Wednesday November 26 “. . . transform opposers into friends . . . “
No classes today so campus gets to decompress and let the buildings and infrastructure rest a bit. Same with UDM employees. I’m slipping in this off-regular cycle post to remind myself, and the 1655 readers enrolled on the “Work Day in Hard Times” list, that the gratitude we celebrate this week does not mean that we go temporarily blind and deaf to the wounds of our world.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s invocation of “the beloved community” — taken I believe from the American Pragmatist philosopher Josiah Royce — makes good Thanksgiving Day reading. It invites us to invite to our family tables those enraged by and those who defend the Ferguson Grand Jury. Dr. King was right when he implied that as a nation we are nowhere near finished with violence.
He was right too, to stake his hope in “the beloved community.”
Happy Thanksgiving; I hope you get to put your feet up and breathe a little.
See you next Monday.
john sj
Beloved Community
“But the end is reconciliation;
the end is redemption;
the end is the creation of the beloved community.
It is this type of spirit and this type of love
that can transform opposers into friends . . .
It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.”
MLK 1957
