MLK DAY

The world doesn’t measure your mistakes as much as you think.
As we celebrate MLK and his prolific and inspirational legacy I find my mind wondering about his daily life.
The life that wore his body to have the physical heart of 60 year old man. One that involved multiple affairs of some sort - although the details are ambiguous...at best. One filled with the rigorous work of study; he was a theologian that filled his life with a decade of holding culture in his hands and asking where the gospel might pierce through it.
It’s his fallibility that I find rather humanizing. The crushing weight he carried that made a dent in his life. MLK was a man. A man. A man.
When someone becomes a legacy we tend to soften their lives. I challenge you to look up the lives of those we only remember with perfection. Particularly faith leaders. The shadows are closer than you might think.

Prophets are rarely perfect. In fact, I’ve only heard and believe in one.
So for those in need of good news:
You are a woman. A woman.
You are a man. A man.
And you are deeply good - even with your dent left by the crushing weight of this life. Even with the sharp edges of your story that will never soften. And your shadows? “Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” -MLK

It’s the whole of your life that leaves the vision for the next. Not to worry dear friends. It’s all of you that’s so deeply loved. And it’s the all of your life you leave for the next.
I hope the all of me is remembered. That I continue to care enough to let people see it. The sharp edges. The imperfections. The shadows.
Because in life there are no perfect stories, simply good ones. And those are the ones I’m committed to telling.