Speech at the Midwest City Martin Luther King Breakfast
Jan 21, 2013
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Nathaniel Batchelder
The title of today’s talks – The Wisdom of Peace – is crucial to our times. Dr. King’s words – his sermons and speeches – ring in our ears today as we commemorate his life and lift up again his prophetic messages for the ages.
He advocated nonviolence and love as a grounding for all efforts for social change. And indeed, our society and world badly need more love, compassion, understanding, civility, and nonviolence in speech as well as action.
We support your dream, Dr. King, of overcoming racism and all divisions among people simply on account of who they are.
We support your dream, Dr. King, to overcome poverty by creating a society and an economy in which every person has access to development.
We support your dream, Dr. King, to overcome militarism and war that destroy lives, drain resources, and render unaffordable the programs that serve people in our society.
And I suggest that Dr. King would expand his vision of peace today to include harmony with nature, with all other species, and with the natural systems that support life on earth.
Spiritual people whose prophetic voices ring across the ages were always those called to speak out about things that were just not right … as we have heard the words of Amos in the Old Testament: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Jesus, Gandhi, and Dr. King all challenged their societies for justice and compassion for the outcast, the vulnerable, and the oppressed, and love for all members of the human family.