Today is the day that the National Observance on Monday will commemorate, the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.   And to mark the deep impact this man has had on my journey,  I focus on this particular quote to highlight yet another theological insight which has changed my course since the fall of 2014.

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. [All]* are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. ”
— MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963

This is the core of why Drew Dellinger calls MLK an “Ecological Thinker” (see http://drewdellinger.org/pages/mlk )

This is yet another affirmation for me of how the exploration of theological depths move us into constant realizations/revelations of,  to put it quite simply,  “How life works”.  We find “reality” illuminated from new angles, to enhance and extend our understanding.

This sense of  “an inescapable network of mutuality” bears witness to something MLK, had he lived on into the 80’s and 90’s,  with all the scientific discovery around ecology and Climate Change to emerge during that period,  would have been “all over it”.  The science would bear witness to the physical reality of that “network of mutuality”.

King would have become one of the early voices for  “Ecological Economics”.  He was already moving to mobilize an Economic revolution in the Poor People’s campaign (and many say that this was the “final straw” which led to the initiation of the fears of whoever it was that plotted his death).  Today,  had he survived the 60’s,  he would be facing yet another foe.  Beyond the racism,  beyond the economy,  we have the ideology of unlimited growth,  led by the fossil fuel industry.  My sense is that “disinformation campaigns” would replace outright, brutish, violence of assasination,  and that the ire of the right wing denial machine,  as well as the “unlimited growth” ideologies,  would slam him from all directions,  and the Christian Right would be joining the fight and aim the laser-focus on various “theological” and “Biblical” arguments ,  much like they do when they take aim at Climate Scientists and articulate activists today.  But the immense stature of MLK in both politics and the theological community would make him a target of immense importance.

Almost 50 years later (48, come April 4)  from his assasination,  we have a lethal mix of revived racism, structural economic injustice, right wing reactionary movements fueled by fear spawned by the spectre of terrorism,  and the immense economic forces of the fossil fuel industry fighting every inch of the way to keep a veil of denial about the eco-realities and that “network of mutuality”,  and preach instead of individual rights to “unending, inlimited prosperity”.  In the end,  some things don’t change much.