A sleepless dream

 "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true,

or is it something worse?"

(Bruce Springsteen)

"A Change Is Gonna Come"  Sam Cooke (1963)

 

 "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

(Dr Martin Luther King)

On this day, Wednesday 28th August, exactly fifty years ago, a soft cheeked and slightly portly black American thirties-something stood up in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to address more than a quarter of a million people. A fervent and eloquent Baptist minister, he eventually veered off his prepared speech, encouraged or even heckled by his friend, renowned Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, to "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" As he improvised around his own vision of a united and just world, the fiery preacher in him came to the fore. With a single phrase, the minister from Atlanta, Georgia, joined the ranks of Jefferson and Lincoln and those whose words have helped to define modern America: "I have a dream today."

The rally was the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest political or human rights rallies in the history of the United States. The march was organised by civil rights activists, labour groups and religious bodies, with the theme of jobs and freedom. Supportive of the innovations of the Kennedy administration, the march is widely credited with helping to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act the year after.

The Baptist minister was of course the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Junior. He had helped organise the rally, but his address to the masses at Washington and the watching world established him as one of the greatest natural orators in American history. Unfortunately, it also established his reputation as a radical, who would become the object of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's attentions for the remaining five years of his life.

The "Dream" speech is a masterpiece of rhetoric and poetry. King invoked the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation and the United States' Constitution. He alluded to both Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and William Shakespeare. The pastor in King referred poignantly to Psalm 30 and also quoted from the Book of Isaiah. King's speech has now been ranked the most important American speech of the 20th century by scholars of public address. It is as accessible, emotive and relevant today as in the long hot summer of 1963. Clearly, the power of the dream is still alive ; but does that mean little has changed?

Fifty years ago, King's words so moved my father that he copied out the full text, nearly twenty minutes long. I found the notebook in his study, long after Dad had passed away. When I myself was a fifteen year old Rebel Without a Clue, Dad encouraged me to properly read Dr King's speeches, particularly the Washington address. At the time, I was outraged that fascist groups marching through south London were being given police escort. My Dad explained that freedom has to be indivisible: you cannot have your own human rights at another's expense: my first real lesson in the intricate but simplistic truth of equality.

Today, a handsome and charismatic black man sits in the oval shaped office in the white mansion on the hill in Washington D.C. Now in his historic second term of office, President Barack Hussein Obama is married to the strong and beautiful great-granddaughter of African American slaves. In line with Dr King's own vision, Obama's daughters will study and socialise with girls and boys of all cultures and creeds. When I was fifteen, I dreamt this might happen but it still seemed improbable.

Yet the president struggles with his own Senate to establish healthcare and social protection for the disadvantaged of all colours. Inspite of Obama's extraordinary rise, the Senate's glass ceiling for African Americans still seems largely unbreakable. In 1963, there were no sitting African American senators in Congress; this year, briefly, there were two, for the first time in history. Incredibly, in Obama's united nation only three states have ever elected black senators.

In recent weeks, when an innocent black American youth was gunned down after being mistaken for a potential offender because of his colour, age and dress, Obama ruefully noted that the boy might have been him thirty years ago, or indeed one of his own offspring today.

I've reproduced some of the "Dream" speech here, lifting away direct references to places and events in America. The message remains undiluted in universality. The bloody reality of racial and cultural prejudice and genocide stalks through Egypt and Syria and across the globe today. Even in comparatively safe and liberal areas in the UK, such as my own Brighton, division between the haves and the have-nots is palpable and increasingly uncomfortable.

We have still have far to go to realise Dr King's dream. He told us that: "Faith is taking he first step, even when you can't see the whole staircase."  The reverence of his Washington speech today continues to lift people onto that first step. You've got to have a dream; if not, how you gonna make a dream come true?

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this cheque, a cheque that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.
We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promise 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 quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God's children.You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character.
I have a dream today.I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual: "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

 

 

"How many years can a mountain exist
before it's washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist
before they're allowed to be free?
Yes and how many times can a man turn his head,
pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind."

(Robert Zimmerman)

 

"Blowin' in the Wind"  Peter, Paul and Mary (version)

 

 

King's speeches

"Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase."

(Martin Luther King Jr.)

