy and does not shout at the top of his voice like the Tea partiers, he knows exactly where he stands on the issues. The problem is that he is not pandering to those extremist factions that have taken over the Republican party which have caused our current political descent into maelstrom.

Accordingly, Romney Care in Massachussetts is roundly criticized as the precursor to Obama Care. Romney, like his democrat opponents in the past, is being attacked on his “strengths” and it would seem to me that such a voice of moderation or ”openness” to other points of view and other forms of logic or illogic, is precisely what the Republicans now need to tone things down and get the party back to being more sane and plain, more mainstream than “engulfed stream.”

We must also understand that his quiet political demeanor masks a ferocity that understands the dyamics of the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. Mitt is a shrewd politician, a one percenter whose economic interests predisposes him to protecting the rule of  the oligarchs and the financial elite on Wall Street if he ever gets into the White House. But Mitt should use those “strengths” and capitalize on them to bring the Republican party out of its current identity crisis and back into a serious dialogue with the Democrats so that both parties can covenant to seriously restore America. This is precisely what the Republican party needs and this is exactly what makes Mitt a more palatable candidate appealing to a wider swath of the American political electorate which will make him a more competitive opponent to Obama in the 2012 elections. The Democrats know this. The Republicans know this but cannot denounce  the Tea Party radicals that are running their party into the ground and turning Congress into a Bleak House.

The American people have been worn out and disillusioned by the extremism and partisan “looney quack” of American political discourse. They are tired of the cry baby politics and the “I am going to take my bongos and go home if you don’t play by my music” mindset that characterizes so much of much of the Tea Party Republicans.

What we need are voices of moderation in both parties that will help this nation get back on track with business enterprise, jobs, justice and prosperity for all and leaders who believe that “there is no crime in compromise and that you can have your ideological fences but still reach political consensus.”  What we need is a more middle of the road approach to the American political process but one that also understands in the words of Will Rogers that you can get run over in the middle of the road if you just sit there.

One man bragged to me some years ago that he was a genius and everything that he received in life was the result of his own industry and tireless work ethic. He never mentioned that his mother scrubbed the floors of white people to get him through college; never uttered thanks for the man who took him under his wing as an apprentice in his tool shop; never talked about the doctor who saved his life after a terrible car accident. Here he was living all by himself, never needing a helping hand for anything in life. He was the creator, master and ruler of his own universe; the quintessential titan of an “empire” that he had fashioned by his hands alone.

How sad this is, for everyone in life is indebted to someone else who has helped him or her get where he or she is today. We all stand on the shoulders of other persons who have helped pave our way and have made sacrifices on our behalf.  We are always in debt to someone else because somewhere along our journey we received the helping hands of other persons, sometimes known and other times unknown. None of us can take serious credit for doing it all by ourselves and those who claim to have made it in such fashion should cease and desist from such disingenuous vainglory.

America did not receive all of it wealth on its own. Somebody had to work her fields and build her bridges. Someone had to forge her steel and stoke her steamers. Someone had to work from “can’t see to can’t see, to build the wealth of this nation. How can we say that the rich have built America’s wealth all by themselves? 

Someone casually observed to me in a class at the University of Chicago many moons ago about how sad it is that African Americans are always looking for a handout; and that the welfare mentality among some blacks is bad and that blacks should develop a stronger work ethic. I reminded this individual that the original welfare system in America was slavery and that had our ancestors been paid a decent wage and been allowed to build wealth, America might not even possess its current wealth and there might be no need for a welfare system today. Thus whatever we receive today as “welfare” to help us get on our feet should be viewed as a hand up and not a hand out. 

This classmate actually believed that the great minds and entrepreneurs who helped build America’s wealth did it on their own without the three hundred and fifty years of slave labor. His response to me was, “I never thought of it that way before Carlyle. I never thought of it that way.”

The point is that we must get beyond this notion of an America where only the rich and super rich have built the wealth of this nation “all by themselves.” Everyone has had a hand in making our nation and world a better place and we should stop subtracting credit from people who have actually worked hard to help this nation financially prosper. We should give proper kudos to them for the ways in which they have helped build the great wealth of a great nation.

Nobody does anything all by himself. We are all beneficiaries of someone else’s labor, counsel, prayers or largess.  We are all indebted to someone at sometime who has helped pay our “destination charges“  to arrive at those cherished places and stations that we all long and strive for in life.

