A recent news story told of a Black businessman who walked into his office one morning and saw that it had been trashed: racial slurs were written on papers and on the walls and an energy of violent hatred permeated the room. He found out that a ten-year-old white boy had broken in and violated the space. The businessman was at first furious, matching the violence witnessed with his own thoughts of hatred and punishment. Some time passed -- enough for him to recognize his negative spiral and he decided to seek out the child, introduce himself and try to befriend him. Over a series of weeks, the two struggled with barriers of distrust. They pushed through the learned response of fear and resentment to find a common language of support. The businessman became a friend to the child and now acts as a mentor and confidante. This creative retaliation will have long lasting effects on the lives of the man and the boy, not to mention the ripple effect of hope and potential that will vibrate in circles beyond their immediate lives.

This creative resistance to hatred is a gesture that is part of the shape of Martin Luther King's dream so eloquently shared some 30 years ago. It is a small gesture; one that wouldn't even scratch the surface of the barrier of cynicism and despair that still plagues this nation. And yet it is a response Dr. King hoped his ministry would inspire to bring this nation to a health and wholeness as yet unknown.

Dr. King approached hatred as a sickness of mind and body, with fear and intolerance as hatred's activating agents. Dr. King and the millions who fought and continue to fight for any civil right know that hatred in the form of bigotry is a fatal sickness, a cancer in society, which, if gone unchecked will infest any semblance of justice and eventually ravage all people.

Tomorrow, much of the nation will take time to honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, whose pilgrimage provided a formidable antidote to this cancer; an antidote that can continue to contribute to remedy this nation's disease and brokenness. The antidote of love, deep and abiding love for life itself. A disarming love still only manifested in moments, yet each time it comes to life in the actions of one or many, it heralds possibilities in this world beyond our imagining. This antidote can only work if we embrace its power as the dignity of life, as King's "the supreme unifying principle of life" or as he would also phrase it, the wrath and compassion of God. This antidote can only work if we continue to develop its wisdom shot down too soon one April in 1968.

This love that Dr. King spoke of is not an easy love. It is a love that dares us to recognize this life that we borrow, this miracle we manifest for a time, and prods us to respond with dignity and humility. A revolutionary love that breeds courage in the face of danger, defiance in the face of injustice and faith in the face of cynicism. It is a love that is both tough and tender, shrewd and forgiving, strong and unrelenting. A love that transcends personal gain. A love that sees and hears and reveals the avoidance of harmony. It is a love that we can choose to ignore, that we have chosen to ignore too often as a people. A love that will not do the work of healing unless we activate its power.

Dr. King's words in 1967:

"The stability of the large world house which is ours will involve a revolution of values.... When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy."

(Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? 1967 (Chap 6/excerpt)

Moral and spiritual bankruptcy...a concern which is very much alive today and is expanded as our knowledge of the "large world house" becomes more and more intricate. Technologies of communication continue to advance and nations continue to redefine themselves in this post cold-war era.

We witness violence on a daily basis all over the world in the news, if not on our own streets. We witness varieties of hatred: based on tribal, religious, cultural, territorial, gender, or financial concerns. We watch corporations "down-size", opting to fire people rather than trim executive spending, or clip investor's profits.

We observe quibbling in the professional sports arenas over multi-million dollar salaries and owner's profits while vendors lose their livelihood and inner city playgrounds and playing fields are unfit for use due to lack of equipment, the danger of crime or limited services to engage children in organized sports.

Moral and spiritual bankruptcy...the cry from the streets as children kill children, teens give birth, mothers and fathers kill their newborns, and shooters enter crowded public areas gunning down anything in their immediate field of vision.

We are aware of the aimlessness of much of our youth, who live day to day not knowing if there will be a world for them to live in, not knowing if dreams are worth dreaming. Instant gratification and quick thrills become the order of the day. Long term projects -- such as concentrated education, mindful toy production, or "paying dues" in hard and less glamorous positions are infected by a sense of meaninglessness and cynicism in a world that craves satisfaction.

Moral and spiritual bankruptcy... where trials of violent crimes create celebrities, lucrative movie and book contracts. And celebrities are given license for abominable behavior as our definition of "heroism" blurs in the media.

Moral and spiritual bankruptcy.... This realization inspired Thomas Moore to write his book, Care of the Soul, reaching out as a "guide for cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life": "The great malady of the twentieth century," he writes, "implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is 'loss of soul'. When soul is neglected, "he continues," it doesn't just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning. Our temptation is to isolate these symptoms or to try to eradicate them one by one; but the root problem is that we have lost our wisdom about the soul, even our interest in it."