How many things that made you cry when you were just sixteen, with joy, anger or sadness or from sheer movement of the spirit, would make you weep like a child again today? 
Due to snow, sickness and work, I'm quite behind with my posts. I sincerely and particularly wanted to write something for "Martin Luther King Day", traditionally observed as a holiday across the United States on the third Monday in January since 1986. On 15th January this year, Dr Martin Luther King Jr would have been eighty four years old; instead, on 4th April, the world will remember that it is forty five years since his assassination. This year, MLK Day fell on 21st January, coinciding with the inaugural celebration of U.S. President Barack Obama's second term of office.
I dithered about posting this on Monday: I appreciate that some of my friends from the United States are not supportive of Obama's economic policies; and many Catholics are affronted by his views on homosexual partnerships and women's rights to choose abortion. Personally, I found it both pertinent and poignant that the first ever black president of the United States was being sworn in for an historic second term, with bibles belonging to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. I was further moved that Obama deferred to King in his inaugural speech, that all men must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalised, the victims of prejudice:
"Not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes; tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice. We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."
When I was fifteen, a few months before my father died, I was sporting two long plaits, an array of anti-racism and anti-this-and-that badges and a permanent petulant frown. My Mum asked Dad to talk some sense into me. She was worried that I was drawing attention to myself by going on rallies and antagonising local fascist groups (I'm sure the National Front in south London found my ribboned plaits particularly irritating). She wanted me to steer clear of anything political, be a bit more "girly" and throw myself more wholeheartedly into the school dances that the nuns organised for their young ladies with the boys from the local Catholic boys' academy. My Dad was a very wise man: instead of talking to me about anything calling itself "politics", he spoke to me about natural equality, justice and goodness. He told me that the late Senator Bobby Kennedy and Dr King were two men with very different backgrounds and voices who shared the same spirit and vision. This became an essence of equality for me.
Baptist minister King became one of the world's most powerful natural orators. My Dad had the transcripts of two of King's most quoted and iconic speeches; "I Have a Dream", from 1963, and the sadly prophetic "Mountain-top" speech, given the day before his death in 1968. He told me to read them and try to understand that real justice had more to do with gentleness and faith than with aggressive sloganeering and political clout. They made me cry. They didn't stop me attending angst-ridden rallies, shouting at the fascist groups in Lewisham High Street (before running away) or being needlessly uppity with the local police, who were only ever caught in the middle. But they touched me in a far deeper and more lasting way than any teenage-targeted rhetoric or subsequent trendy bandwagon cause.
After hearing Obama's own emotive yet punchy inaugural speech on Monday, I decided to listen to King's speeches again, now with the (sometimes dubious) benefit of You Tube. After all these years, the same words made me cry again. Some might say I haven't grown up much: I would say my finest dreams, like those of my father, haven't aged.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." 

"I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear." 

"Let no man pull you so low as to hate him."

"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.” 

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." 

"I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"Only in the darkness can you see the stars." 

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." 

"It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart."

"A man who won't die for something is not fit

to live." 

"I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls... 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character... I have a dream today."

(Martin Luther King Jr.)

" I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free / One"  The LighthouseFamily

"He who laughs, lasts." (Mary Pettibone Poole)

"Laugh as much as possible, always laugh. It's the sweetest thing one can do for oneself & one's fellow human beings."

(Maya Angelou) 

"There's hope for the future because God has a sense of humour and we are funny to God."

(Bill Cosby)

 

"Music is the great mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."

(Ludwig van Beethoven)

One of the truly great things about growing up in and around south London was (and hopefully still is) the richness and exuberance of Pentecostal and Baptist churches in the region, reflecting just how colourful and joyful faith can be for people of all ages and cultures. Happy to be a Catholic, I've also been happy to feel good in others' places of worship; I've always loved Gospel music. A few years ago, a friend in Lewisham introduced me to the sound of urban Gospel duo "Mary Mary", actually two Afro-American sisters from California called Erica and Tina Atkins. They took their stage name from the Virgin Mary and from St Mary Magdalen, some pretty hefty inspiration! They make vibrant, contemporary music which is lyrically uplifting and also gets you off your knees and onto your feet.

"Shackles (Praise You)"  Mary Mary

"Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance"

Down to the river

A New Year's Tale from Craggy Island

Father Jack Hackett has escaped from Father Ted and is stumbling blind drunk through the woods, when he comes upon a preacher baptising people in the river.
Father Jack proceeds into the water, bumping into the preacher.
The preacher turns and is almost overcome by the smell of alcohol. He asks Father Jack:"Are you ready to find Jesus?"
"Oi am."
The preacher grabs him and dunks him in the water. He pulls him back and asks:"Brother, have you found Jesus?"
Father Jack growls "Oi haven't found Jesus!"
The preacher, shocked at the answer, dunks him again for a little longer.
Again he pulls him out of the water and asks:"Have you found Jesus, brother?"
"Oi haven't found Jesus!"
The preacher is at his wits end and dunks Father Jack again, but this time holds him down for about 30 seconds. When he begins kicking his arms and legs about, the preacher pulls him up.
He again asks:"For the love of God man, have you found Jesus?"
Father Jack staggers upright, wipes his eyes, splutters, and eyeballs the preacher:
"No! Are ye sure this is where he fell in???"

