Today is Flag Day. I wouldn’t have known that but for today’s reading in Science of Mind magazine. Celeste Frazier is writing the Daily Guides this month and doing a fine job – as do all the people who write the Guides each month! She talks about an incident that inspired Martin Luther King to write a sermon called, “The American Dream.” The incident is described in the book, A Knock at Midnight.
Driving past the Jefferson Monument, and recalling Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” King came to realize, “Never before in the history of the world has a sociopolitical document expressed in such profound, eloquent, and unequivocal language the dignity and worth of human personality.”
In his sermon, rooted in the best American ideals, Martin Luther King challenges us to make the American dream a reality, and engaged us to “meet…physical force with soul force,” promising to “transform… dungeons of shame to havens of freedom.” Ms. Frazier goes on to say, “That is freedom. To know ourselves as powerful spaces of truth is freedom. When we know who we are, there are no lies that will move us. There is no force that can threaten us. There is no will that can oppress us. We are the Thing Itself.
“Today is Flag Day. More important than the red, white or blued, greater than the blood or the first colonies represented therein, is the intention behind it. This freedom is not given by governments, nor won through wars, but is inherent in everyone’s being.”
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