A Tale of Two Stories
(Reflections After Fifty Years—Martin Luther King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Address)
Rev. Dr. Leon Dunkley
Washington Ethical Society
January 15, 2017
Introduction (Rev. Amanda Poppei, Senior Leader at Washington Ethical Society)
Back to our Platform, the Rev. Dr. Leon Dunkley. Leon is a Unitarian Universalist minister and before that, was a professor of Ethnomusicology at Duke University. As you have already heard, he is also a singer/song writer and it is a particular joy that he brings music with him when he comes to speak with us and he has asked me to start with a reading. [Technical pause] This reading comes from Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
—Charles Dickens, 1859
A Tale of Two Stories
Best worst... Wisdom foolishness... Does anybody remember the old, the original Saturday Night Live? They used to have...what was it...Nightly Updates or whatever they called their news? They would pause for commercial breaks in between... That was my favorite part. I must have been twelve when I first started watching them. There was one that I remember (and I am embarrassed to start this serum with this). It was an argument between to people—probably Jane Curtain and Chevy Chase, I think. Jane would say, "It's a floor wax!"
And Chevy Chase would say, "No, it's a desert topping!!"
"It's a floor wax!"
"It's a desert topping!!"
And then, someone interrupted them—maybe Belushi—and would say, "Calm down, you two. New Shimmer is a floor wax AND a desert topping!"
So, in a sense, that is the model for this sermon.
Hi. Good morning. I am so glad that you have made it safely here. Settle in. It is good to be together. It is good to be here again. I am grateful for the invitation to speak on this particular weekend during which we recognize the birth, the life and the contributions of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.
I have an odd question for you but I cannot ask it yet. I have to wait until a little later. Right now, I have to ask you a different question—perhaps, more important question, a more basic question, to be sure…if that’s ok. This question is: "How are you today?" But don’t answer just yet. There is a story. Actually, there are, at least, two.
I have to ask this question. I have to ask how you are because this is precisely what I failed to do with the woman in the airport, the woman to whom the opening song—true believer—is dedicated. I had arrived at the Raleigh-Durham Airport departure terminal almost an hour before my flight was to leave. I decided get something to eat. I was carrying my backpack over my right shoulder. I had my guitar in my left hand. I looked around at my food options and I saw a woman dressed in fatigues. I failed to ask her the question. I didn’t say, “How are you today?”
It was January of 2009. I didn’t ask a thing. I just reacted. I just turned away. My unreconciled feelings about the war in the Middle East must have seemed monstrously clear in my reaction. I was embarrassed. I was dissatisfied with myself. Whatever my inward feelings were, I delivered outward disapproval to the woman in the airport. That wasn’t right.
I conveyed to her that I was sorry for what I had done and that I deeply appreciated the personal sacrifice that she was making. Fortunately, she was not offended. She laughed in recognition and I breathed a great sigh of relief. Then, I tried to figure out what I would have felt if I were the one in military dress. I tried empathy. I tried to hold both of our two stories at the same time. I tried to figure out what my life might be like if my life choices and circumstances had been different. I wrote a song about that moment and I dedicated it to her.
I want to win the wars of oil and masquerade
as a welcomed liberator
That's where that song comes from.
I wanted to stop feeling terminally victimized and righteous—victimized by my own inward political agenda. I wanted to stop ignoring the different ways of living. I didn’t agree with the war then and I don’t agree with it now…but I understand that there are dignified, respectable people who do. I hold on to those two things at once.
I realize now, I know more clearly, that the degree to which I am aware of the different ways of living, the degree to which I am self-aware—not self-absorded or self-consumed, by self-aware—and this degree prepares the way for peace and true happiness. It is to this end that I ask you—and please, feel free to answer this time—how are you?
I wonder what your answers are. Así, así, perhaps? Or mas o menos?…which is Spanish for so so, medium or regular. Or com si, com sa? …which is the French…which means as “like this and like that,” quickly acknowledging the presence of two different ways of feeling, two distinct experiences bundled up in a single response—one experience, a little good and the other, a little bad. You can easily say things like that in foreign languages. And you can easily do it in English, too—perhaps, less beautifully and perhaps not. It depends on how you look at it. For there is, of course, the plain-spoken English translation of these more elegant Spanish and French phrases, which is “eh.”
How are you today?
Eh.
