As MLK and OWS embrace...

As a part of my honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today, I have been thinking a great deal about the connection between MLK and OWS ~ and Psalm 85 keeps coming back to my mind. (This clip is LONG ~ over 20 minutes ~ but gives honor to Dr. King in just the right way.)

One translation puts it like this:
Love and Truth meet in the street,
Right Living and Whole Living embrace and kiss!
Truth sprouts green from the ground,
Right Living pours down from the skies!
Oh yes! God gives Goodness and Beauty;
our land responds with Bounty and Blessing.
Right Living strides out before him,
and clears a path for his passage.

Another gives us:
Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
Yea, the LORD shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase.
Righteousness shall go before him; and shall set us in the way of his steps.

For the past 20 years I have been exploring and praying over the heart of this Psalm: it tells us that in God's time there will come a reunion that erases our false distinctions about the sacred and the secular. The essence of the holy will be inter-woven throughout the fabric of our humanity. It will be a time when hesed ~ deep compassion ~ is integrated with 'emeth ~ the very words we use to honor God ~ so that our words become living flesh in acts of radical solidarity and caring. Further, tsedeq ~ healing and right relations among people ~ will be joyfully intimate with shalom ~ peace ~ as they embrace and share a lover's kiss with all creation.

Now, given my passion for midrash, that sounds a lot what is taking place right now as MLK embraces OWS (or vice versa):  there is justice and compassion, peace and faith and truth swirling about in a creative,playful, deep and potentially healing way, yes?  Last night, for example, Bill Moyer's new show devoted the full hour to the consequences of our current debacle born of greed ~ and concluded with some reactions from a OWS participants.  Next week, the heart of his broadcast (in most locales 6 pm on Sundays) will be guided by OWS folk. For more information check it out @ http://billmoyers.com/)

Bill Moyers Journal: Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.For the first time in over 30 years, Americans are talking about greed and class and justice in new and healing ways.  So I see something of MLK being embraced by OWS in a way that makes God's heart dance.