“Power without love
is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands
of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” ― Martin
Luther King Jr.
Today the Occupy Movement will be engaging in global actions
centered around the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The heart of Dr. King’s vision offers wonderful inspiration
for the movement – one that is deeply rooted in love. King’s approach to activism was all about “love
in action.”
The activists of the civil rights era faced incredible repression
and brutality, yet remained firm in their conviction to love, their conviction to non-violence. This gave them tremendous
“moral capital.” Violence, as an activist tactic, very rarely is successful. It is speaking the language
of the opressor, and they respond with even greater violence. But the images of loving activists in contrast to brutality,
is poignant, moving and transformative. It opens the hearts of the undecided, and calls them to join in the quest for justice.
Those who seek to undermine the Occupy Movement, or any activist movement, invariably point to acts of violence.
King taught that while legislative changes were important,
such as desegregation (a focal point for the movement at that time), unless we also change our hearts and minds, we
would end up with, ”a society where men are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are
together and hearts apart. It gives us social togetherness and spiritual apartness. It leaves us with a stagnant equality
of sameness rather than a constructive equality of oneness.” He beautifully said that, “we are tied
together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
Dr. King’s greatest vision was that the world would
come together in a “Beloved Community.” The civil rights movement represented an attempt to created that
Beloved Community in microcosm. Today, within the Occupy Movement, we can also create this kind of community, founded on compassion,
non-violence and mutuality. This is turn can help lead to the tipping point, towards that day when we are able to live
in a world that works for everyone. King’s profound dream was to enlarge “the concept of brotherhood
to a vision of total interrelatedness.”
If he were alive today, I believe Dr. King
would have recognized the incredible potential of this remarkable time in history.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only
light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
By remaining firmly grounded in
love, we are practicing “prefigurative politics.” Instead of waiting for some far off dream of a peaceful,
loving world, we are living it, right now, in real time. The principles of participatory democracy, central to the Occupy
Movement, allow us to practice a world where everyone is important. Having a leaderless movement is also a radical step
– we all are leaders today.
Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has said that in this era, “the Buddha is the Sangha.”
This means, the community is the new Buddha. It’s time for us all to wake up, and tap into our collective
wisdom. We are moving beyond the top down hierarchal structures that have dominated all areas of life in the past –
from politics to spirituality, from culture to economics. It’s time for a new era, an era of shared power, of horizontality.
This is the way ecosystems work – complex webs of systems within systems, supporting, nurturing each other in webs of
checks and balances. It’s time that we integrate fully into the planetary body, recognize our profound inter-connection,
striving always towards mutually enhancing relationships.
The field of possibility expands
exponentially each time any one of us truly steps up to the plate, and opens our hearts. How joyous, to live the realization
that the greater the brilliance of any one of us, the greater is the radiance of the whole. We can go beyond that
outdated dog eat dog eat dog isolating, disconnecting model of the corporatocracy, into a new world, where we care for each
other in networks of compassion. Let us truly, deeply, authentically occupy the dream, the dream of a world that works for
all life, where each and everyone of us is a shining star in a constellation of love.
“Everybody
can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have
to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
Borrowed From: http://occupylove.org/