It's NOT All or Nothing Conclusion

When it was recently reported by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver that black superdelegates are being pressured and intimidated through nasty letters, phone calls, threats, and being called an Uncle Tom if they didn't switch their support from Sen. Hillary Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama, I almost wept.

This is definitely what it means to carry racial pride to the extreme and it goes against all that Martin Luther King advocated in his I Have A Dream Speech given the 28 of August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. when he said:

"I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood...I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character...little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

How Martin Luther King must have wept with joy when he looked down from heaven and saw Rep. John and Sen. Hillary Clinton marching arm in arm and when he saw Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones and Sen. Hillary Clinton working together on issues--seeing his dream becoming a reality. Common causes, not skin color, motivated them.

How Martin Luther King's joyous tears must now be turning to painful tears as they have for many of us of all skin colors as we have witnessed the blatant racial sentiment and behavior of Blacks intimidating other Blacks to base decisions and support for a presidential candidate on skin color rather than on common goals and ideals.

Will we ever learn?

Paying the price

Spiritual leaders understand that commitments come with a price....and they are willing to pay that price, whatever it may be.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet and visit with a retired BYU professor, Dr. Neil J. Flanders, who gave a speech at BYU on August 13, 1999 entitled The Search for Moral Harmony.

As I have pondered on his counsel I have been reminded of some words that are not only worthy of memorizing and pondering, but that should also be written upon the heart and lived by every leader who desires to be a spiritual leader and make a difference for our diverse learners.

The first are the lyrics of the song The Impossible Dream from the movie, The Man of La Mancha:

To dream the impossible dream

To fight the unbeatable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrow

To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong

To love pure and chaste from afar

To try when your arms are too weary

To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest

To follow that star

No matter how hopeless

No matter how far

To fight for the right

Without question or pause

To be willing to march into Hell

For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true

To this glorious quest

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm

When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this

That one man, scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable star

The other words come from a letter written by Archbishop Tutu to Tim Wise, the author of White Like Me: (you can visit Tim's site at: http://www.timwise.org/ )

"You do not do the things you do because others will necessarily join you in the doing of them nor because they will ultimately prove successful. You do the things you do because the things you are doing are right."

Thomas Merton words provide similar counsel:

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

Last of all is a scripture that comes from an epistle written by Mormon to his son, Moroni, found in the Book of Mormon:

"And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently: for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay....." Moroni 9:6

And added words by Albert Einstein to ponder: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds"