19 JAN 2015 :: MLK Monday

Today's holiday threw me off ... I deeply admire MLK, but the holiday is a mixed celebration. It isn't his real birthday, and the meaning is getting lost. It's more of a three day weekend, and I heard one report that our youth don't even know who he was or the battles that were fought. I noticed it is becoming a community service day...which is a nice thing, but is it related to what he stands for?

I forgot about it being a federal holiday, which means no mail or banks.  I put a letter out for the mail person to pick up.  I went on all my errands and did a lot of things after getting back home before I remembered the mail wasn't being delivered today.

I did remember that the buses might be affected by the holiday. I checked for holiday schedules and discovered some buses were eliminated, but my routes were regular schedule. That was good. I didn't have to cancel my doctor appointment or errands.

My first errand was to deliver two heavy bags so I couldn't take my purse with me. I carry a lot of things in my purse so I didn't have them with me for the day. That  always causes problems.

When I went to transfer to a bus I thought I needed, I suddenly thought I was going to the wrong doctor location. I couldn't check on the address because I didn't have my purse.  So I went to find a phone book at a nearby business.  In our digital age, phone books are becoming a thing of the past. Since I don't have a smartphone, I couldn't check for the needed information myself. The worker at the business talked into his phone and the location information came up. I was on the right bus route, going to the right place... then I realized both of the doctors I have seen might be on that same street, that same route. I will have to check on that.  :-)

Not having my purse meant not having my extra bags with handles... a small thing with great importance for bus riders. (At least, I think so.)  I did some food shopping on the way back home and bought too much. It was a real challenge to get from the bus to the house with paper bags that don't have handles. I am thinking I need to start looking for a good backpack again... or a large fanny pack... to carry the bare essentials like extra bags with handles and my address book, when I can't take a purse.

Back to MLK...   I don't have money to go see movies, so the ability to see SELMA is not an option. I would rather see the I HAVE A DREAM speech each year, using a personally owned DVD that would play on my computer or TV.  If I remember right, and history is not my best subject, I never realized that he was killed after giving that speech. I read that somewhere on the internet one of the past several years and was so surprised. I think that is the speech where he says he would like to see people judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

Our nation is losing its moral foundations so I don't know how anyone will be able to judge the content of anyone's character.

What do you compare it to?  The only real pivot point is the Bible, and we are losing our relationship to all things godly. Do we base our evaluations on another religion? The writings of Darwin? or Hitler? or Einstein? Maybe we should use Archie Bunker or Married With Children.  Do you see my point. We need to have the same rules to make a judgment about things that matter, like crime, good, evil, law, morals, and more.  America was great because it was based on the greatness of GOD and the goodness of His Word. 

I grew up with the social battles fought over civil rights and Martin Luther King, the farmworker abuses and Caesar Chavez, the Vietnam war (which was really a "conflict" and never declared a war), the sexual revolution and bra burning (not my desire, but the society I lived in),  abortion rights (formed long before the first photos of the womb were made, and when people thought that the baby didn't exist until they felt it -- about the third month -- which became the time it was decided it was OK to have an abortion), the HIV battle and gay rights, and who knows what else... there are always a lot of issues being fought over. The contents of each battlefield was created by the moral character of the leader.

Martin Luther King was a Black man, and he was a pastor of the Bible. The statements he made, which we like to quote, were a mix of these two elements of his life. MLK is lifted up for his civil rights activities and martyrdom, but not for his faith. Can we really separate them?  I don't think it's possible. We all make decisions based on the core ideals we choose for ourselves.

I wonder how many people in our history have done what they did because of their faith in GOD and the boundaries of what is right and what is wrong that the Bible teaches us. Probably quite a lot. Their faith created their moral foundations AND their desire to see changes that would make the world a better place for oppressed people, abused people, violated people. 

Every activist is motivated by something. I would rather support someone who has the Bible as their guide and boundary.