Dear Friends,
Greetings of love and peace.
I write as the last light drains from the sky on this day commemorating the life and ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King.
I spent the morning in San Francisco participating in an event organized by the San Francisco Interfaith Council, which is a URI Cooperation Circle. Rita Semel, who many of you know as URI's founding board and Global Council Chair is Executive Vice Chair of SFIC; and Michael Pappas, who is a member of the leadership council for URI North America, is SFIC's executive director.
They organized an inspiring commemoration of the 45th anniversary of the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, that played such an important role in the Civil Rights Movement in this country. Many local URI leaders and friends, and Sandy Westin, URI North America's Coordinator participated in today's commemoration.
Among the distinguished guests at the commemoration were the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, former San Francisco Mayor, Willie Brown, and current Interim Mayor, Ed Lee.
After marching from the 3rd Street bridge to Yerba Buena Gardens in downtown San Francisco, we shared in an interfaith commemoration beside the Martin Luther King wall, which is a stone wall with a waterfall flowing down its face, engraved with the words from the Hebrew scriptures Dr. King quoted so often, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
In addition to commemorating Dr. King, we also honored Rev. Amos Brown, a local Baptist pastor who decades ago studied with Dr. King at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Rev. Brown, a leading spiritual figure in San Francisco for decades, spoke movingly of the primary lesson he felt Dr. King wanted to teach -- that all people, regardless of race, color or creed, deserved a basic human dignity, which of necessity included being free from oppression, the threat of violence and having the means to meet their basic human needs. Internalizing this teaching meant giving your life to help to make it real, and to do so non-violently.
May we in URI do our best to internalize this teaching of one of the great spiritual leaders of the 20th Century and do our best in our lives, individually and collectively, to make this teaching a reality all over the world.
It is a privilege to share this journey with you.
Faithfully,
Charles
