Martin Luther King

This morning when I went on to the Pilgrimage of Peace web page I was surprised to see that Tegan, our wikignome, had placed on that page the slide show of part 1 of my pictures from the Pilgrimage to India. She had helped make possible a dream of mine to tell a story without using many words. Now I am anxious to put Part 2 and maybe Part 3 of the pictures on flickr and on the page. By just using dates of the pictures, titles, and maybe a few comments I can now tell eloquently without many words the journey we were blessed to make to India.

Today was my Dad’s birthday. He passed away in 2000, the same year as my mom. Without these two I would not be alive to dream. Today is also Martin Luther King’s birthday. He had a ‘dream’ and made a lot of dreams come true. He was a real disciple of nonviolence and in India they are soon celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s visit to India to study the nonviolence of Gandhi. Two of our group of pilgrims, Pastor Joe and Joyce Ellwanger, had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the south in the early days of the civil rights movement. We were all held up and honored in India but special honor was reserved for Joe and Joyce for their association with Dr. King.

India really changed me. I especially noticed it today when I responded to a “fair trade store owner” who is more concerned with the certification and legalization of fair trade than the poor persons who make the products. His challenge of the ‘real fair trade’ status of some of the products of the persons in the villages of India, like his past challenges of the Juan Ana Coffee from San Lucas Tolimin or Ella’s Patch Quilts, angered me. However, I did show restraint in responding and said that I would start to call what I was talking about ‘just trade’ and how ‘just trade’ gave a just price to creator of goods as well as the consumer. (His so called “Fair Trade” products in his store are about double the cost of ‘just trade’ prices where the ‘middle man’, the certifier is eliminated. Poor people do not know what ‘fair trade’ is. However, I did react, while in the true spirit of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, St. Ignatius and Jesus I should have just let his dismissing of my judgment go and not responded. I told him in my response that I no longer have time to react like I was doing. As Jesus said: Let those that have eyes to see, see and ears to hear, hear. (I did not say that to him.)

My new dream today is to make nonviolence true in my daily actions. I have a lot of other dreams but if I can make this one happen I can do whatever I dream.

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