I Have A Dream!

As Americans, we celebrate Martin Luther King Day each year. A day to honor, not only Martin Luther King Jr., but to honor his commitment to stand for justice, to have his voice heard, to bring hope and light to a people who were in darkness. Mr. King fought his battles to the death, in a non-violent manner, to end segregation and racial discrimination. He was assassinated for standing up and doing so. This year, the day holds even more meaning for me.

This past year I've been victimized, abused, cheated, lied to, taken advantage of, and discriminated against. I've seen first hand what it is like to feel completely helpless against other people, their actions, ideals, and beliefs. I've felt the frustration and pain of feeling pressed against a wall against my will (figuratively speaking) and I've witnessed abuse at it ugliest, abuse of the soul and mind.

And what I've learned, among other things, is non-resistance is powerful. That hate can't take the heat of love.

That forgiveness brings peace to one's soul.

And that nothing lasts forever.

The old cliché' "We've Come A Long Way Baby," may be true, however in many ways we are still standing, over forty years later, in the same darkness that Martin Luther King Jr. was trying to shine a light on. He was an incredible man, an incredible change agent for social justice.

If you haven't ever read it, or if it has been awhile since you have, I recommend reading, "I Have a Dream."

I will include in this post a video of his famous speech.


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You likely will recognized that the changes he was asking for then, in 1963, are still problems we face today. Yes, we've come a long way in some areas, however I've also had the opportunity to watch my oldest daughter, Rachel, teach children who have been terribly abused. She works in a special school just for children who have been so abused they can't manage in life outside this confined, controlled environment. I've also had the opportunity to know those (personally) who work in urban middle schools, where they still see great segregation and poverty.

The difficulties these kids face everyday would be haunting for most of us. Life for them is one of survival. Even here in the mountains I call home I see the children in the public school system. Some of them… lots of them come to school hungry, dirty, sleepy, and scared. Their parents drug abuse, or mental/emotional problems have driven them to live in such a way that is unimaginable to most of us. Some live in cars, some on the streets, and most are just trying to make ends meet. They're doing what they need to do to provide for their families. For some students, school is the only place they will eat or feel safe that day. The playing ground is so very, very far from being equal.

Here are some of Dr. King's words, expressed over forty-four years ago in his "I Have a Dream" speech:

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

As I watched Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his speech, "I Have A Dream" I cried, again. Though I've seen it and read it for decades now it still touches my heart. Sadly much of what Mr. King fought for and died for has yet to become reality. But the hope remains… in me.

As we celebrate Dr. Kings birthday, let us not forget what he stood for, what he asked for, and what he died for, and do our part in each of our lives to bring his dream into reality. May we all begin today.

Change begins with me!
And the world wins!

Peace and love,

CiCi
© Cynthia Stewart is a literary agent, an international speaker, author, and promoter.




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Through Janie’s Eyes

Over 30 years ago we didn’t have ESPN, or MSBC, or cable TV and 24-hour news, though it wouldn’t have mattered much to me if we had. I didn’t watch TV; perhaps all those hours of cartoons during childhood made television news seem boring. Besides, I didn’t have time to sit still, much less in front of a box and even had I been so inclined, I doubt very much I’d watch whatever news was airing because it made my grandmother cry when she watched it—morning, noon, and night.

I was just hitting my teens, typically self-centered and somewhat detached from the ‘adult world’, I don’t remember what I even knew about war, about politics, about Vietnam… but I do remember when some of the boys started coming home, and I remember when some didn’t.

I remember the look of emptiness in their eyes… blank, vacant, as if they were absent from their bodies in some odd way. I remember the ones who returned in wheelchairs, dismembered bodies crammed awkwardly into uncomfortable and cumbersome contraptions into a world ill prepared for them, or them for it. I remember people staring… I remember I stared too. I remember being afraid, scared of something, yet I didn’t know what. But what I remember most was Jerry.

Jerry served in Vietnam. His sister, his twin Janie, was my friend. She was older than I was, had a job, and provided a safe haven of refuge for a somewhat wayward teenager like me who was fighting wars and battles of my own. It was really through Janie’s eyes that I saw Vietnam for the first time.

