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  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
  • Stewardship and Gift Policy
    • Saints We've Known
    • Charitable Giving and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
  • Sermons 2022-23
    • The Seventh Principle
    • Make Light of It
    • A Turn of the Screw
    • America: Part II
    • What Do You Expect?
    • Good Mourning
    • Beyone Repair?
    • No Signal
    • Absolutely, Maybe, Definitely Not
    • Do Guardian Angels Exist?
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  • LOVEUU
  • Community Resources
    • Mental Health Providers, Worcester MA
    • Southern Worcester County Parent Guide
  • Contact Us
    • Sermons 2021-22
  • Sermon Archives
    • Finding Joy in Uncertain Times
    • The Arithmetic of Joy
    • Of Muck and Martyrs
    • Doing Dishes
    • Idle Worship
    • The Fear of the Refugee
    • It's Not Just You
    • If We Choose
    • Lazy Busy
    • A Most Human Season
    • Running on Empty
    • Alone Together
    • Come Home
    • Winter Warmth
    • How Big Is Your Circle?
    • Thanksgiving Life
    • Kurt Vonnegut: Humanist Hero
    • In Costume
    • Again
    • Borderland
    • The Geometry of Life
    • Transformation and Growth
    • Come Build a Land
    • Our Brains, Our Minds and Our Hearts
    • Gifts
    • Repairers of the Breach
    • The Times They Are A-Changin'
    • Mission Possible
    • It Matters
    • Thanksgiving Reflection
    • Shoes That Fit
    • Winter
    • Ignorance, Answers, and Bliss
    • Questions, Questions
    • Living to the Point of Tears
    • Lost in the Shuffle: UU's Less Popular Principle
    • On the Turning Away
    • A Matter of Degree
    • A Collection of Near Death Experiences
    • I Know Her So Well, I Think. I Thought.
    • Faith-based Resilience
    • To Abet Creation
    • Who Cares?
    • A Matter of Life and Depth
    • Pass/Fail
    • Enough
    • O Holy Light
    • With New Eyes
    • Coming Alive
    • Beyond Words
    • Becoming
    • A Miracle Even Thomas Jefferson Could Embrace
    • Fear Not!
    • The Miracle of Change
    • Meeting Grace
    • R-E-S-P-E-C-T
    • Serving with Grace
    • The Pursuit of Happiness
    • When Heresy Met Sally
    • The Souls of All Living Creatures
    • What Are You Looking For?
    • Beloved
    • Let Me Count The Ways
    • Happiness
    • Chosen
    • Faith and Belief
    • Room To Grow
    • Blessed Fools
    • Don't Be a Superhero
    • Getting There from Here
    • Unfinished Business
    • Universalism's Origen
    • Yearn to Learn
    • Beauty Saves
    • Commentary on Freedom
    • Being Human: Religious Community in a Plastic Age
    • Questionable Certainties and Faithful Doubts
    • Commentaries on Murphy's Law
    • Children of a Lesser God
    • Fragile Nets of Meaning
    • Life Incarnate
    • So You Want to Be Happy
    • A Year's End Resolution
    • Where Stars Are Born
    • Thanking Eve
    • Anger, Our Teacher
    • Everlasting Punishment
    • Comprehending Moral Imperatives in a Me-centered World
    • Promises Kept
    • Dancing With The Stars: Science and Religion
    • Two Steps and Missteps: Church Membership for Human Beings
    • Light of the World
    • Dear God
    • Imago Hominis
    • CESA: Reflections on Drug Addiction
    • Falling in Love Again
    • How Does Your Garden Grow