Sometimes I wonder if people claim to do everything all by themselves so they are not under any moral obligation to help someone else in need.  If someone has helped me then perhaps I should help someone else, for one good turn deserves another.

Let us each remember that “Life is not a solo flight and anyone who thinks that he is flying alone should remember who built the plane in which he now flies .”

In another sense however, America should not only be concerned about repairing its physical infrastructures, but rebuilding its intellectual, educational, moral and spiritual infrastructures. Young men and women spend thousands of dollars obtaining a college education or learning a trade but once graduated many of them are sacked with massive debt and search in vain for good paying jobs. Many of those jobs have been shipped overseas.

Someone recently stated that America is squandering its intellectual capital and is trailing behind other nations in its capacity to innovate and creatively problem solve. Many of the problems facing our nation today can be easily addressed by galvanizing a waiting cadre of eager minds who not only have the skill set but the desire to go to work to make their nation and world a better place for all. Many of these individuals are trained not only in math and science but in the humanities, arts and social sciences. Too often these great minds are undervalued, under utilized and displaced by foreign workers who are paid a cheaper wage. 

While America has historically led the world in scientific and technological advancements, our efforts today seem almost feeble by comparison. The categorical waste of America’s intellectual capital is putting America further behind nations such as China and India and is further evidence of the dire need for rebuilding America’s intellectual infrastructure.

Rebuilding Americas educational infrastructure is also important which means redeveloping a system of globally competitive public education in rural and urban areas that make a good education necessary and accessible. Too many of our great minds are wasting away and are under developed because they have little or no access to a good education that will prepare them to compete in a global economy.

Also needed today are efforts to rebuild the moral and spiritual infrastructure of America to make it a more compassionate and empathic nation for all and not just the rich and super rich but the poor, middle class and underclasses. We need to go back to basics in learning how to respect and treat people. We can claim to be the richest nation on earth but if we have no charity for our neighbors and have lost our souls; if we have lost our capacity to feel the pain of others and respond to their needs then all of our bragging about America’s wealth means absolutely nothing. 

This means working from a moral center of core values that affirms the possibilities, potential and worth of every living person. It means developing a society that cultivates and utilizes that potential to build human community and ultimately a better world.  The current” winner take all politics” and the Gekkoesque culture of greed and selfishness now permeating our nation is nothing more than a blueprint for disaster which further alienates and polarizes the rich and poor into perpetually warring camps.

What good can come from this?  How does America as a whole benefit? Am I not my brother and sisters keeper? What happened to the idea in the words of Jim Hightower that when everybody does better everybody does better? A moral and ethical concern for all persons will translate into a healthier and more just society. We need to reconfigure our ethical and moral value systems in ways that will help us revere the worth of all human beings and develop a society that will affirm the inestimable value potential of all of America’s citizens.   

Meanwhile some segments of the faith communities fair no better. Their anti intellectualism and chronic theological pandering to the lowest and basest in us through  hypertrophic and homophobic rants,  the denigration of the urban black poor, immigrants  and the underclass and the subordination of the role and rights of women in the name of religion give us all pause. Fanning the flames of hatred and divisions rather than uniting us around common concerns of community should not be the function of religious belief systems but too often is. Should not religion and the practice of spirituality teach us to assert what we believe while affirming the rights of others to believe what they believe and still enable us to view them fully as human persons and they us?   Should  not religion and spirituality help society” cement the things that unite us and surmount the things that divide us?”

Unfortunately, organized religion is often used as tool; a weapon to devalue and demean others who do not share the same religious faith and and beliefs which foments more strife and division among us. As a Christian, I am hard pressed to find anything in the Bible that justifies the use of religion as a weapon to demean, devalue and destroy persons who are different or other. What religion should strive to achieve is spiritual enlightenment; a capacity to recognize and affirm the moral values and belief systems that we all hold in common but also preserve a desire to recognize our differences of opinion.

We need to rebuild the infrastructures of spiritual practice and religious beliefs so that we can not just tolerate others but appreciate them. This means recognizing the logical limits of our religious beliefs and practices,  embracing what we believe but also transcending our established boundaries to acknowledge and if  possible appreciate and celebrate the viewpoints of others. Then we will truly be able to see things “not only as we are but as they are.”

