God writes straight with crooked lines

Religious Liberal blog has some extended, and appropriate, quotations from Martin Luther King, Jr. today. I liked this bit:

The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.

The Right Christians also has a very helpful annotation of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

One of the most interesting, candid and thoughtful accounts of Dr. King's life which I have read was this RJ Neuhaus piece in First Things, just over one year ago. Neuhaus may be a Catholic neoconservative today, but he was once a young Protestant liberal, and he knew King well. His First Things article is moving, and Neuhaus reminds us that Martin was a minister of Jesus Christ first, and his call for justice was always, always grounded in the Gospel, even when both his supporters and critics wanted to soft-pedal that truth. Neuhaus wrote:

I recall rallies when, in the course of his preaching, King would hold forth on the theological and moral foundations of the movement. The klieg lights and cameras shut down, only to be turned on again when he returned to specifically political or programmatic themes. “Watch the lights,” he commented. “They’re not interested in the most important parts.”

Lovingly and boldly, Neuhaus turns to the subject of King's troubled sexual life. (Even King's most loyal supporters have long since conceded that the allegations of promiscuity, infidelity, and womanizing were not inventions of the FBI, but were -- sadly -- grounded in truth). And he finishes his reflections on Martin King thus:

...if everything was known then that is known now, Dr. King would early have been brought to public ruin, and there would almost certainly be no national holiday in his honor. But God writes straight with crooked lines, and he used his most unworthy servant Martin to create in our public life a luminous moment of moral truth about what Gunnar Myrdal rightly called “the America dilemma,” racial justice. It seems a long time ago now, but there is no decline in the frequency of my thanking God for his witness and for having been touched, however briefly, by his friendship, praying that he may rest in peace, and that his cause may yet be vindicated.

I know the phrase "God writes straight with crooked lines" is Thomas Merton's, but I associate it now with Martin, and on this day, I reread Neuhaus's paean with tears in my eyes.

Comments

[The Angry Clam]

Today is actually General Robert E. Lee's birthday (not observed, but really).

Here's what the General had to say about slavery.

He was also big on emancipating his slaves (and had, at least once, refused to accept money that a man who had come to buy the freedom of his wife and children offered, instead simply freeing them), but refused to do so until he was certain that the freedmen could care for themselves, usually by making sure that they had a skill.

I only mention this because I was watching the news and there was a piece about renaming schools around the country because the namesakes had been slave owners.

It's a sad commentary when people want to get rid of "George Washington High School" for that reason.

[Hugo]

And on that issue, I am with you. I want to keep the Stonewall Jackson high schools and Jefferson Davis Parkways around as well, even as history rightly judges the cause for which they fought to have been an unjust one. We need to recognize that all of our heroes -- without exception -- lived lives of moral complexity.

[Leslie Ciechanowski]

God writes straight with crooked lines - on a personal level reflects our zig zag towards the unfoldment of self. The process of redirecting our self over and over again to the numinous and divine within. Reflecting, redirecting, and remerging once again anew.
Peace
Leslie Helen Bambic Ciechanowski