Spiritual Sunday

I am just loving, really really loving this book, "Strength to Love" by Martin Luther King, Jr. As I travel on my journey of being Quaker, I am in more and more awe of people like Martin Luther King Jr. who followed their leadings despite the incredible obstacles and dangers. Martin Luther King Jr., of course, was not a Quaker, but a baptist minister, however there are many parallels between his work for civil rights and the many Quakers that spoke out and actively opposed slavery.

The book I mentioned above, is filled with Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons and I have been reading through them, absorbing them, and truly being filled with awe and admiration and I can feel the spirit moving in me that I must also listen and learn and act.

Here is an excerpt ~

The hope of a secure and livable world likes with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!

In his essay Self- Reliance Emerson wrote, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." The Apostle Paul reminds us that whoso would be a Christian must also be a nonconformist. Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave. Mark well these words from the pen of James Russell Lowell:

They are slaves who fear to speak

For the fallen and the weak;

They are slaves who will not choose

Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,

Rather than in silence shrink

From the truth they needs must think;

They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three.

From Strength to Love, by Martin Luther King, Jr.1963