A great challenge to America today will be not only rebuilding its physical infrastructures of roads and highways and bridges but refurbishing its intellectual, educational, moral and spiritual infrastructures by creating  new pathways and bridges into the hearts, minds and souls of all people to create a more equal, just and compassionate America. Until we learn to maximize our intellectual, moral and spiritual capacities and recognize each person’s need to actualize his or her potential and thus promote a common good for all, our infrastructures will continue to rot, dissolve and crumble thwarting the rebuilding of those pathways and thorougfares that lead to a greater America.

Roger did not want to be reminded of the Cubs ordeal; their suffering, near misses and their “almost” seasons; their heroic determination to keep pressing on to a championship against all odds. Nor was he amused at the ceremonial and pompous manner that his wife unwrapped his gift for him, humming a drum roll and John Philip Souza marching music while surgically picking away tape from the paper to save it for next year. Receiving the book was one thing. Adding insult to injury was the twelve minutes it took for her to unswath the present, embroidering the moment with a suffocating speech about how we all, like the Chicago Cubs, must learn to recover from missed field goals in life.

What he wanted this Christmas was something that he had always wanted; something that he had always drooled for; a gift that he just knew his wife would give him after he had dropped hundreds of hints throughout the year and after explicitly calling her attention to his need for it. She knew what he wanted and knew what he loved. She knew deep in her heart that the gift would lift his spirits and would be a fitting capper for a tough and difficult year. How could she not give him the only thing that he wanted this Christmas?

If she knew deep in her heart that he was a Looney Tunes aficionado and that as  a child he was a frantic but faithful member of the Bugs Bunny Club why would she give him a book on a team that had not won a championship in over century?

All he wanted for Christmas was the DVD set of “”That’s All Folks.” After all, he was not a man that asked for much but could not even get the prize of all prizes, the gift of all gifts; the only thing that he had hoped and longed for.

“If you really love me,  you would have given me what I wanted for Christmas; you would have honored my wishes, like I always do yours, and although I could not give you a gift this year for obvious reasons, you could have at least put more thought into what you would give to me.”

“You know how I feel about cartoons. You know how I get an adrenalin rush watching Bugs and Daffy. You know the many times that I have sat down on the couch in near depression and the countless times that I have gotten up from that couch, renewed, victorious, hands high, spirits lifted, determined to start looking for work again after months of beating the pavement trying to find a job.

Those DVD’s would have been all that I needed to get by this Christmas! Why would you do this to me? What you have given to me this Christmas will make my New Year even harder.

Pray that I get through this year and pray that we are still together by next Christmas!

I wish that for once in my life you could give me what I want, what I need and what I ask for, but instead you leave me Scrooged. Your gift sucks and so does this holiday season!”

January 16, 2011

America has made great progress in the granting Civil and Human rights to African Americans and other groups the last sixty years. Blacks are no longer the victims of the virulent and violent forms of racism so prevalent in the South in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. Voting rights laws have been passed and public lynching has ceased. The disabled can now have unhampered physical access to public buildings and spaces. Women have gained greater ascendancy and equality in the work place. Economic opportunities have expanded for minorities. There are more Latinos, blacks and women holding political office than ever before, and America, said one commentator, has finally shown that it is maturing as a nation in the area of race relations with the election of its first black president.

Since the dawning of the modern Civil Rights era, America has demonstrated a moral capacity and a heartfelt willingness to move beyond the artifices and adolescence of race prejudice and racial injustice.

Such achievements should be roundly and jubilantly celebrated as part of our continuing national legacy, and is certainly something in which Martin Luther King, Jr. would take immense pride and satisfaction. And we too should be proud of the steps this nation has taken and is still taking in making good on the promissory notes of freedom, justice and equality for all Americans enshrined in the three great documents of freedom; the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

But with all that has been achieved in the area of civil and human rights, many of us would admit today that America is still a work in progress; that we are still en route to full freedom and justice for all as many people in our nation still wage sovereignty struggles to be gainfully employed; to be recognized as full persons and to finally obtain their complete inalienable rights as citizens.

Thus emerging today are other groups, waging similar battles for human dignity and Civil and Human Rights which include same gender loving and trans gender people, people of Middle Eastern descent, Hispanics, Latinos and Chicanos, labor unions, common laborers and migrant workers, immigrants, the poor, black, brown, white and native urban and rural under classes, the sick and infirm, the elderly, the homeless, prisoners, and political prisoners, the disabled, disenfranchised, marginalized and dispossessed, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and Baha’is, atheists and agnostics all desiring to sit at the table of freedom; all wanting to drink fully from the cup opportunity and equality; all seeking to realize and fulfill the great promises offered to all who come to this promised land called America.

