Ellen Kolb

Still dreaming

Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech 57 years ago today.

I’m understating the case to say that nonviolence hasn’t quite won out yet. I could fill this post with links to news reports just from today, from this country, proving that point.

With all that Dr. King wrote and said, I keep coming back to his 1964 book, Why We Can’t Wait. I have a paperback edition I treasure, published in his lifetime, without prefaces or afterwords written by people trying to frame his words for me.

In a book that continues to challenge me every time I pick it up, there’s this.

Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another’s flesh.
Martin Luther King, Why We Can’t Wait

“Must” become, not “has” or “will.” There’s urgency there. Perpetual urgency seems a contradiction in terms, yet here we are.

Marching

There’s a march in Washington today, timed to coincide with the anniversary of “I have a dream.” It’s meant to be a nonviolent affirmation of the need for racial justice, and I hope nothing disrupts it.

Pandemic or not, I have no problem with a scheduled march for human rights. Coronavirus doesn’t seem to stand in the way of violence anywhere, so it shouldn’t stand in the way of peaceful demonstrations. The National Park Service in Washington seems to appreciate that.

I expect the same courtesy, permits, and COVID-19 precautions to be extended to the March for Life next January.

Featured photo: Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Washington, DC. Photo credit: National Park Service/volunteer Bill Shugarts.

“The most deadly poison of our time…”

Every year on the August 14 feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, one or another social media acquaintance posts these words attributed to him: “The most deadly poison of our time is indifference.”

My conscience stings every time I read that. Am I indifferent? Am I not doing enough stuff? Maybe, but there’s more to the saint’s statement. This is the part that doesn’t make it onto the memes.

“…And this happens, although the praise of God should know no limits. Let us strive, therefore, to praise Him to the greatest extent of our powers.”

He wasn’t talking about indifference to the news or politics. I wish he had been; that’s easier for me to remedy. If that were the case I could just keep doing what I do, only more of it.

But instead there’s this: the praise of God should know no limits.

I’m busy. I do stuff. I have a family. There’s a pandemic going on. I have bills to pay and work goals to meet. I make my Morning Offering and then move on from there. Some days that’s the only spiritual box I check, but at least I check it.

Box-checking looks feeble – downright indifferent – in the face of praise that “should know no limits.”

That’s something for me to work on.

A little win for the Little Sisters at the Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court tiptoed its way through a jungle of administrative law to hand another victory to the Little Sisters of the Poor. Some people just can’t stop insisting that nuns help provide birth control. In this case, it was the state of Pennsylvania, which deservedly lost on a 7-2 vote.

Or, in the words of a headline from CNBC (a business network, mind you): “Supreme Court says Trump administration can let religious employers deny birth control coverage under Obamacare.”

Let me fix that for them: “Supreme Court tells Pennsylvania to get its hands out of nuns’ pockets,” or “Supreme Court recognizes religious liberty interests of Catholic women,” or “Supreme Court says government cannot impose ruinous fines on Little Sisters of the Poor,” or even “Supreme Court lets employers stay out of employees’ private decisions involving sex.”