A reflective four-hour holiday

published January 20, 2011

by the Stockton Sentinel,

Stockton, Kansas

            As I write this column on Monday morning, the 17th of January, I am at home on a four-hour holiday. That’s what you get when you have two part-time jobs and one of the positions observes a public holiday, but the other does not. Because I have been gifted with these four hours of “free time” (which is not really enough time to do much of anything), I decided my time would best be spent reading things about the person for whom this holiday was established: Martin Luther King, Jr.

            Obviously much has been written on the short life of this controversial man who was assassinated in 1968 at the age of 39; it would take much more than four hours to even skim through it. My efforts, however, were bolstered when I read that, a few days after Senate passage of the holiday measure, Mrs. King wrote in the Washington Post (10/02/83) about how the holiday should be observed. “The holiday,” she wrote, “must be substantive as well as symbolic. It must be more than a day of celebration… Let this holiday be a day of reflection, a day of teaching nonviolent philosophy and strategy, a day of getting involved in nonviolent action for social and economic progress.”

            Since I am a collector of meaningful quotes, I chose to spend my half-day holiday in a time of “reflection,” as Mrs. King suggested, choosing one quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. to guide my thoughts. Reflection, however, is only as good as the action that it inspires, and King would certainly want us all to be moved to action by the words that he delivered.

            Here is the quote I reflected upon: “Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

            I can’t imagine the number of times I have felt inferior because I do not have a college degree. But I also can’t imagine that a college degree would have made my life any better–or richer or fuller–than it is. While I do have many hours of college experience, I lack the required number of hours for an official piece of paper to hang on my wall. Jokingly, I have said that I dropped out of college to get my “MRS degree,” and from there went on to graduate level for the coveted “MOM degree.” But seriously, I remember the “epiphany moment” many years ago when I made the conscious decision to live at peace with myself for what was in my heart rather than what was in my head, grateful for the pictures of children (and now grandchildren) on my walls which are absent of a college diploma.

            The real challenge delivered by Dr. King in this quote is to serve–whoever we are, wherever we are, with whatever we have–and to do so with a heart of grace and soul of love. That challenge is both easy and difficult at the same time, because it’s easy to serve when the opportunity is convenient, but difficult to serve when it moves me out of my comfort zone or takes more time and effort than I want to give. But therein lies the challenge and the reflection on my four-hour holiday. It’s now up to me to give it meaning.