“Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.
John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: ‘No one is an island entire of itself. Every one is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ And he goes on toward the end to say, ‘Any one’s death diminishes me because I am involved in humankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution.”
Minister: Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
People: Thanks be to God.
—from ATestament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
ed. James M. Washington, and A Knock at Midnight
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