On one hand it is the struggle to be recognized as full human beings; to live in safe neighborhoods and have safe transportation; to obtain quality housing education and health care, make a living wage, and raise their children to grow healthy and strong and live gracefully to old age.

On the other hand it is the struggle to have clean water, breathe clean air and have clean energy; to eat fresh untainted food from organic soil; to live in harmony with the earth and live in peace with their neighbors; to actualize their God given potential to make the world a better place.

Dr. King worked lived, worked and died for this kind of America and this kind of world. If he returned today, the idealist in him would be disappointed that we have not fully achieved his dream, but the realist in him would understand that the road to full human and civil rights for all persons in this society will, in one sense, always be under construction, but that we must honor the struggle and keep faithfully to it even if we have not completely arrived at our desired destination.

Notwithstanding these realities, Dr. King believed that America’s potential for fairness and justice could be still be actualized into the beloved community; where each person could realize his or her gifts and grow into persons of inestimable worth who could make themselves, their families, country, communities and  world a better place in which to live for all.

 Dr. King was a meliorist; someone who believed in the moral progress and improvement of humankind, society and civilization as a whole. He believed ever so fervently and worked ever so diligently for these high ideals. If Dr. King were alive in the flesh today, he would be happy with the progress we have made but saddened at how we have in some instances regressed and increasingly polarized into a nation of have, have mores, to use George Bush’s terms, and have nots. He would probably pick up where he left off before he was assassinated, with his poor people’s campaign, for his primary mission then as it would be now would be the eradication all forms of human poverty that threaten all forms of human life on all levels of American society and the global human community. In order to really appreciate and understand the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr,. we must understand poverty as a parental source of injustice and inequality.

For Dr. King, virtually all of the woes, ills and suffering of humankind, including the denial of human and civil rights are fundamentally related to poverty. He would say that all human beings share these various forms poverty in varying degrees manifested principally in five basic forms: poverty of soul, poverty of spirit; poverty of mind and heart and the poverty of society and until we work to eliminate them, on all levels we will never be fully free.

Let me share briefly insights on these five forms of poverty as we celebrate his life and legacy and express them in light of the continuing quest for Civil and Human rights in America.

Poverty of the Soul

The concern then was not just economic poverty, but poverty of the soul; poverty of the human spirit which germinates poverty of mind and heart which gestates ignorance, antipathy and a lack of compassion. It is a poverty rooted in fear and a lack of human experience; a poverty that compels those who have more to ignore, refuse or deny those who have not, and those who have not, to demonize and denounce those who have.

It is a poverty whose ugly face is gaining more prevalence in our nation today most evidenced in the recent rise of incendiary political discourse and language of malice, fear and hatred, used as political tools to silence and discredit certain beliefs. The recent assassination attempt of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords may be linked to this combustible and inflammatory political ethos which sanctions the use of violence as acceptable means of attacking and discrediting political opponents. The philosopher Plato said “Mislogos leads to misanthropos.” The misuse of language can lead the hatred of humankind. The hatred of humankind fuels the misuse of language.

The Civil Rights and Human Rights, for which Dr. King fought, must be understood in light of his concern for the spiritual poverty of the human soul and how it instigates a poverty of heart, mind and body. For Dr. King, poverty of soul is essentially the absence of compassion, epitomized by the question,  How could a country so materially rich be a country so spiritually poor; a country so abundant in material possessions be so lacking in compassion for so many in need?

This paradox is captured in a memorable line from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch” who as a frostbitten Siberian work camp inmate, asked a cruel, antipathetic prison guard if he could go inside the cabin and get heat by the fire, to which the guard unmercifully responded “No, you cannot,” of which Ivan’s reply was, “How can a man who is warm understand a man who is cold?”

Dr. King believed that a poverty that leads men and women to turn a deaf ear to the material and human needs of those languishing in despair in our land is rooted in a poverty of the human soul which he believed detached and estranged such persons from their creator as well as from the deeper needs of their fellow human beings.

Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson developed a concept called the Over Soul, which is another name for a transcendent power known to many as God who gives a soul to each living person. Every man, woman and child created by the creator has a soul; and that soul is the pathway into the heart of God and the hearts and souls of other human persons. It all begins with the elan vital; that creative spark breathed by God into human beings as “ruach,” “pneuma,” which engenders a compassionate and empathic concern for all of life.

