Spiritual Progressives

This morning, we went to an session of a discussion series titled: "Progressive Pathfinders: A first hand encounter with spiritual progressives." The moderator and today's speaker (Dave Dodson) did not explain the intent of the series, however it appeared to be devoted to illustrating the strong history of progressive spiritual leaders. Too often today, all spiritual leaders are thought to be conservative.

Today was the second session of the series. The first looked at Mohandas Gandhi. Today was devoted to Martin Luther King. It was facinating. Today's speaker had a chance to met Dr King and ended up spending an afternoon with him. The meeting occured one week before Dr King's famous "I have a Dream" speech in Washington DC. Dr. King spoke about several of the themes that he would include in the historic speech.






There were only about 10 people at today's session, yet in addition to the speaker, one audience member had been at Dr King's speech in Washington DC; one had been at the People's Park March in Berkeley; two others had been at the protest where Governor Reagon was held hostage with the UC Regents in Merrill Kitchen at UCSC. It was facinating to listen to the stories of these people, who were present at significant events in the Civil Rights movement.




Some interesting things that I learned at the session: Gandhi believed that one should prepare oneself for civil disobedience. Diet should be Meager, Medicinal and Vegatarian. To avoid passion - no meat, spices, onions or alcohol; to avoid enjoyment - no tea, coffee or sweets; to avoid violence - no meat, eggs or milk. One should fast for self-purification and moral persuasion. One should practice sexual abstinence and "non-possessiveness". If one does not follow these guidelines, then one is not prepared to practice civil disobedience.



While Dr King was a student of Gandhi, he had his own approach. Dr King was much more inclusive. At one point, he was asked if there were any Communists in his organization. He replied, "I know everyone in my organization well. There's no one in SCLC who is a spectator. They have made sacrifices. If a member of the Communist party is willing to make that kind of sacrifice, I must applaud his good judgement. He's making the right sacrifice." In other words, any one who was willing to sacrifice for civil rights was welcome in Dr. King's organization.

The session only lasted one hour, however I could have sat there listening to the stories for many more hours.