mlk

As a child in the deep South during the latter part of the civil rights struggle (not to say it isn't an ongoing thing), I didn't understand much of what was in the news and on TV about Martin Luther King. During family gatherings, the grown-ups gathered in a front room to speak in urgent, low tones about what was going on. One year, we even left for Houston, believing that there would be murderous riots in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. Only later, having met one of Dr. King's collaborators in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who had become a Catholic at the parish we attended in Virginia, did I begin to grasp how moderate and moderating King's efforts were. When I experience injustice, I don't want to be so moderate! How fitting for Martin Luther King day that the theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity should be "Pray always with justice: 'See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all'."