"Down to the River to Pray"  Alison Krauss

Whitney Houston

"The Star Spangled Banner"  sung by Whitney Houston

"Didn't we almost have it all
When love was all we had worth giving?
The ride with you was worth the fall my friend
Loving you makes life worth living"

(From "Didn't We Almost Have It All", written by Michael Masser and Will Jennings; artist, Whitney Houston)

Whitney Houston was born in East Orange, New Jersey in 1963, daughter of acclaimed Gospel singer Cissy Houston. Church was a feature of her community and music was a huge part of her childhood: her cousin was Dionne Warwick and she grew up around vocalists such as Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Roberta Flack. It was inevitable that she would first sing publicly in church. At the age of eight, she performed "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" for a mesmerised congregation at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark. Decades later, she would tell Rolling Stone magazine: "When I used to watch my mother sing, which was usually in church, that feeling, that soul, that thing - it's like electricity rolling through you. If you have ever been in a Baptist church or a Pentecostal church, when the Holy Spirit starts to roll and people start to really feel what they're doing, it's incredible."

Obviously, Whiney Houston's days of singing to friends and family in a New Jersey church were numbered. By the age of 12, she was singing backup on recordings for major recording stars like Chaka Khan and Lou Rawls. Stunningly sleek and beautiful and with an undeniable God-given talent, Whitney Houston was a chart topping artist in her own right by the time she entered her twenties. Hit followed soaring hit and the ethereally pretty girl became a diva. Her first acting role was as the star of the 1992 feature film "The Bodyguard", in which she played a diva - and very well. The film's original soundtrack won the 1994 Grammy; its lead single "I Will Always Love You" became the biggest selling single by a female artist in music history.

She became the first act (solo or group, male or female) to sell over a million copies of an album within a single week. She was the top female act featuring in the Top Ten Best Selling Albums of All Time. Although a subsequent film vehicle "The Preacher's Wife" wasn't a massive cinematic success, the soundtrack album became the best-selling Gospel album in history. We said she was born to be a star: she was a success and a phenomenon. Middle-class America forgot that she was black. She sang "The Star Spangled Banner", inimitably, and Americans united in their adoration for her and her path to fame that cut through and across social and political divides.

On February 11, 2012, Houston was found in the bathroom of her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles: she was certainly deeply unconscious and could not be resuscitated. She was in town for the Grammy Awards, partied and feted as a legendary artist with an unrivalled tally herself. Staying at the hotel with her 18 year old daughter, Whitney had been photgraphed earlier that day, dishevelled and bloated and clearly the worse for some substance or another. Her daughter (by bad-boy husband Bobby Brown) Bobbi Kristina was admitted to the Cedars-Sinai hospital twice in the 24 hours after her mother had been pronounced dead there. The teenager had also been drinking heavily and may have taken prescription or other drugs: she was in the hotel suite when her mother was found in the bath, unaware of the situation and "surrounded" by prescription medication, including sedatives Valium and Lorazepum, Michael Jackson's last addiction. Bobbi Kristina was treated for extreme anxiety and the Houston family and entourage are said to be concerned for her mental state.

In New Jersey, the owner of the Whigham Funeral Home has announced a private, by-invitation only funeral service at noon this Saturday. The requiem mass will be at Newark's New Hope Baptist Church, where Whitney's voice and radiance were first showcased. The poignancy is palpable: Whitney is going home, in so many ways. There have been many sentimentalised reports, allegedly from "sources close to" Whitney, saying that she had only recently re-connected with her religion after several highly publicised years of crack-cocaine addiction, alcoholism, mortification at the hands of her womanising and volatile husband. Her weight had plummeted between emaciation and bloating; she may have been on the verge of bankruptcy when she died. Certainly her last singing performance, at "Tru" in Hollywood and shortly ahead of the Grammys, was of "Jesus Loves Me", but it's a far cry from the inspirational soaring emotion of the young Gospel singer; it's actually painful to watch and to hear.

This is a rough catalogue of events spanning the 40 odd years for the eight year old prodigy in the New Hope Baptist Church who will be returning there on Saturday as a star, but in a coffin. As with so many hugely gifted, globally famous people, so much went right for her; but when things went wrong, they were catastrophic and ultimately tragic. I'm not totally dismissive of Fame. I've been known to watch "X Factor": I grew up watching "Top of the Pops". I've queued for hours to sing myself hoarse to Bruce Springsteen (still The Boss you understand). I'm thrilled for Adele at the Grammy Awards this year, with her newly honey-blonded big hair and her good ol' North London gasps of appreciation: thrilled and slightly concerned for her. I love to listen to her voice and lyrics, and she seems like a nice, ordinary girl. I buy into the whole persona like so many others; but one hopes and prays that the perceived grounded "ordinariness" is real and durable. 
I've heard several people say that Whitney would still be alive if she hadn't walked away from Gospel. Sadly, we can never know that now. But for sure, the Gospel never walked away from Whitney. The wonderful gift she was given now becomes her legacy. Another generation will marvel at her rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner". Little black girls with big lungs in recession ripped America will sing into their hairbrushes and realise they can Have It All. There will be more raw talent, more accolades, more awards, more glitzy parties, more induced highs, more pitifully early and avoidable deaths in over-priced hotel rooms.

The Show Goes On.

"I Love The Lord"  Whitney Houston (from "The Preacher's Wife", 1996 )