Over the past several days, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve attended some magnificent presentations at Utah Valley State College in commemoration on Martin Luther King Jr.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s legacy. Besides asking myself the obvious (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we doing this kind of thing at BYU?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), I have been taking notes and thinking about how my life can change because of the things I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard and been engaged in. A few examples from the words of Keynoter Vincent Harding:
\n\t\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The words in the Bible are not true because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the Bible; they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the Bible because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re true. The words Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount are not true because he said them, but because he KNEW them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n\tI found myself in a supremely ironic moment as I left UVSC and turned on my radio\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhearing the demeaning rhetoric of Sean Hannity finding new epithets for the democrats and liberals. His tone and words were so contrary to what I had just been a part of that it was actually shocking.
\n\tHere are a few examples of how Dr. Harding taught which touched me:
\n1)\tHe asked that the audience come together so he could see our faces and feel like he was having a human experience. (We did.)
\n2)\tHe said that the best teaching was done in dialogue, not as a lecture, and then engaged the audience in a probing discourse, asking each questioner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name and then calling them by that name, finding something good to say about their questions, and moving them to larger circles. (He complimented a Native American for his question on Civil Rights and the plight of the reservations, and then suggested that we would do better to not distinguish ourselves as one race or people but as a brotherhood committed to the same cause in addressing oppression wherever we find it.)
\n3)\tHe introduced me to MLK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Riverside Speech, which I found tragically relevant today. King chose to oppose the Viet Nam War\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddespite the fact that LBJ had signed the Civil Rights Act and was set to sign the Voting Act. It was terribly risky for King to oppose this war, and many urged him not to do it. But ultimately, the completeness of King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mission (which, Harding pointed out, was thoroughly based on King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Christian commitment to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153love your enemies\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) made his opposition inevitable. King said these sadly prophetic words: “If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
\nThe presentations left me with many thoughts, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll let you comment just on these scanty notes, should you choose to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the past several days, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve attended some magnificent presentations at Utah Valley State College in commemoration on Martin Luther King Jr.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s legacy. Besides asking myself the obvious (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we doing this kind of thing at BYU?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), I have been taking notes and thinking about how my life can change because of the things I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard and been engaged in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}