Emanating from the human soul then is a “satyagraha,” soul force, says Mohandas K. Gandhi ultimately grounded in Ahimsa, love for God, love of others and love of self simplified in the profound observation of poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, “I am a part of all I have met.”

Dr. King felt that those systems of power that subjugate and suppress human rights are lead by people who have lost feeling for other human beings. They have essentially lost their souls and their connection with God, for to have a connection with God is to have empathy and compassion for others. The divine spark of which the Christian mystics speak is compassion, for it links us one to the other and binds us into common community or to use Dr. King’s words, into” a single garment of destiny.”

Howard Thurman, a mentor of Dr. King’s wrote an article titled, “America In Search of a Soul, which affirms the necessities of compassion and empathy as bridge ways into the hearts of others. Thurman concluded as did Dr. King that America was still in search of it and would not obtain it until we cement the things that unite us and surmount the things that divide us.

If America could overcome a poverty of the soul by having compassion for each person and find its true soul center and actualize true soul force through genuine compassion for every living soul, America could become an even greater nation.

This compassion, emanating from disinterested, agape love, was not only for people who had become the victims of oppression, but for people who directly participated in upholding these unjust systems; people who unwittingly or knowingly benefitted from them; people who were impervious and oblivious to them; and people who knew them and witnessed their human devastations through their various forms of violence and did nothing to stop or change them. This compassion ultimately means recognizing one’s adversaries not as nameless, lifeless, careless, faceless objects or as “others,” but as us.  As long as we see the other as something other than ourselves we cannot see ourselves in them. As long as we see them as wholly other we can justify our mistreatment, denial and even our annihilation of them.

Dr. King’s compassion most optimally expressed itself in nonviolent struggle. America regaining its soul meant a compassion for both oppressor and oppressed and developing strategies that agitated for complete freedom recognizing the full humanity of both dominator and dominated. The use of nonviolence was a way of affirming the humanity of the oppressor and engaging in transformative actions that would change his mind and heart; that would move him from a non compassionate caring person to one who could genuinely feel the pain of those he oppressed.

It was King’s belief that this lack of soul or compassion allows for the proliferation of various forms of physical and structural violence in society. Physical violence involves such things as war and various forms of physical brutality. Structural violence is more insidious such as hunger, unemployment, the use of hate filled language as public and private discourse to devalue, demean, deceive and destroy persons who are other. It also includes unemployment, exploitation of the environment and nature; and the negation of human rights used as a pretext to enforce and maintain hegemonic and tyrannical power to control the lives and destinies of others.

It is the perpetuation, says David Korten, of those hierarchical systems of empire which reinforce the injustices and inequalities of the world order, and support says Rene Eisler dominator power which is the power to take, control and destroy by coercive means.” Such power organizes and stratifies every relationship at every level of society according to a hierarchy of power, control, status and privilege exemplified in such dichotomies as male over female, material over spiritual; white over black; rich over poor; master over slave; powerful over powerless; educated over non educated etc. Such hierarchies of power are the structures of empire which reinforce the cultural, relational, economic and political disparities that promote self interest, reinforce injustice and perpetuate unjust systems of power that foment the indignities and poverties of oppression.

For Dr. King the actualization of soul force or the power of compassion for the needs of others helps overcome the obstacles to true social change. “We must be the change we wish to see in the world,” says, Gandhi.

Perhaps it was the experience of Robert Kennedy that epitomizes such powerful compassionate change; who went to Mississippi and various parts of the South to witness with his own eyes the ravages of human poverty. It was through that experience that his subsequent metamorphosis from a person of wealth, power and privilege to one who could compassionately feel and intimately empathize with the poor, that defines the power and breadths of a life changing soul transformation that emanates from life awakening soul force.

Even in my own experience as one who been deprived of some material things as a child growing up in Detroit- I dare not call it poverty- and while living in Chicago as a student at the University, I had witnessed poverty’s urban sprawl in places like Cabrini Green, but it was not until I travelled to Houston Texas by Am Track train shortly after 911 that I developed a deeper compassion and could see with my very own eyes the horrendous humiliations of rural poverty as we passed trailer homes with roofs caved in, downed power lines, and emaciated mud faced children flapping their tiny hands in fecal infested waters. It was there and then that I awakened to the kind of raw, decimating poverty that transcends race and perishes the human soul. It was then that I was able to move beyond my own stereotypes of what the color of true poverty was and who the poor really were. It was then through this intimate personal experience that I was able to develop a deeper compassion that compelled my transcendence beyond the narrow prisms of my own myopic thinking.  Through this experience, I had in one instance over come the poverty of my own soul and was able to see for the first time what poverty was really like and who was really poor. I came away from that experience with a profound sense of my own poverty; a poverty born of ignorance and social conditioning; a poverty of soul that reinforced the debilitating social labels of others that did not allow me to see them as true human beings thus confirming the axioms that “we see things not as they are but as we are,” and that often” our window limits our view.”

