A couple of weeks ago while performing in a little grotto in Winston Salem, NC with Reagan Boggs, I ran across this quote at “The Garage” – a funky room and one of the coolest we’ve played so far. Only two people were running it that night – a young woman at the bar and a kooky bouncer. It was an esoteric room and I never expected to run into a profound statement by Dr. Martin Luther King here.
After our sound check, I walked to the end of the bar and before me were these doodles on a purple sheet of paper glued together. Someone had taken one of those ragged scissors and cut a heart shaped border in the middle and penned the following words that stirred my soul.
Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life, love releases it. Hatred confuses life; Love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it..
As long as there is poverty in the world, I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than 28 or 30 years, I can never be totally healthy, even if I just got a good check up at The Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.
Dr. King’s words are rich with utopia and the sound reels we see on the historical features still stir the imaginations of a free society.
Part preacher, part orator and oracle of a modern generation, Dr. King’s work is incredible and the only thing missing from this piece of paper was his voice, but for some reason, his words are haunting because when I read them, I can hear them preaching them proudly, the confidence in his voice – a poet/prophet?