This is an exchange that I find quite beautiful…you may feel differently. And that’s ok. Here is plenty of room.
Eh. It is a fabulous expression. It behaves just like the Spanish and the French examples and more or less conveys the same thing…but more succinctly. In just two letters. So efficient. So economical. Two letters explaining the presence of different ways of feeling, distinct experiences bundled up in a single response. God help me, but I often find the little things profound.
Are you with so far? …because it’s gonna get a little more complex. Staying present to two different ways of feeling, different ways of experiencing the world is challenging. It’s hard because the complexity of inward experience does not always translate into the wider world. We use words like "fine" instead. Sometimes, we speak a too-narrow truth—out of habit or out of convenience—and then, we drive ourselves nearly mad trying to be true to our word.
We value that, I think. We value the integrity of our word. We value the integrity of our stories. We like their meaning, the clarity, their consequences. We like how our stories help to define us in inward and in outward ways. So, it is important to tell our stories and to tell our stories well, no matter how simple or how complex and no matter how spectacular or how commonplace.
Ever since 2002, Arundhati Roy has been encouraging us to tell our stories…not our story (which is sometimes simple), but our stories (which is always complex). Arundhati Roy. Are you familiar with that name? Roy is an author…of fiction and non-fiction alike. She is a learned and a searing intellectual, a passionate observer of American politics, culture and influence in the world. She lives in Delhi, India…which might seem strange for a critic of the American way. But Roy is wise. She addressed this directly, explaining,
You may think it bad manners for a person like me, officially entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an “Indian citizen,” to come her and criticize the U.S. government. Speaking for myself, I am no flag-waver, no patriot, I am fully aware that venality, brutality and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that I speak as a subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king.
A slave who would criticize the king…
I wonder if Martin Luther King felt
similarly…when he wrote his famous
Letter from a jail in Birmingham,
when walked over the Edmond Pettis
Bridge in Selma, when he broke ranks
and came out against the war in
Vietnam. You’ll have to evaluate for
yourself if this is a compelling idea for
you. I find Roy absolutely fascinating.
Arundhati Roy is the author of
long list of non-fiction works but is
most widely recognized as the writer
of The God of Small Things. It won the Booker Prize in 1997. Clearly, she believes in the power of the written word. She believes in the integrity of spoken word. She understands the power of our stories…and the importance of writing. In an address called Come September, she explains that…
Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. [but that, perhaps, it is] vanity makes them think so. [Because] it’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative—[stories] colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told.
Look down into your hands. Are you right-handed or left-? Look at your dominant hand—your writer’s hand—and consider the importance of our words, consider the power of stories. Right now and quite literally, we hold that power in our hands. Only we can tell the stories of our experience in the world. And the world is made richer in the telling.
“Stories colonize us,” Roy explains. “They commission us. They insist on being told.” Stories colonize…not story colonizes but stories colonize. This is a very important distinction to make. It is not simply linguistic. There is a required complexity. So, stories colonize us. Roy continues…
Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, fiction dances out of me and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning. The theme of much of what I write, fiction as well as nonfiction, is the relationship between power and powerlessness and the endless, circular conflict they’re engaged in. John Berger, that most wonderful writer, once wrote: “Never again will a single story be told as though it’s the only one.” There can never be a single story. There are only ways of seeing. So when I tell a story, I tell it not as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another, but as a story-teller who wants to share her way of seeing.
What is your true way of seeing the world in which we live? How excellent are you in the telling of it?
Charles Dickens did a very good job. In 1859, in the last years before the Emancipation Proclamation and the beginning of the American Civil War, Dickens described a complex truth. Famously, he wrote,
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief [and] incredulity, the season of Light [and] Darkness… It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
England, 1775. Across the sea in the American colonies, it was the time of the Battles of Lexington and Concord in the American Revolution. Across the channel, it was fourteen years before the revolution in France in 1789. Seventy years later, in 1859, Charles Dickens would reflect, recognizing the presence of two different ways of being, two different experiences bundled up in a single response.
It is January of 2017. Fifty years ago, in April of 1967 (on the 4th of April, to be precise), a 38-year-old, African American preacher named Martin Luther King delivered an address at the Riverside Church on the west side of New York City. Martin King came out against war in a powerful address called 'Beyond Vietnam.' This address is simultaneously regarded as King’s highest achievement and his most costly mistake. People feel one way or the other way…or even both. Some even argue that this address cost King his life…for one year later to the day, on April 4th of 1968, Martin Luther King was killed by an assassin’s bullet at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. One can but recognize the coincidence.
