Everybody Can Be Great

A salute to Martin Luther King Jr. in honor of his namesake day. Here  is a well known piece from his pen which continues to resonate in our competitive world:

“Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Our world needs servers. Individuals who see beyond themselves and their own needs so that the greater good of ‘justice, righteousness, and peace’ might be established.

Someone has said ‘That we need to move beyond the ‘i’ of ‘live’ to the ‘o’ of ‘love’—beyond the ego of ’I’ to the ’O’ (other) of ‘love’. It is this outward movement of service and love that M. L. King celebrated and that his message continues to celebrate today.

Good for America to acknowledge and applaud this prince of servants. May we say our ‘yes’ as we follow in the path of compassion and ‘otherness.’

A Power In Your Life

Words from Martin Luther King Jr. as we begin 2010:

“So I say to you, seek God and discover Him and make Him a power in your life. Without Him all of our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrises into darkest nights. Without Him, life is a meaningless drama with the decisive scenes missing. But with him we are able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the bouyancy of hope. With him we are able to rise from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy. St. Augustine was right—we were made for God and we will be restless until we find rest in him”.

A power in our lives promoting meaning, hope, joy and rest—words and realities we all desire to experience. Thank you Martin for the reminder and the encouragement!