In honor of the day

Today as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr and what his life meant to all of us as Americans, I am not posting anything profound because I have no great words to add to the conversation. 

Instead I will share with you what I am doing more and more frequently. 

I am reminding myself that the Civil Rights movement happened in my lifetime. 

I was ten years old the night I sat watching TV while my parents were at a PTA meeting at my school. Whatever show we were watching was interrupted to announce that Dr. King had been shot. It was shocking and impacting even though I was basically clueless. 

Russ and his family, who I wouldn’t know for another decade, were at home with their dad waiting for their mom to get home from night school in Omaha. There were no cell phones and the anger that erupted in the city was alarming as they hoped she would get home safely.  

These are my remembrances but my understanding of the significance of all of this has taken years to process. And that, in itself is an indication of why racial tension exists. 

What I say to myself often these days is, people my age needed someone to speak up for them about their rights as citizens. People who have children the same age as our children, dealt with things I had no idea about. In my lifetime.

This is not some issue from before I was born.

While we raised our children to be different, there are still roots of this unholy thinking about differences in skin and ethnicity and cultural heritage that are deeply engrained in us and in our American culture.

And the older I get, the more I realize how little I know about how other people think and feel unless I make a conscious effort to listen. 

I only know my own experience until I take the time to understand someone else’s. 

So the best way to honor the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, is to continue to learn and continue to listen and continue to grow in understanding that I don’t know everything and never will.

But I can start somewhere.

And I can be conscious of the fact as I move through daily life on planet earth that our country is a good country that strives to treat all people equally, but we have a history that speaks otherwise and we cannot ignore this. 

I must learn from it and move forward and not just remember the work of the Civil Rights movement one day a year, but every day.

I must remember that there are people who still remember a very different experience of being an American than I had and I must respect their stories. 

So that’s where my thoughts this day of closed banks and postal service and schools and such are landing.

It is not a holiday of leisure but a reminder of why we remember a leader who had the courage to do something about the wrongs he saw. 

May we all have the courage to speak up when we see that things are wrong.