Today is not a day of passing shadows,
not a day for the ordinary rhythms of life.
It is the rising sun of a dream made flesh,
the steady drumbeat of courage echoing still.
This is Dr. King’s day, a day to feel the weight of his steps,
to see the path he carved through thickets of hatred,
his hands reaching not for vengeance
but for the outstretched palms of peace.
He was a man who held the fire of a thousand prayers
and turned it into light.
A pastor whose gospel was action,
whose hymns were sung by feet marching in unison,
by voices swelling in the cadence of justice.
He did not wait for the winds to shift,
he stood in their gale and pushed--
every word, every march, every jail cell
a seed planted in the soil of hope.
He was not a statue, not a saint cast in marble.
He was a father whose children called him home,
a husband who kissed his wife’s forehead
with the burden of the world in his chest.
And still, he marched.
Through Selma’s bloody bridge,
through Washington’s swelling crowds,
through the halls of power where silence reigned.
He marched, a man with no weapon
but the relentless love of a dreamer.
He dreamed not of fleeting things
but of a nation awakened to itself,
where the color of a man’s skin
is the poetry of his existence, not its cage.
He dreamed of mountains where the weary could rest,
of valleys echoing with the laughter of children
who saw no borders in each other’s faces.
His dream was not for him;
it was for us, for all of us.
And how he loved us,
even as dogs snarled and hoses roared,
even as darkness pressed its weight against his chest.
He loved this fractured, bleeding nation
enough to stitch its wounds with his hands,
to bind its broken bones with his voice,
to offer his life if it meant a single step closer
to the promised land.
Today, we stand in the shadow of his dream.
It calls us still, louder than the noise of division,
stronger than the pull of apathy.
Let this day be not a whisper,
but a song sung boldly in the streets.
Let it rise like the dawn--
a reminder, a challenge, a promise:
that the dream is alive
and it waits for us to carry it forward.
For Dr. King lives in every hand held in peace,
in every word spoken for justice,
in every child who dares to dream.
And today, of all days,
we remember that his dream was never his alone.
It was ours, and it still is.