Growing up in Texas, the twins, Janie and Jerry, clung together and clawed their way through, and out, of the middle of a family of twelve and into the world side by side. Identical twins couldn’t have been closer than those two. They went to school together, played together, and fought a little too, yet held on to each other through the ups and downs of report cards and rejections, dates and disappointments, elation, divorce, illness, and even death. They were best friends.

As I remember it, from the first day I met Janie she talked about Jerry. Jerry this and Jerry that… you’d have thought she was talking about a new boyfriend or God, or anything besides just a plain ‘ole dumb brother, that is unless you looked into her eyes. Those cavernous blue eyes, echoing the words her mouth couldn’t utter, and the feelings she was unable to release—those dark daunting feelings—the kind that eat their way through you from the inside out. The kind that show up suddenly when a song comes on the radio that reminds you. The kind that rise up in the middle of a sleepless night when you feel too weak, too tired to hold them a moment longer and so you let out the fear, the rage, the unspeakable pain. Those are the stories Janie’s eyes told me when she talked about Jerry, and about Vietnam.

Afterwards she told me many other stories about Jerry. She showed me pictures of their childhood; two towheads turned brunette, plopped in the middle of a mud puddle back yard, white teeth peeping through mud covered heads—pictures of small faces behind gigantic pink ice-cream cones, pink dripping off their chins and down their t-shirts—pictures of the past. Memories anchored to feelings held on paper, and Janie’s attempt to preserve the past, clinging to it, almost as if to postpone the uncertainty of the future. Pictures of perfectly groomed children preparing for first communion. Pictures of birthdays, of holidays, of high-school graduation… two blonde heads with big smiles in the center of a mass of blue robes; pictures of college; and finally of Jerry’s farewell.

As that year passed Janie let out more and more of those dark feelings that wrenched her gut through the day and held her hostage in the dark hours of night. I remember the night she brought in the carved wooden box that sat on her dresser and held her precious mementos. It was a dark mahogany color, carved on the top and sides with roses. I watched her holding it with reverence, as if the contents were more precious than rubies. Her petite white hands carefully unwrapped envelopes postmarked from Vietnam, from places I’d never heard of before, from a world I didn’t know. Letters filled with words I didn’t understand… “Fires in the hole” or “Gooks in the wire”. She read those letters to me from Jerry, her twin, her brother, her best friend; words on paper that evoked a horror and repulsion in me I didn’t even know existed until then. And then she cried. I’d never seen anyone cry so hard, and for so long and in the years that followed I remembered I’d only seen her cry twice. That night was one of them, and when Jerry returned home three years later was the other.

The pain that followed I can’t speak of, it isn’t my story to tell, but anyone looking could read the tale in Janie’s eyes. Those blue eyes spoke volumes. They spoke of fear, anger, and of heart-crushing pain. They spoke to me when Janie wouldn’t… couldn’t… but they never again shed a tear. Something changed inside of Janie the day we met the plane and watched as Jerry came home. Many soldiers came home that day. We stood in absolute silence as the boys came off the plane. I couldn’t tell which one was Jerry. They all looked the same; caskets draped in red, white, and blue.

I remember afterwards leading Janie by the arm through the airport towards the car, gently pushing our way through other families who had come for their own reunion with their brothers, husbands, children, or fathers; families who were forever changed, altered in an indescribable way through their loss. I remember the melancholy that hung so heavy around me and in me, I could barely lift my feet to move through the throngs of people, women with faces still buried in their hands, red-faced men, and children clinging to the legs of their mother’s or siblings. Then I remember the shock that followed, and soon the repulsion, and finally the fear and anger that came as we exited the airport that day.

War protesters they called themselves. I didn’t understand then. I do understand now. I remember thinking, “Why were they screaming? Why were they here?” Waving homemade peace signs while at the same time inflicting acts of violence on these heart-broken families… screaming obscenities, waving fists in the air, spitting on the clothes, shoes, and even some faces of these grief-stricken people who, with heads bowed, made their way quietly through their sorrow to their cars. I don’t remember what happened next, but I do remember the look in Janie’s eyes…

That’s what I really know of Vietnam… the Vietnam I saw through Janie’s eyes.

In memory of Jerry C ~ August 1974
© CiCi Stewart ~ Written Winter 2000