I bring up this theory here not to draft your allegiance in some way. I’m not trying to win hearts and minds for a particular cause. I am to transcend that level of thinking…being…speaking… I’m trying to broaden the reach of our understanding to stretch beyond the limits of a single narrative. I am trying to be a decent storyteller, trying to make good sense of a complex world…and storytelling, I believe, is the best way to do it.
And I am not alone in this belief. A Jewish, political theorist named Hannah Arendt agrees. She believed in complexity, in the slow unfolding of our stories. As she stated, “Storytelling reveals meaning with committing the error of defining it.” In other words, sometimes it takes time to understand the truth…especially considering its many pieces.
Arendt’s words provide us with an opportunity. They amplify the words of the late John Berger who passed two weeks ago in Paris at 90 years of age. Berger said, “Never again will a single story be told as though it’s the only one.”
How would it be were we to take Berger’s advice? So, rather than choosing a story, rather than confining ourselves to a particular narrative, how would it be if we chose to live more expansively? How would it be if we were to allow ourselves to take in a deeper breath—a more expansive breath, a more inspired breath—and relax a while?
Let us open ourselves a little, shall we? Let’s allow ourselves to be present to different ways of feeling that are happening at the very same time. Let us open ourselves to the complex reality of our experience and not pretend to tame the wild cacophony with shallow stories. Let’s flip the coin of life into the air and place our wager and see what happens—heads or tails. You make the call. Let’s roll the dice and see who wins—if that sounds fun to you—but, in the process, let’s choose not to shrink away from one another.
In life, we must take chances. One guess will lose and another will win but let us understand for a moment that the winning and the losing is arbitrary. It’s meaningless when we are beholden to one another.
I remember one time in New Hampshire. I was playing a game of ping-pong with a friend. Both of us were learning to put English on the ball, to spin it this way or that way to bias the shot and gain an advantage. Topspin forces the ball to turn downward. So, you can increase the velocity. Backspin softens the bounce, drawing the other player forward and force the ball to cut down from the defender’s paddle. Sidespin curves the outbound ball back into the field of play. We had such fun. Learning. Screaming out in strange, sophomoric joy when we got it right. We were playing and laughing for more than an hour and friends came down. They wanted to know which one of us was winning. Neither one of us had any idea. They question stymied us and then our answer stymied them. And there we were, winning and losing in some new cosmic reality. That one was a truly excellent moment.
Both sides of the coin still matter, no matter the outcome of the toss. The dismissal of the loser is our contrivance. We make it so …even though we pretend that it’s otherwise.
King delivered his Beyond Vietnam address at the Riverside Church in New York City on Tuesday, April 4th, 1967. It was both his highest achievement and his most costly mistake. He was driven to deliver this address by the events of history.
By the end of 1966, American forces in Vietnam [had reached] 385,000 men, plus an additional 60,000 sailors stationed offshore. More than 6,000 Americans [had been killed and another 30,000 wounded in that year alone. 6,000 killed]. In comparison, an estimated 61,000 Vietcong have [had suffered the same ultimate fate].
[http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/timeline/index1.html]
People of conscience felt compelled to respond. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King had been among them. He began by saying,
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the most distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation...
I come to this great magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization that brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
This was a difficult moment for Martin Luther King. Still, he felt compelled to push through. He felt compelled in seven ways. He had “seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of his moral vision” and they were these:
1. King wanted to explore the connection between the war in Vietnam and the civil rights struggle.
2. He wanted to reveal that our country was requiring its less privileged sons and brothers and husbands to fight and to die disproportionately to guarantee freedoms in Southeast Asia that could not be found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.
4. King was driven to confound the issue about his limitations as a civil rights leader. He understood himself in broader terms.
5. He’d been charged at his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in ’64 to work harder than ever for bonds of kinship beyond national allegiances.
6. King was called by his Christianity to affirm that the Good News was meant for all of us to share—communist and capitalist, revolutionary and conservative, black and white…for their children and ours.
7. He was called as a son of the living God, for beyond callings of race and church and nation, team and creed and breed and tribe, there are deeper bonds of belonging…for we are members of an indivisible human family.
