Every year’s end offers to us the opportu
nity to reflect, to pause and listen to the echoes that reverberate from out of the past 12 months.
Lady Pamela and I, a year ago began organizing Moral Monday CT. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, said this”…I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” …there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So, the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” As you’ve heard me say,
TURN UP helps to create the political space for community change and transformation to occur!
We have begun the task of change and transformation here in CT. Together, we’ve marched on the streets of Hartford and New Haven. We’ve engaged in conversations in Bridgeport, Newtown and New London. We’ve been honored guest on college campuses across the state from UConn to Wesleyan. We’ve been featured in newspaper articles and on public radio. The work has just gotten started! We are in process, progress. We are under way!
Hear the words of my spirit teacher and guide, The Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman:
“There is something which seems utterly final about the end of a year. It means that we are one year older; this is a fact definite and inexorable. We are twelve months closer to the end of our physical time span—one year closer to death. It means that in some important ways we are taken farther from, or brought closer to, the goal of our living, whatever that goal may be. It means that some crucial questions which were unanswered twelve months ago have been finally and decidedly answered, and whatever doubts there may have been about the result are completely removed; now, we know.
It means that we in fuller or lesser possession of ourselves and our powers than ever before.
During the passing of twelve months, experiences have come into our lives which revealed certain things about ourselves which we have not suspected.
Some new demand was made upon us which caused us to behave in a manner that was strange to our established pattern of life, and we felt shocked, surprised, enraged or delighted that such was possible for us. We met someone with whom we built the kind of relationship which opened up to us new worlds of wonder and magic, which were completely closed to us a year ago. It means that we are wiser by far than we were at year’s beginning. The circling series of events upon whose bosom we have been wafted cut away our pretensions, stripping us bare of much beneath which we have hidden even from ourselves; when we saw ourselves revealed, there was born a wisdom about life and its meaning that makes us say with all our hearts, this day, that life is good, not evil.
It means that we have been able to watch, as if bewitched, while the illumined finger of God pointed out a path through the surrounding darkness where no path lay; exposed to our surprised gaze a door where we were sure there was only a blank wall; revealed the strong arms and assuring voices of friends when we were sure that in our plight we were alone, utterly and starkly alone.
All of these meanings and many more counsel us that because life is dynamic and we are deeply alive,
the end of the year can mean only the end of the year, not the end of life, not the end of us, not even the end of time.
We turn our faces toward the year being born with a riding hope that will carry us into the days ahead with courage and with confidence. The old year dies; the new year is being born—Long Live Life!” From Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman
These words resound the sentiments of my heart as I think of you this New Year’s Day!