By overcoming a poverty of the soul, we can once again connect meaningfully with other human beings in ways that will help positively transform the internal and external conditions that prevent our full freedom which was an integral part of Dr. King’s dream.

Poverty of Spirit

If poverty of the soul is the absence of compassion, poverty of the spirit is the absence of charity and generosity.  Dr. King saw the denial of human rights as symptom of this poverty of the spirit. Christians always go back to the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 and the words of Matthew 25:40 which exhort compassion not only for the neighbor but charity for the stranger. While we all know that charity abounds in our land more than we care to admit, particularly in response to human catastrophe and suffering, we are often left with the cold grey images of the stone cold faces of people devoid of charity who cannot bring themselves to empathize with the pain and plight of others which bespeaks of wealth and privilege as obscenities rather than as opportunities whose generosities abound in true charity.

The issue for Dr. King was not so much the reality of gaining more wealth, which is a hallmark of the Capitalist system, but what we do with it after we gain it. His concern would rather be the poverty of spirit which leads to pure selfishness; and the emergence of a kind of feudal apathy which we see now in Washington Gilded Age, politburo, theater politics, evocative of an epoch where human greed wins out over human need; where profits are more important than people and a cold hearted disregard for the least of these eclipses a warm blooded concern from the most of these.

He was concerned how money and power hardened the hearts of some people, compelled them to construct and support social arrangements of power whose tenets and tentacles, processes and policies continued the spiritual and economic disparities in our society and prompted that society  to ignore the pain of the poor and oppressed. He was also concerned how the lack of money and material resources often lead to apathy; and kill a a genuine desire to conquer and overcome that lack; and how poverty of the spirit creates its own cultures and systems and regimes of behavior and belief that perpetuate their own clinical forms of oppression, depression and despair.

Poverty of the spirit can engender a form of personal oppression where the person who has more, keeps getting more and gives nothing to alleviate or even eradicate the pain and suffering of others, is oppressed by his own getting and thus loses the power to positively change those external conditions that help make himself and all people in society well and whole.

Poverty of the spirit is a form of personal depression, where the person who has less, keeps getting less and does nothing to eliminate his own pain and suffering, and is depressed by his lack of getting, and thus loses the power to positively change those internal conditions that help make himself and his society whole and well.  

Dr. King was especially perplexed at how many of those who had ascended to great wealth in our great nation and were once themselves poor, had lost that spirit of charity in giving aid others. Had they lost their souls? What profits a man that he should gain the whole world and lose his soul? He was also concerned at how many of the have “nots “descended into a loss of spirit devoid of humanity and a desire to radically and positively change their condition.

His concern then was for the ways in which poverty of spirit became its own contagion and instigate the various dis-eases of society; and the ways in which those dis-eases metastasize into the American Body politic causing its eventual weakening and decline. To eliminate poverty of the spirit, we must be more charitable and generous, in giving the things we value most highly to others. “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” If every living person gave something of value to help the least of these, society would become more equal and just for all by giving values such as time, talents and treasure.

Poverty of Mind and Heart

If poverty of soul is the absence of compassion and poverty of spirit is absence of the charity and generosity; poverty of mind is the absence of knowledge and wisdom and poverty of heart is the absence of love.

I do not have time to delineate these ideas but let me just say that Dr. King believed that we could dispel the poverty of mind by eliminating ignorance and fear, for these are often the twin engines of injustice and oppression. “Many of our fears are born of ignorance and much of our ignorance is born of our fears.” If we can replace ignorance and fear with knowledge and wisdom, borne out by empirical experience with the other, we can begin to eliminate injustices in our land. And if we can have more love in our hearts, by having compassion and not just seeing others as others but truly as ourselves, the walls that divide us can be made into bridges that can unite us. “The heart of education should then be educating the human heart.” By growing in knowledge, wisdom and empathic love for others in our hearts, we can overcome the barriers and constraints to a full and complete freedom. We must all work to overcome poverty of mind and heart, where we are held captive by systems of belief that limit our capacity to positively change ourselves and thus change our world.

