"A time comes when silence is betrayal."

2008 feels as though it will be larger, somehow. Maybe leap years and election years always feel that way, but as I look forward at the moment I feel a little - not afraid, maybe intimidated. Something will happen, and I've been waiting with my hands on my heart for a while now.

Tonight, while driving to my dorm, I heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech "Beyond Vietnam" on the radio. I think that God works in stranger ways than we realize, and if God still employs prophets, then Dr. King was undoubtedly one of them.

The speech is filled with abyss and light, hope and fear and dread and not a little anger. It is beautiful, and painful, and makes you much more aware of the way your lungs and heart feel inside your chest. He was a truly gifted man, and I don't think that we realize exactly how much the world needed him, despite the countless dirty streets and ignored statues that bear his name.

Whatever poor soul who stumbles upon this site would be much better off reading his words: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm


And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.