I've noticed lately I've been using King's speech at Wesleyan University on soul force a lot lately.
It's a prescient idea. As I reflect on this, I think it's because we make much in Western culture of the martial idea. The hero valiantly rising to beat down the bad guy.
People that don't fight are often seen as meek, or the support, but there is another way to push against the dark... Compassion.
It's often a hard and costly road. It's what caused Thich Nhat Hanh to be exiled from his country, and it saw MLK Jr and a cadre of protesters beat savagely on Bloody Sunday on a bridge in Selma.
But through their endurance of their suffering, their refusal to rise in hatred and martial violence, did they turn things around
The incident on the Selma bridge led to the passage of civil rights acts. Hanh founded a global network that now includes his home country that is changing the world today
And if it saves lives and changes hearts, isnt that better? If the change is more impactful and long lasting isn't that better?
As much as violence seems a quicker solution with our history of wars and what not, we can see the damage of that violence stretching out over generations of damage, not just from those that participated.
My line of reasoning gets stopped cold when I hit things like World War Two, where it absolutley had to be stopped, but I think about how WW2 was caused by WW1, and the desire for revenge worked into the treaty of Versailles.
Conditions have to be ripe for tyrants to rise, and so long as we continue the same patterns, the same results will arise.
Compassion and the endurance of suffering isn't "sexy" nor is it cut and dry. It's a process, like erosion. It's a wearing down and a process of endurance, but it can and does change the world every day.
The willingness to show up and sacrifice for the betterment of one soul can change the whole world.