His third reason—the one I skipped over just now—had been his most powerful reason, the one having had on him the most lasting effect. King’s third reason for bringing Vietnam into his moral vision involved with his commitment to nonviolent social change—a commitment that lost integrity, a commitment that was continually weakened by the deadly realities of war. Shaken but unbroken, King was led to a striking conclusion…and he was brave enough to share it plainly. His words were these:
I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.
For these words, some have argued, Martin Luther King paid a final price. Of course, not everyone believes this. This is but one of many stories.
Not long ago, on March 30th of 2010, King’s 'Beyond Vietnam' speech was the Talk of the Nation. National Public Radio’s Neal Conan explored the subject on the radio with an honored guest. Perhaps, you heard it. Perhaps, you remember… Conan said,
In 1967, a year to the day before his death, Martin Luther King, Jr. departed from his message of civil rights to deliver a speech that denounced America's war in Vietnam. The message directly challenged the president who'd taken great political risks to support civil rights legislation and also challenged many of his colleagues in the movement who've called it a tactical mistake. [] Tavis Smiley joins us today from [] Los Angeles. [] Tavis, it’s nice to have you [on] the program.
King had begun to lose his influence against the increasingly dire backdrop of war. Tavis Smiley responded on the show, explaining that while most Americans are familiar the ‘I Have A Dream’ speech (at least, in part), most are unfamiliar with ‘Beyond Vietnam.’ According to Smiley, it was…
…the most controversial speech he ever gave. It was the speech he labored over the most. [King] rarely gave speeches from a text. This speech was written and basically read word for word… [] …King did not want to be misquoted or misunderstood. [] After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. He would no longer be respected. And that's just the Times and the Post. [Lyndon Baines Johnson] disinvites him to the White House. It basically ruined their working relationship. [According to credible polls,] nearly three quarters of the American people, nearly three quarters, had turned against Martin on this issue, and 55 percent of his own people, black folk, had turned against him. [This] was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done.
Go big or go home, I guess. I beg your pardon here. Truly, I do not mean to joke. It is just that this part of our history is difficult for me. Martin Luther King was just speaking his mind, speaking what he was compelled to speak. He had thoughts in his mind about human liberation that were larger than their bodily container and 75% of us—we, the Americans—and 55% of us—we, the African Americans)—simply could not forgive him for being that free. We couldn’t forgive him and some assassin took his life. It’s incredible. And he was fearless, ripped in the muscle of courage, mettled, steeled, hardened to his loving core. Right before his death, knowing confidently before his God that he had done his level best, he surrendered to the tossing coins of life, to the water-course way of our good living, to the flow of his particularly powerful course of grace and havoc. He surrendered and he said,
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!
The next day, he was dead and gone. So quick. And we were, traumatized. It would take some time for the poetry to come. But when it did, we sang… Nina Simone had led us.
Once upon this planet earth, lived a man of humble birth,
Preaching love and freedom for his fellow man,
He was dreaming of a day peace would come to earth to stay,
And he spread this message all across the land.
Turn the other cheek he’d plead…
And Sonia Sanchez had led us on…
Great God, what a morning, Martin!
The sun is rolling in from faraway places. I watch it reaching out, circling these bare trees like some reverent lover. I have been standing still listening to the morning, and I hear your voice crouched near hills, rising from the mountain tops, breaking the circle of dawn. [] As I point my face toward a new decade, Martin, I want you to know that the country still crowds the spirit. I want you to know that we still hear your footsteps setting out on a road cemented with black bones. I want you to know that the stuttering of guns could not stop your light from crashing against cathedrals…
Great God, what a country!
What a country, indeed. Broken, now, in two by political rancor and divisiveness. And yet, is there not also something that survives, that holds, that binds…although it is not yet tested and not yet seen. Is this not an opportunity to hold opposites together? What would Martin Luther King say? What did he say? He said,
Now, more than ever before, we are forced to grapple with this particular issue because the state of the world today does not afford us the luxury of an anemic democracy.
How will we now bring good health to our country? How will we overcome the challenges at hand?
Fearlessness, I think. Fearlessness and gentleness, I do believe. Fearlessness, gentleness and grace. May we hold these within our hands and write our story.
May it be so. Blessings. And amen.
