Dr. King's Day and the Power of Our Voice
Happy Dr. Kings Day!!!
Yesterday realized that earlier in the year of 2017, before I started this channel, I was working on an application that lets you use your voice to connect to and make visible the words of others. You speak and animations appear.
From protesters in airports, to Dr. King’s words. I realized that I had been talking a lot lately about the power of words and how our words, for better or worse, have the power to manifest into the world, physical events and images. But I had forgotten the interest in this subject started much earlier.
Although the work I have been doing with the channel and in readings in many ways speaks of the values we can’t help but wear in our sleeves, it is the values and not the method that matters in the end.
It’s our turn.
Sister Corita Kent: The Artist-slash-nun who made colorful protest art in the 1960s
Yesterday I was showing my friend the voice-activated animations I had been working on and she said it reminded her of Sister Corita Kent. I remember hearing about her in art school but I didn’t remember much else. So I looked it up. And I not only LOVED all the images and posters she made, but loved this 23-minute documentary too.
From Corita.org Corita Kent (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. At age 18 she entered the religious order Immaculate Heart of Mary, eventually teaching in and then heading up the art department at Immaculate Heart College. Her work evolved from figurative and religious to incorporating advertising images and slogans, popular song lyrics, biblical verses, and literature. Throughout the ‘60s, her work became increasingly political, urging viewers to consider poverty, racism, and injustice. In 1968 she left the order and moved to Boston. After 1970, her work evolved into a sparser, introspective style, influenced by living in a new environment, a secular life, and her battles with cancer. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986. At the time of her death, she had created almost 800 serigraph editions, thousands of watercolors, and innumerable public and private commissions.
What is Our Role in Making the Arch of History Bend Towards Justice?
From Seth Godin’s blog
Seth Godin discusses OUR role in keeping his legacy alive and brings up the fact that although the arch of the moral universe bends towards justice, it does not bend on its own. As he puts it, it’s the tiny acts that matter in the end.
And it bends toward justice
Superman could bend steel with his bare hands.
Along the way, we’ve been sold on the idea that difficult tasks ought to be left to heroes, often from somewhere far away or from long ago. That it’s up to them, whoever ‘them’ is.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
But it’s not bending itself. And it’s not waiting for someone from away to bend it either.
It’s on us. Even when it doesn’t work (yet). Even when it’s difficult. Even when it’s inconvenient.
Our culture is the result of a trillion tiny acts, taken by billions of people, every day. Each of them can seem insignificant, but all of them add up, one way or the other, to the change we each live through.
Sometimes it takes a hero like Dr. King to wake us up and remind us of how much power we actually have.
And now it’s our turn. It always has been.