Today is the one day a year we pay respects to a man who was as close to being a King as we will ever get.  His name was King but his actions provide us with an insight into what Kings should have been and in very few instances were.  Let me try to tell you what Martin Luther King, Jr. meant to me and should have meant to all peoples all over the world.  He was in a class with saints and movers and shakers of society exemplified by Mohandas K. Gandhi, Sister Theresa, Albert Sweitzer, and Albert Einstein. Most recently, there are among us a host of self effacing and silent workers for world peace. They bring health and happiness to all who are really brothers and sisters sharing the same ancestry when we first walked upright among the other experiments with what we call “humanity”.

Kings who rule by not ruling but by loving and helping are the models of those who should be elected by us to bring about better lives and good, honest government.  M.L. King, Jr. did not rule but he made marvelous speeches and helped organize people of good will to change the hateful conditions which a Civil War killing thousands on both sides never did much to change for the better.  After Mr. King, things did change.  The glacial movement to make better the bad things that marked America as a backward country where social inequality as well as economic selfishness was speeded up a bit and America is better for it.

To judge others by the color of their skins or by their religious practices is to see differences while the sameness is unseen and our common origin forgotten.  We cannot have too many saints nor can we have too many Kings who have the betterment of our human race as their main reason for being.  What we have are too many intolerant and selfish people who hate differences and long for a fictionalized time when we all were the same.  There never was such a time.

We started out as differently as our fingerprints and now our DNA.  We have the same number of fingers and toes and the same two eyes, ears and one nose and a mouth.  But, for some, the difference of where you came from, your language, your practice of making food and your belief system is too much to accept.  You must all be alike and all be the same and get rid of those who are not the same as you.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a King among us for a short time.  The good he did is still marching along with him in our memories and in the way we are evolving as a people. He was as close to being a King among us that we were ever going to get. He died too soon and we must stop thinking about those who would shame him by stories that made him human. We cannot wish him happy birthday but we can try to live as he did – in the service of others.