Food for Thought

Monday in the USA is Martin Luther King, Jr Day.  Plenty of folks will quotes excerpts from the I Have a Dream speech.  Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful speech, one of the greats in American history.  Sadly, what often happens with the great speeches and ideals they express is we become inured to the message by repetition.  Rev. King has been one of my heroes since I was in grade school and read about his adherence to non-violence for the first time.  Today I thought I'd reference some of MLK, Jr's other quotes which perhaps are not as well known and offer them for consideration in light of current conditions.

 

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Purpose of Education


When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam


A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, (1967)


 Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
-- Strength to Love (1963)


The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
-- Strength to Love (1963)


I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.--Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

Slice of Lime-One of My Heroes

The office where I now work is a place where I have been a patient for many years. The staff there have supported me through the healing process after 4 car accidents and one unfortunate zipline incident. There have been a handful of times when I just sort of melted down in tears and someone there brought me a tissue and gave me a hug when I most needed it. A couple years ago one of those staff members went through the unimaginably painful process of loosing her son to cancer. I was honored to give her a few hugs when she really needed it in those dark days.

This week marked the anniversary of her son's death. She was determined not to spend the day in tears so she organized a happy and silly way to remember him by asking everyone to wear bandannas (his favorite accessory) so she could have some smiles and laughter on that day instead. That goal all by itself makes her a remarkable woman in my eyes. I've known others who have spent every day for decades making those around them miserable because they feel the world should pay for their loss. My coworker made a far different choice, perhaps a more difficult one but one that amazed me.

Here are some pictures to prove the smiles. My hero of a friend and coworker is the lady in the blue bandanna next to me. You're not actually surprised I wore a tie dyed bandanna are you? I wore mine around my neck because I've been fighting headaches for 2 weeks and I couldn't bear to tie it around my noggin.

At lunch we began the intense laughter therapy.
Start laughing or the bandanna bandit will have to use this finger to tickle you!

See no bandannas, hear no bandannas, speak of no bandannas.

And for the Monty Python fans out there, we have the tie dyed Gumbie.

Irena Sendler

*image taken from http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/sendler/

We likely are all familiar with Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and perhaps Corrie Ten Boom and their lives during WW2. We've read of Anne's life in hiding and her untimely death at age 15 in spite of the great hope she carried. We may have seen the film showing how Schindler saved the lives of many Jews by employing them in his factory. Corrie Ten Boom, along with her widower father and her sister, hid Jews in their home in the Netherlands and were arrested and sent to the death camps as a result. Corrie alone survived. These people displayed courage I wonder if any of us can begin to fathom. They are heroes.

Yesterday morning the world lost another true hero. Irena Sendler was 98 years old, confined to a wheelchair, and would be the last person to call herself a hero. In fact, it is said the designation irritated her greatly as she was plagued by guilt at feeling she had left so much undone.

She was a Polish health care worker who first joined the Nazi resistance and later was responsible for smuggling 2500 children out of the Warsaw ghetto. She found foster homes for each of these children and managed to provide them with false identification documents bearing new identities so the Germans would not suspect the children. Infants and toddlers were simply given new names, but older children had to be coached to remember their new identities and false family histories so they could maintain the ruse that would save their lives. She alone kept track of the true identities of the children encoded, placed in jars, and buried in her back yard so after the war children could be reunited with their families. Sadly, most of those families perished but there was some comfort, for both Irena and the children, in being able to provide the information to those who had been too young to remember their true name and family background.

Her efforts were discovered after a fellow member of the resistance gave Irena's name under torture. In October 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo. She suffered torture including the breaking of her legs and feet and was sentenced to death. She still refused to give any information which would endanger either the children or other resistance members. Later the Communist leaders of Poland threatened her with denying access to higher education for her own children.

She has left this world and we are poorer for her absence. May she rest in peace and find great reward. May the rest of us be strengthened by her example.

*image taken from http://www.haaretz.com