Radical Joy for MLK Day
January has long been one of my favorite months because it holds my most sacred of Holy Days: Martin Luther King, Jr Day. I’ve spent decades studying the Civil Rights Movements not just in the US but around the world. I’ve spent time at the feet of Gandhi’s statue at his Ashram in India where I studied non-violent actions in an attempt to make sense of the concept of Agape. I studied mediation with the Dalai Lama on a sweeping porch of an orphanage in the Himalaya and then put that practice into social action while working to protect disenfranchised Tibetans inside of Tibet. I’ve sat with Palestinian and Israeli mothers and born witness to the fear they feel of each other. I’ve spent time in rural, “Red State” American, listening to socially conservative activists school me in intersectionality, ultimately giving me an understanding of why they choose to be anti-choice, anti-immigrant, or pro school prayer.
I know that MLK, Gandhi, and so many others were not, are not, people without faults. They were not people who did no harm while they also did/are doing incredible good. I do my best to see them in their full light. As I do myself. Doing no harm is different than doing good and it is my 2021 resolution.
All of the teachers that I’ve been lucky enough to sit at the feet of (metaphorically and in some cases literally) have two things in common. The first is that they are/were each radical. Radical in their thoughts, behaviors, equipped with undiminished hope that in spite of the darkness they faced believed that they would see better, safer days. Most of them would not use this word, radical, to describe themselves or their actions. Yet I felt their perspective to be radical in how it was different from what we are taught to believe about social change. That it is too hard, too dark, too heavy to carry. I bring this lesson with me this MLK Day as a lesson in how I need to tap into this sense of radical in myself when days are hard. Keeping hope alive, a radical act in and of itself.
The second commonality these teachers share is that they laughed, a lot. They found time to play with children with wide, spacious smiles on their faces. They found time to dance with each other after long days of sometimes life threatening struggles. They seem to have understood something that has taken me too long to see: joy is in and of itself an act of resistance.
Being able to find, access, and experience joy when doing hard things is how we are able to do this work for years and years and years. And this, my friends, is what is required of us.
Find the joy, it will sustain you.