Poverty of Society

Dr. King believed that all of these various forms of poverty were at the root of the perpetual opposition for full freedom for all people in America and that these various forms of spiritual privation and deprivation helped create  the poverty that so easily besets us.

If poverty of soul is the absence of compassion, poverty of spirit is the absence of charity and generosity; poverty of mind is the absence of knowledge and wisdom and poverty of heart is the absence of love, then the poverty of society is the absence of justice.

He would concur with the assessment of the great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who stated that on the individual level the highest human virtue is love and on the social level the highest human virtue is justice, which is loves moral equivalent. While societies cannot love their citizens in the same way individuals love each other, the cardinal expression of love on the social level is justice. If justice is actualized on the social collective level as love is realized on the inter personal level then we can overcome the various forms of poverty that prevent us from working together to build a freer more just nation for all. To actualize justice for all in society requires moral courage on the part of citizens in that society. While physical courage elicits the praise and admiration of our fellows while moral courage often elicits their wrath and indignation because it often means standing alone against the opposition, realizing, I the words of Henry David Thoreau, that “one on the side of God constitutes a majority.”

King here also borrowed a concept from Mohandas K. Gandhi known as the Trusteeship of society. Everyone in society is a potentially or actually a trustee. Trusteeship of society is driven by a concern that all citizens are treated compassionately and justly. Society is essentially made whole through justice. With justice everybody does better and everybody does better when everybody does better and this can start with the basic means of subsistence, like food, clothing, shelter and meaningful work.

King believed that in order for society to maximize its greatest potential and optimize its greatest strength, all of its citizens would realize some form of justice through equality, which means that every living person would not only gain something of value from that society but give something of value back to that society to make it better than it was.

That is why the constitution is so important because it accords every living person, notwithstanding race, gender, age, creed, place of origin, sexual orientation etc full rights as citizens, which means granting them justice. By so giving, the society and nation gain strength, for the strength of the nation is in its capacity to actualize the potential of its citizens, and to see that actualization not as a threat to people in power but as a consolidation of that power which makes for a viable future for all.

Perhaps I can use here the story of the German businessman who was asked by an interviewer how he felt about paying taxes whereupon he admonished the interviewer to move on to another subject because had had always happily and thankfully and justly paid his fair share. You don’t have a problem paying taxes, the interviewer asked. “No! Why should I?” he said sharply.  That is something I gladly do!” Why? She asked. “Because I don’t want to be a rich man living in a poor country! By paying his taxes that businessman understands his role as a trustee of his society.

Each of us then is a trustee in society called to take our gifts, potential, knowledge and resources and use them for a greater good because it is just and good. Such justice is not only concerned about the treatment of all of society’s citizens, but the use or misuses of those resources that make or prevent the greater good of society.

Accordingly, Dr. King today would be perplexed at how we misprioritize our resources; how we spend 53 percent on a Defense Budget and 3 percent on Education and 6 percent on health care. He would be concerned about the bail out of Wall Street, the put out of Main Street and the throw out of back street. He would be alarmed that we would spend 306 million dollars a day on a war in Afghanistan while the working poor have increased to nearly 45 million persons. He would be aghast at the middle class virtually being wiped out; that millions children are going hungry and starving while we waste millions of dollars on pet projects and pork and other frivolities that drive deeper our divisions and make harder our pain. He would be concerned that we are still more concerned about guns than we are about butter and bread. He would be perplexed at how 3 percent of the population owns 80 percent of the nation’s wealth; how 1.2 million homes have been foreclosed and counting, and the millions of jobs shipped overseas. He would be concerned at how we have denied full human rights to same gender loving people; how we have used scriptures as a means of denying people their full citizenship rights rather than using the constitution as the proper basis for granting those rights.

Every trustee of society should be concerned about the well being of that society and seek ways to charitably invest in his own society through justice, even for others, and, until we achieve some sense of responsibility for all of America’s people we will, each of us, languish in the indignities of our own deprivations.