    • Repent! No Guilt Trip Required
    • Go Out into the World
    • Thanks-living
    • Life and Not Life
    • Guilty As Charged
    • Dare To Hope
    • Don't Forget To Chew
    • Break the Silence - Stop the Violence
    • Living Among Strangers
    • What Is Religion Anyway?
    • East of Eden
    • Praying Attention
    • Wholly Human
    • The Healing Power of Forgiveness
    • All I Want for Christmas
    • Let It Be...Let It Go
    • Why Not?
    • People Like You
    • Vulnerable Trust
    • Thin Places
    • Now What?
    • Courageously Humble
    • The Last Butterfly
    • The Good, The Bad, and The Whole
    • Sacred Souvenirs
    • Made Whole
    • This Wild and Precious Life
    • Fragile Nets of Meaning
    • Where Our Future Can Begin
    • Taking Stock: Managing Our Spiritual Inventory
    • To Convert Life into Truth
    • Are We There Yet?
    • Family Matters
    • Ordinary Saints
    • All I Wanted Was Everything
    • Giving Thanks
    • To Be or Not To Be
    • Entering the Christmas Story
    • A Great Light
    • What's Real?
    • Troubling the Water
    • The Amazing Mr. Wedgewood
    • Lend Me Your Ears
    • Work That Is Real
    • Happy Melba Toast Day
    • The Great Pacific Garbage Dump
    • Plastics, Benjamin!
    • Surprise Beginnings
    • A Place at the Table
    • Norbert Capek’s Flower Communion: A Call To Honor Life
    • Voices of God
    • Hold On To What Is Good
    • The Little Stone Church That Rocks
    • What Would Jean-Luc Do?: A Tribute to Humanist Hero Gene Roddenberry
    • From Who am I? to Whose are We?
    • Turning
    • Spirituality
    • R & R
    • Spritual F-Words
    • Does Anyone Really Like Herding Cats?
    • Prepare to Be Amazed
    • The Greatest Gift
    • The Impossible Will Take A Little While
    • Taking Sides: Journey to the Center of the Universe
    • Help Wanted, Apply Within
    • Two Truths & Plastics and Water Don't Mix
    • The Third Conversation
    • Good People >
      • UU You >
        • Twitter and Covid and Wall Street, Oh, my!
        • I Do Believe in Spooks >
          • Holy Homophones >
            • What's in a Name?
            • So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!
            • Open-Mindedness, As Assigned
            • Going on a Journey
            • Cheap Love
            • Nonproductive Delight
            • The Persistence of Memory
            • Thoughts about the Historical Jesus
            • Lindens and Tiarella and Bearberry, Oh My!
            • Season's Greetings
            • I Still Have A Dream
            • Peace Corps - A Lesson in Caring
            • Spiritual Engineering
            • Thanks for the Memories
            • Our Stories, Ourselves
            • Anxious Gardeners
            • The Best Sermon Ever!
            • UUnited
            • We Are Courageous
            • A Right Way to Be Wrong
            • Sacred Ideals
            • This Wild and Precious Life Revisited
            • 20/20
            • Home
            • What About Now?
        • Fragile
        • Time Ravel
        • Now Is Not the Time for Hope
        • The G Word (It's Probably Not what You Think)
    • No Thanks, I'll Walk
    • Be the Change
    • I Don't Know
    • What Lies Within
    • Guest Perspective
    • Growing Panes
    • De Colores
    • Roots and Wings
BROOKFIELD UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH

