On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 

I'd like to remember the man himself as related through the eyes of my friend and one time business partner, Jim Coleman. In between tours of duty, a Marine in Vietnam, Jim had and took the opportunity to serve as a body guard for Dr. King. Jim once told me, with a tear in his eye, that he felt "that if everyone in the world could have shook Dr. King's hand this world would be a very different place."  Jim would recall King's humor, that he often took pleasure in simple practical jokes, like rigging a matchbox  with a single match and a rubber band, so that when someone asked for a light, opening that trick box, they'd startle with the split second of propeller action achieved by coiling the one stick into the closed cover. I hear that one never grew old for him, though it only ever 'worked' on those newest to the entourage.




Thirty years after King's death, Fr. Dan Berrigan, myself and a dozen others were arrested outside the U.N. Headquarters  for an act of non-violent civil disobedience, protesting the sanctions on Iraq, specifically, the embargo on medical supplies.

Two years later I entered the Gandhi-King Award ceremony at U.N Headquarters to find that my name was removed from the guest list. Knowing enough of those present it was no problem proceeding to the event, but it did seem somewhat ironic that my action two years prior could have resulted in being kept from that Award ceremony.

It's hard for me to know for sure just how far we've come. Having known black teens in Harlem, (NYC) in the 1990s, who did not know who Martin Luther King was, it's not at all clear to me that the progress we assume and depict is actual. 

My hope for us today is that we see Martin down off the podium and back on the pavement with us. That we continue to glean inspiration from his example while acknowledging his (and thus our identical) humanity, and remember to enact the levity which does help make the bearing of tremendous burdens possible.
                  

On this the 60th anniversary of the assasination of M.K.Gandhi

I'd like to recall Dick Gregory, a serious student of Gandhi's methods and champion in his own right of our continuing collective leap to post-colonial worldspace.

In an Integral Health thread I briefly recount the time I worked for him.

As a black who ran for the U.S. Presidency twice (through the write-in ballot, 1968, and '76) I think of him (as I do Barbara Marx Hubbard in relation to Hillary Clinton's candidacy) as a cultural forerunner to the candidacy of Sen.Obama. By one analysis, if Dick had not run in '76, Carter would not have won. Rather than remember him as only political I want to express my appreciation for his modeling important aspects of Integral Life Practice.

Through hunger strikes he was able to wield his celebrity for the systemic sake of raising public awareness. Working with all quadrants, the practice of fasting was always accompanied with prayer. He taught this. A balancing of being politically active with spiritual practice; and of tending to the vessel, the body, in ways that reflect one's own degree of freedom from the myriad, subtler colonialisms still woven tightly into our increasingly post-colonial era. For instance, the rare form of cancer that he was diagnosed with in 2001 he is now free of, and which he treated with a thoroughly holistic regimen.


One lesson I Iearned from Dick is that revealing and examining our relativistic ruts and comforts is a valid instigation of Second Tier perspecting. I found him to be a reliable master at "highlighting our fixation to the green meme", which, as KW wrote in A Theory of Everything (English, page 29), "By highlighting our fixation to the green meme, I believe that we can begin more readilly to transcend and include its wonderful accomplishments in an ever more generous embrace."

After a screening of the movie, Gandhi, at the Whole Life Expo (Plaza Hotel, Manhattan, '83), Dick spoke to the packed house of holistic health practicioners and enthusiasts ( a sea of green? ). The crowd was aglow with the triumphal, romanticised depiction of their hero. Dick said, "That ain't nothin' but a vicious movie", and went on to point out a few consecutive scenes. In one, the Indian populace is affirmed in their capacity to accomplish their liberation on their own, in the very next, an altruistic white woman appears as a necessary catalyst for the movement. Implicit meanings of such a reading (of that scripting and editing) may not have been conscious, even for Attenborough, its producer, but the nuances of colonialism and its transposed perpetuations were recognized by Dick. And he still does that these days.

Dick is good at deconstructing the "golden shadow" of Green, prompting the members of his audiences to start with their own empowerment, thereby actualizing the Gandhian slogan, "Be the change you wish to see...".

He does have his far out side, and I don't agree with many of the statements he makes. But as someone who has long used their own position in society to reflect that society back to itself, I consider Dick Gregory an exemplar of the full richness possible for a single human life.