As a trustee of society Dr. King would be also be concerned at the rising corporatization of America, the sell out, buyout and payoff of politicians who in the words of Howard Zinn, “Look good to the people who elect them but are good to the people who finance their campaigns. He would be especially alarmed at how rising corporatism is leading to what Sheldon Wolin called “inverted totalitarianism,” where human and civil rights of John and Jane citizen are revoked by some corporations in the name of national security and thus undermine the anchoring pillars of our representative democracy. He would have predicted and would be horrified at the rising power of the corporate state; whose budgets are more than some countries, who do not pay their fair share in taxes; whose propensity is to please only their shareholders and put profits before people; who destroy the environment and our various ecosystems; who ravage and pillage the land, and the air and the seas with impunity and are not held accountable by the law.  

 If the poverty of society is injustice, each person as trustee of that society should work to eradicate it. “For injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  Furthermore, he would be concerned about torture of prisoners, the criminalization of undocumented workers, the virtual exoneration of their employers and the increasing repression of human rights activists.

Dr. King understood creative, nonviolent protest as a means of addressing various injustices and viewed it as a legitimate strategy of the trusteeship of society. It was a means of calling attention to social problems, of mobilizing resources to solve those problems and designed overall to make that society a better place for all citizens.

Dr. King was well aware, as history has so painfully proven, the society that suppresses dissent and creates a culture of silence and deference will one day be haunted by that silence in ways that may spell that society’s undoing. Every trustee of society should take both ownership and responsibility for making that society better for all persons and not just a few persons and speak to those concerns and work to bring liberty and justice for all.

Conclusion

Well I have said enough today, and perhaps gone on too long. But let me say in closing. That each of us can begin to make this nation better by eliminating these various forms of poverty and work to ensure that all are free in America. Each of has something to contribute by overcoming these various forms of poverty.

Dr. King was an optimist, a man of deep faith and belief.
He would concur with the words, “This is my country, land that I love.” He believed in America and we too must believe in America that we can still overcome.

 We can have compassion for each other. We can stop demonizing people who are different or other and give a helping hand to those in need. We can refrain from demeaning and humiliating public and private discourse. We can build a better America. We can live in peace. We can prosper again as a nation. We can eliminate injustice. We can hurdle the various obstacles in our path. We can build the beloved community but we must be committed seeing that every living soul is treated as a person; that every living person is accorded his or her full human rights as a citizen of this nation; not simply as something other but as something simply- us!

But this means that each of us recognizes his own poverty. It means that as a collective humanity we are all poor spiritually or materially, that each of us can work to eradicate poverty in all of its various life strangling and potentially life destroying forms; poverty of soul and spirit; poverty of heart and mind; poverty of body and purse and poverty of society, community and world.

We can all start where we are and work to overcome notwithstanding race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, place of origin, religion or non religion, economic station or political or social status. Yes we all can be free, obtain equality, have true justice and peace.  This was Dr. King’s dream and the dream can become a reality for all of us if we take this work seriously and keep working to overcome.

Friends, we have come a long way, but still have some distance to go. We are still on the road to freedom, justice and equality for all, but still have miles to travel. And as we celebrate whence we have come, plant road markers for where we must yet go, we must not take for granted the blessings and privileges of our great nation; the privileges and blessings of being American; and what that means to each of us; to those who have gone on before us; to our families present and our children and our children’s children’s children and future generations.

So let each of us work to eliminate these various forms of poverty not only for us but also for them.

University of Chicago President Robert Hutchens said some years ago, “America is not a perfect place but it is still the best place on earth.” Now some would take issue with that, but I believe many people in this room would concur with that statement and so would Dr. King. America is not a perfect place, but America is still a great place. America has struggled however imperfectly to bring to perfection the images and visions of freedom, justice and self government for all of her people. Were he alive today he would tell us to press on and not to give up or give in to the forces of despair and defeat. 

So let us go forth to overcome these various forms of spiritual, relational and moral poverty by increasing our moral and spiritual capital so that we become a truly wealthy people; rich in mercy and rich in grace; rich in compassion and rich empathy; rich in wisdom and rich in knowledge, rich in love, and rich in justice; rich in charity and rich in peace; rich in freedom and rich in equality rich in health and rich in wealth. Let us march on. Let us never give up. Let us fight on until victory is won and we create this kind of America where every living person is a person, entitled to and fully granted full human and civil rights, for then and only then will we become the people our creator has called us to be and fulfill the potential we were meant to have.

Thank you. God bless the life, legacy and memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, and those who stood by him and fought with him.  God bless America and God bless you all!!!

Amen