I Still Have a Dream
​

by Gary Blanchard
January 19. 2020

 
Coming of age in the 1960’s, there were many people who inspired me, but there were three who had a profound impact on the person I would come to be. The first was a person who died three years before I was born. I learned of Mohandas Gandhi from a biography I read when I was ten years old. In Gandhi I found a person whose life embodied the values I was being taught at church. I was impressed by his commitment to non-violence, something that I felt was central to my faith at the time. A few years later I heard a man who was following the path of Gandhi to try to win freedom and equal rights for African Americans; this, of course, was Martin Luther King Jr. I remember hearing parts of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech when I was twelve, on August 28, 1963. A couple of years after that I came across an album by a folk singer that featured songs of the civil rights movement; that album was recorded live on June 8, 1963, a couple of months before King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I would learn to play most of the songs on that album and would perform them many places, including at rallies and school assemblies. The hymns in today’s service were songs I learned from the singing of Pete Seeger.
 
            There were many lessons learned from these three men. I learned the lesson of love, the strength of numbers, the value of commitment, the need to follow the heart and conscience, the calling to speak out, the power of song, and the importance of hope. Today, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., I want to take time to celebrate his life and legacy.
 
            The mid-to-late 1960s were interesting times. There were a lot of problems; the fight for civil rights for African Americans, the emerging women’s rights movement, the Stonewall riots that began the gay-rights movement, free speech fights, and the anti-war movement were all happening. Despite this, there was a sense of hope and optimism, a belief that, as Graham Nash stated in his song Chicago, we could change the world. The hippie movement, now remembered as being about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, at the time was centered on promoting peace, love, and brotherhood.
 
            There were successes. Despite the murders of civil rights workers, police brutality, segregationist politicians, and grassroots opposition to equal rights, there were changes made that helped ease the plight of the oppressed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, first proposed by John F. Kennedy, then signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Through all of this, Martin Luther King Jr. was there to lead the call to action. Consider this excerpt from his 1965 “Our God is Marching On” speech:
 
            “Once more the method of nonviolent resistance was unsheathed from its scabbard, and once again an entire community was mobilized to confront the adversary. And again the brutality of a dying order shrieks across the land. Yet, Selma, Alabama, became a shining moment in the conscience of man. If the worst in American life lurked in its dark streets, the best of American instincts arose passionately from across the nation to overcome it. There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes.”
 
            On April 4, 1967, King went on to not only advocate for civil rights, but to oppose the war in Vietnam. In that speech he stated: “This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls ‘enemy,’ for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.” King demonstrated that the fight for civil rights was, indeed, a fight for justice for all humanity.
 
            Ten days later he gave another speech, known as “The Other America”. In the speech, King explained: “But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” This is as true now as it was in 1967.
 
            Yet, near the end of the speech, King still spoke of hope. “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward Justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right, ‘No lie can live forever.’ We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right, ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right, ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne — Yet that scaffold sways the future.’ With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
 
            This was part of the power of Martin Luther King. There is no denying that he was a dynamic speaker, but his greatest asset was his hope that convinced him that humanity would, indeed, overcome some day.
 
            On April 3, 1968, King gave another memorable speech. He ended it with these words: “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!”
 
            As you probably know, the next day an assassin’s bullet ended the life of Dr. King. Robert Kennedy, then running for president, gave a truly beautiful, impromptu speech as he shared the news with a crowd who had come for a political rally. Two months later he was also killed. In the midst of this it would be very easy to give up hope. I realized, however, that to give up hope was to waste the sacrifice that King made for the heart and soul of our country.
 
            Years go by, and decades, go by, as they always do. We have seen victories and we have seen defeats. We saw the promise of our first African American president, then saw the rise of bitterness, hatred, and prejudice. In all of this it is easy to lose hope. But we cannot lose hope; to do so is to abandon the work of King and others.
 
            Carol Mays, in her poem, Fantasies, presents a vision of a future that not only could come, but must come. We will hear melodies rise with the sun and stars. We will see sparkling-haired children in yellow silk, sprinkled with sun rays, dance on a hill.  And we will see women in glowing robes walk near streams of snow, landing as natural lace.
 
            I still have a dream. I still believe in the power of love to overcome hatred. I still have a dream that that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’ " I still have a dream that “one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”
 
            John Lennon, in his song Imagine, states, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you will join us and the world will live as one.” I call you to join me in this dream. I urge you to share that dream, and to live that dream. If we fail to dream, we give up hope, and will not take action. If we work together, the dream can come alive.
 
            As we prepare to once again celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., let us remember the power of his words and the power of his actions. Let us say, “I have a dream today” Let us all be able to say, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Free of hatred, free of violence, free of anger, and free of fear. Free at last.
 
Amen and Blessed Be.
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