Ripples #973: Glorious Opportunities!
Jan 15, 2018
PEBBLE
We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
shared by Keith in San Luis Obispo, CA
BOULDER
So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? …The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
excerpt from Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963
PONDER
In the twenty years we’ve been assembling these weekly splashes, one of the traditions I’m most proud of is our annual rippling of Dr. King’s wisdom on the third Monday of January, which wasn’t even recognized as Martin Luther King Day by all 50 states when we began sending out Ripples in 1999.
Many of us are too young to have directly experienced the turbulence Dr. King and others were trying to help our bitterly divided nation grapple with. And as divided as our country was in the 1960’s, imagine just how bleak things must have seemed a century earlier as the civil war ravaged and nearly fractured our nation.
As we to attempt to navigate the difficult and significant challenges that currently permeate our conversations and our culture, I remain optimistic that we have the potential to grow exponentially if we are willing to embrace these challenges as GLORIOUS OPPORTUNITIES for growth. This process isn’t going to be easy and it isn’t going to be comfortable. But as I said in a conversation last year (and recently repeated in some of my presentations)…. Discomfort is required for growth. We cannot remain comfortable and grow into the best possible versions of ourselves.
Let’s honor Dr. King’s legacy by renewing our commitment to speak up, to show up, and to stand up for those who are not being seen or heard.
Peace,
Paul
The Ripples Guy
P.S. Members of our Team Ripples group on Facebook have access to a compendium of quotes from Dr. King that we’ve used over the last 20 years.
