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EMBODYING MLK’S DREAM TODAY  
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Rev. Irene Monroe
January 13, 2025
LA Progressive
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_ If King were among us today, he would say that it is not enough to
look outside ourselves to see the places where society is broken. _

Martin Luther King Jr.,

 

MLK Day 2025 marks the 40th holiday observance. The theme, "Mission
Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of
Nonviolence365," is challenging in this politically polarized era.
With this new presidency, we are called to reaffirm our values and
hold them against a hard reality that provides a promise for future
generations.

Americans on the margins have the most to lose now in a country
eroding, if not dismantling, decades-long civil rights gains that were
allowing protection and participation in an evolving multicultural
democracy.

For King, protecting freedom, justice, and democracy was more than a
racial, legal, or moral issue. It was a human issue. This was evident
in King's passionate concern about a wide range of concerns: "The
revolution for human rights is opening up unhealthy areas in American
life and permitting a new and wholesome healing to take place," King
once told a racially mixed audience in 1967 during his "Beyond
Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech. "Eventually, the civil
rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation
than eradicating racial injustice."

Moral leadership played a profound role in King's justice work. He
argued that authentic moral leadership must involve itself in the
situations of all who are damned, disinherited, disrespected, and
dispossessed, and moral leadership must be part of a participatory
government that is feverishly working to dismantle the existing
discriminatory laws that truncate full participation in the fight to
advance democracy.

However, if King were among us today, he would say that it is not
enough to look outside ourselves to see the places where society is
broken. It is not enough to talk about institutions and workplaces
that fracture and separate people based on race, religion, gender, and
sexual orientation, among other issues. Often, we find that these
institutions and workplaces are broken, dysfunctional, and wounded in
the same ways we are. The structures we have created mirror not who we
want to be but who we are.

King would remind us that we cannot heal the world without healing
ourselves. In light of King's teachings, healing ourselves is the
greatest task and the most difficult work we must do. This work must
be done in relation to our justice work in the world.

In "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway said that the world breaks
us all, but some of us grow strong in those broken places. King's
teachings invite us to grow strong in our broken places—not only to
mend the unhealthy world we live in but also the unhealthy world we
carry around within us.

"If you want to see love, be love. If you want to receive compassion,
be compassionate. If you want respect, you have to show respect,"
Bernice King said in an interview promoting her 2022 children's
book _It Starts With Me_. Dr. Bernice A. King is the CEO of The King
Center and the youngest surviving daughter of MLK. "Stop waiting on
the next leader, the next Martin Luther King Jr. It starts with you!"

I know that the struggle against racism that King talked about is only
legitimate if I am also fighting anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism,
and classism—not only out in the world but also in myself.
Otherwise, I am creating an ongoing cycle of abuse that goes on
unexamined and unaccounted for.

We are foolish if we think we can heal the world and not ourselves.
And we delude ourselves if we believe that King was only talking about
the woundedness of institutional racism and not the personal wounds we
all carry as human beings.

Ironically, our culture of woundedness and victimization has bonded us
together in brokenness. Sharing wounds to depict and honor our pain
has created a new language of intimacy, a bonding ritual some feel
more able to trust. When we bond in these unhealthy ways, we miss
opportunities to work collaboratively with others to effect change in
seemingly small ways that eventually lead to significant outcomes.

When we use our gifts to serve others, as King has taught us, we shift
the paradigm of personal brokenness to personal healing. We also shift
the paradigm of looking for moral leadership from outside of ourselves
to within ourselves, thus realizing we are not only the agents of
change in society but also the moral leaders we have been looking for.

Therefore, our job keeping King's dream alive is to remember that our
longing for social justice is also inextricably tied to our longing
for personal healing. And it starts with you.

_REV. IRENE MONROE can be heard on the podcast and in the Boston
Public Radio segment ALL REV'D UP an affiliate of NPR. As a feminist
public theologian, ordained minister, and religion columnist, Monroe's
columns appear locally nationally. Her papers are at the Schlesinger
Library at the Harvard/ Radcliffe Research Library on the History of
Women in America._

* Martin Luther King Jr.
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* political wisdom and lessons
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* personal accountability
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