Faith Becoming Flesh: Martin Luther King Day 2013

What does it mean to take our faith into the world? To not simply proclaim it, but to follow the examples of the world’s great spiritual leaders—Christ, Buddha, Mohammed—and give flesh to our beliefs?

In the U.S. of modern history, few have exemplified such “faith in action” better than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I continue to find the national holiday in honor of King the most moving and inspiring day of the year.

And right now, on this Martin Luther King Day 2013, I’m thinking of One Billion Rising on February 14, and the National March on Washington for Gun Control next Saturday, January 26.

King’s message, like the great spiritual leaders’ before him, was “simple:” love thy neighbor, and pay particular attention to those who are poor, afflicted, and oppressed. The making of these words flesh continues to be complicated, and King’s execution of his faith was no less complex than those who came before--or than ours must be each day.

While best remembered for his civil rights victories, it is King’s much broader battle that demands our current attention. His great 1963 March on Washington, forever memorialized in his “I Have A Dream” speech, dramatized the plight of America’s poor and catalyzed President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty legislation. King supported the rights of low-wage garbage workers in Memphis; he actively protested the Vietnam War.

Johnson proposed The War on Poverty (we have this legislation to thank for federal programs such as Head Start) in response to a national poverty rate, in 1960, of just under 19%. During President Clinton’s tenure, the poverty rate reached a low of 11.3%, but by the time of the 2010 census it had climbed back to 15.1%.

In 50 years, we’ve shaved less than 4% off our national number of people living in poverty. This is 15.1% of individual U.S. citizens living on less than $11,344.

Whether or not you support the Occupy Wall Street movement (or for that matter the Arab Spring revolutions), with 1% of our population accounting for 24% of all income, we have not, as a nation, solved the problem of how to equitably distribute resources so that everyone, including children and the elderly, has enough to eat nutritiously and live warmly, safely, and healthily.

So when President Obama, in his inaugural address, connected King’s actions at Selma to those of women struggling for equality at Seneca Falls and gay people fighting for our rights and lives at Stonewall, he’s reminding us that for any of us to be free, there must be equity for all—and equity, despite our religious beliefs and faith, does not come easily. It requires action. It demands that faith be made flesh.

Just days before his assassination, King was planning a second March on Washington, and said that to create real change for America, “We are coming to demand that the government addresses itself to the problem of poverty. It is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.”

Poverty and oppression come in many shapes and sizes, and so there are nearly limitless opportunities to join together and put our faith to work. One billion women—mothers, daughters, sisters, partners, and friends, one of every three people on our planet of seven billion—will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. One Billion Rising, the largest day of action in the history of Eve Ensler’s V-Day movement, is a promise that we will rise up with women and men worldwide to say the violence ends now. Join us at the Opera House this Valentine’s Day, Thursday, February 14, and put your faith to work on behalf of ending violence against women. Or take yourself to Washington, D.C., next Saturday, January 26, to work towards lessening gun violence in the U.S. by demanding legislation to better protect all of us from the “overkill” of a culture in which a strident insistence on individual rights often works to the detriment of our communities and the most disenfranchised among us.

Can we truly call ourselves a nation of faith when so much of our legislative and economic time is spent struggling only for our own individual well being? Not in my book. Together, we can make change, but to do so requires action in addition to belief. It requires, as all the great religions of our world proclaim, faith made flesh.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
    and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
    and her salvation like a burning torch. – Isaiah 62:1

All Saints' Day

On All Saints' Day this year, we're driving the back roads of Connecticut near where I grew up: back roads in beautiful foliage, back roads because we prefer them, and back roads because of a horrifying tanker truck accident on Interstate 95 that has left several cars crushed and many people dead. So we've headed a bit north, through Montville and Salem and Haddam, where we mail our absentee ballots and pick up postcard stamps; past the Goodspeed Opera House (shown below), a beautiful 19th century icon on the Connecticut River and a popular regional theater; and finally to my Gram's, Mary Endrich's, grave at St. Joseph's Church in Chester, CT. Seems a fitting visit for All Souls'/Saints' Day.

In 2004, we were in Paris for this Catholic holiday, which takes the place of Halloween in France. I wrote the following Letter from Paris at that time, and reprint portions of it here three years later:

November 1, 2004, Letter From Paris, All Saints and Election Days, 2004. Dear family and friends, This is a holiday week in Paris, dominated as it is by churches built hundreds of years ago, a week leading up to today, Tous Saints (All Saint’s) Day. Our own Halloween pays slender homage to this worldwide rite (Dia de las Muertas in Mexico). This week, the dead have been called forth and remembered, with their favorite foods and meditations. Here in France, it is a week for remembering that the joy of life is made possible by our embrace (not denial) of death. This has been a most welcome and meaningful time for Judith and for me. We light many candles for James, most recently departed, but also for my grandmothers, Signe and Mary Elizabeth, and for our many other friends and family members who have crossed over to the other side. We spend much time in the medieval churches lit by these candles, swaddled in incense and organ music, meditating on our own lives and the ways we make a difference in this world in which we are all, living and dying, connected.

We have cast our absentee ballots and await, with much of Europe, the results of tomorrow’s election. While it is easy to vilify Bush and the current administration, I find it more critical and interesting to consider why so many of our fellow citizens support such decisions, rhetoric, and actions: what are the characteristics of U.S. culture which allow us to reward and to applaud such empty leadership? From a distance, we are more acutely able to feel the repercussions of U.S. choices on the world, and to puzzle over the differences in socio-secular-religious cultures from which national politics, and our understanding of them, arise. Like a cold Maine wind on a blue sky January day—the wind that brings tears to your eyes—we have been buffeted by the seeming faithlessness with which we Americans operate in this world.


By “faith” I simply mean a belief that the world is bigger and more coherent than any one or any group (or nation, or company) of us; and, most importantly, that we each play a part in this bigger whole: a faith in and recognition of the beautiful spirit inherent to the world. . .

“What lies beyond the usual is diminished, it is regarded as wasteful and perverse,” states Rudolf Mittwisser, a 1930s professor of religion and German refugee to the U.S., in Cynthia Ozick’s new novel, Heir to the Glimmering World. “What was once valued there [in Europe] is not valued here. Here they lack the European mind, they are small.”

I move around Paris, watching the way Americans travel, carrying their language and customs and expectations with them like coins to be tossed to embittered others we have either rescued or vanquished. In Deer Isle we are also very aware of the way Americans bring our culture with us when we travel, very aware of the means by which many “from away” bring with us self-righteous, self-important beliefs (the best ways to do business, to communicate)—all with the best intentions. Colonialism lives and thrives in the American psyche, which takes pride in its individual prowess and refuses to prioritize or attend to its interconnections to others . . .


We are all connected, and the whole world is watching. I am not separate from my vote or my country, even when I am in opposition to it. And the U.S. is not separate from this world. It is time that we who want our country to make a positive difference in this world take back the language and ACTION of faith, hope, and charity and embue our daily lives with these beliefs. Other views, and our listening to them, matter; strength arises from generosity, and as Americans we are grateful to have so much to give. . .Faith allows us to embrace death and not to fear it; which in turn allows us to open our arms rather than putting up our dukes. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by acting generously.

Along with much of the rest of the world, I wonder: are enough individual Americans strong enough in our beliefs to make a difference tomorrow, in the ways our powerful nation affects the world we share with so many? May the Red Sox victory be an omen for change. Vive l’underdogs, vive l’esperance, vive la change! [2004]