IT TAKES STRENGTH TO LOVE

I have never been one to copy and paste a quote once a year to impress others about something in my heart. While Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was prolific, he also wrote many books that impacted my life. Please read them; his words and wisdom are relevant and even more relevant in 2024.

Dr.? Martin Luther King Jr wrote a book about it and exemplified it by his life's calling and losing his life.

I was born loving. It's how I was knitted in my mother's womb, and yet there are days I lament to the Creator for planting such a massive seed in my soul.

It takes every bit of energy to love.

I was raised and taught through life experience to be patient, kind, and compassionate. I have been reflecting on my thoughts because my flesh wants to dig in, be unforgiving and bitter, and save all my love for me. What's the point? The whole world is destroying one another through war, economic disparity, withholding of food and fresh water, the destruction of our planet, racism, sexism, and the backsliding of corporate America. Why should I care about others? Who honestly cares about me? Would you lay down your life for me?

These past seven years, this past year has been quite the spiritual challenge about forgiveness, tolerance, and understanding. Our highest leadership level's perspectives, policies, and actions have been grating my sensibilities during the last administration, and I am now concerned about the next election. For me, the digression of the office of the President, the Supreme Court, our Congress, and the Senate is alarming.

Please hear me, beloved. The legacy of Dr Martin Luther King Jr is not a yearly day of celebration for me but a constant reminder of a continual role model of character and repetitive meditation of nonviolence and compassion. So few have the strength to endure, but I strive to be like them. Yes, I strive to be like Dr. King—absolutely, but humanity, you don't make it easy.

It takes great strength to love.

?I thought I was a kind, compassionate woman. Still, when professed followers of the Gospel articulate and insist on racist ideology or prejudice toward those less fortunate, I get annoyed and sometimes angry. The fight for civil rights, hence human rights, was a long and arduous battle— many good people from diverse cultural backgrounds sacrificed their lives. DR. King lost his life believing in what he called the strength to love. I have a responsibility— perhaps a calling if you will be more compassionate, more tolerant, and more patient with those who do not comprehend the enormous cost of these inhumane ideologies. It is not just a matter of opinion because, for me, and many like me, it is essential to our inalienable rights as human beings.

Oh, dear God, it takes strength to love and to forgive.

I have no excuse for being impatient with injustice. I have dined and prayed with Rosa Parks and been blessed by Coretta Scott King and Dr. Maya Angelou, who encouraged me to share my perspectives by writing. I have been mentored by Dr Derrick Bell and shared platforms with Julian Bond and Andrew Young. I even conversed and prayed with the politically conservative General Norman Schwarzkopf.

It has taken great strength for leaders now gone to love.

I am responsible for leading in a manner that is the antithesis of all the recent harmful and destructive dialogue. I don't know how all these leaders became so eloquent, but their genuine kindness and encouragement to me mean something life-changing. I feel it in my heart. This is what God wants me to understand, and from all of you naysayers, I have not believed in the Gospel of love my whole life. I was a Buddhist for half my life, but each of these individuals urged me to shift my paradigm and open my heart. Before I can encourage you to love, I must individually try harder and rouse collectively that we rise above the level of mediocrity, fear, and disgust.

Strength to Love, 1963. "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

?I ask for your kind prayers and encouragement. I want to be the absolute best version of myself, so I must re-think, re-calibrate my discourse, and find my strength DAILY, not once a year, to walk in love.

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A'ho! Amen, and So be it.

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