Martin Luther King believed that the civil rights movement was the transforming of a nation's soul, that it would indeed heal this great malady. He believed in an American dream more holistic than I think originally intended...equal opportunity, equal regard, equal liberty for all people...and he believed that the witness of black experience in America would uplift its conscience to revolutionary reform.

In December of 1955, when he stepped out of his house to begin his public service as leader of the Montgomery boycott, inspired by the courageous dignity of Rosa Parks' defiance, he framed the substance of his work for the next 13 years: "If you protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love," he said, "when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say 'There lived a great people -- a black people -- who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization. This is our challenge and overwhelming responsibility"

There were times when that witness did uplift the conscience. Strides were made to secure the vote for all citizens and steps were taken to curb blatant physical oppression. People were challenged to look at their lives, to witness barbarism, denial, complacency and terrorism in contrast to peaceful demonstrations, sacrifice and passionate demands for dignity amongst a nation believed to be the Promised Land.

But the road was not smooth nor as straight as hoped, for the tough lessons of love and dignity turned to poverty and the Viet Nam War. When the talk of equal opportunity then focussed on the redistribution of wealth and foreign policy, those in power were not so ready to share a piece of the American pie.

The civil rights movement hit the glass ceiling, so to speak, freedom and justice was only heard by those in power as long as the reform did not take any of their economic and political power away, as long as the reform did not truly restructure the status quo. King pointed out that white America was deluding itself in thinking the middle class utopia was available to all simply after the long overdo gestures of simple decency occurred in reforming Jim Crow laws.

The delusion became clear after the increased focus on economic justice and a call for broad-based employment opportunities. With this progressive call came a stiffening of white resistance.

It was this resistance to actual reformation that caused the uprising of the Black Power movement. Too little was happening too late. Trust in the nation and in the black leaders professing the American dream was diminishing rapidly. More severe, revolutionary action became the focus of many younger civil rights workers, inspired by Malcolm X, Floyd McKissick and Stokely Carmichael, to name a few.

Dr. King did not agree. He held fast to his tough and tender love, believing that because love conquers fear, the reform that would finally arise would have emerged from deep within our sacred knowledge of the unifying principle of life. This would create an irreversible change in the collective psyche of the nation -- a healed collective soul.

"Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear;" King would admonish, "only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred diminishes (darkens) life; love illumines it."

The philosophy of non-violence gained King respect in some circles and growing scorn in others. King was aware of the ambiguity of such a calling. He understood the violent outbursts that occurred. He named riots the language of the unheard, who were saddened by cynicism and despair. Many thought he had embraced the Euro-American image of the American Dream and had been coopted to a kind of passivity that would help perpetuate the systemic evil of racism.

Some thought he played the role of the "loyal opposition" to the government and regarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a gesture to keep him passive.

King held fast to the belief that non-violent demonstration repeatedly shamed white racists in contrast. He believed that the cohesion known in such demonstrations, and solidified in song and prayer created a groundwork of dignity that could not be broken. The constant exposure of racism, he believed, would shake the complacent ones of good will out of their inertia and into the cause. And this revolutionary love had a violence to it, for it demanded change. And change is a kind of death, a violent one to those comfortable with the status quo.

In 1968 Dr. King spoke these prophetic words: "History has thrust upon our generation an indescribably important destiny--to complete a process of democratization which our nation has too long developed too slowly. How we deal with this crucial situation will determine our moral health as individuals, our cultural health as a region, our political health as a nation, and our prestige as a leader of the free world." Days later, on April 4th, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Months later, the 1968 summer riots in L.A. and Chicago devastated a nation.

King knew the deep-seated struggle that lay ahead, he knew that the reform would have to be radical, for so many racist assumptions lay deep within America's psyche.

Studs Terkel, in his recent book Race, reminds us of one of Dr. King's favorite modern-day parables: There were ten drunks, one was black, the other nine were white. "Look at that black drunk", says the indignant observer.

The senior editor for Ebony is waiting for a cab outside the expensive high- rise, where he lives, Terkel recalls, he is elegant in dress, manner and speech. An older white woman, described as matronly, hands him the keys to her car. A living assumption: Who else could he be but a servant in that part of the neighborhood?

Check a Thesaurus and you'll find at least sixty synonyms for blackness that are offensive (grim, devil, foul -- compound words: blacklist, blackmail, black market). There are over 130 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable (purity, cleanliness, chastity, innocence). Even a white lie is better than a black lie.

Although there have been improvements and multiculturalism is finding its rhythm, we have a long way to go, longer than I would assume King would have hoped, but not so long that we cannot take the journey.

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