It's funny how things work

For some reason, I really struggled with making meaning of this weeks reading. While I enjoyed the readings individually, I had a hard time finding my understanding of what was being said in We Make the Road by Walking and I struggled finding meaningful connections within the readings from The Impossible Will Take a Little While. Ironically it was the short paragraph beginning chapter 35 (which was not part of our reading), by Cornel West (who I love and think is a genius in his ability to speak to the younger generations), which gave me some inspiration for reflection. West writes:

The quality of our lives and the integrity of our souls are in jeopardy... The lethal power of global corporate elites and national managerial bosses is at an all-time high...The precious system of caring and nurturing are eroding...And out public life lies in shambles, shot through with icy cynicism and paralyzing pessimism." (p.293).

These words inspired me to rediscover the content and meaning of the readings. I believe our souls are paralyzed as Mr. West suggests. As a society and as individuals we hump along to the metronome of drumming provided by a mindless, heartless Bureaucracy that doesn’t apply to us. It is so big and so advanced that it carries the illusion is that it knows best, when in fact it really doesn’t care. We are fueled by consumption and advertising, which carries the empty promise of happiness, sexual gratification, individuality and superiority. We no longer feel with our souls, but rather with our hands and our eyes. We have disconnected from our own souls and spirits and thus disconnected from the interests of our fellow humans. In The Impossible Will Take a Little While, Dr. martin Luther King writes:

I must confess that over the last few years I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is no the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” that to justice (p.282).

I believe that Dr. King’s point makes sense not only in the Civil Rights movement of African American’s, but in a larger civil rights movement that is on the horizon, which is people reconnecting to their souls and doing what is right in the context of all humanity, not just for them as individuals. Mr. West is right, we have become docile, tricked into immobility by a life that is not bad enough to have the NEED to change it, but not good enough to allow us to feel as though we can change it. I believe the beauty and the genius of the Civil Rights Movement was that it was not immobilized by the few and largely meaningless concessions occasionally made by the powers of the time. Its beliefs were not convoluted and it’s vision not blurred. Things were so bad and so clearly unacceptable that change could not wait. Dr. King writes “Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity” (p. 284).