Among the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. that have guided me . . .

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

God has two outstretched arms. One is strong enough to surround us with justice, and one is gentle enough to embrace us with grace.

I believe that the unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the last word.

Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and worth.

Truth is not an idea but a life.

In studying nonviolence, King secured a book by missionary E. Stanley Jones on Mahatma Gandhi. In it he read these words, “Civil disobedience is not for the weak but for the strong.” In the margin King wrote, “This is it.”

This is the great new problem of humankind: We have inherited a large house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu—a family separated in ideas, culture and interests, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace. 

May we each do our part, more and more each day, to live with each other in peace.

Paul