Trajectories and Sudden Turns

I find it interesting that Winnie Mandela died during this week which marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King.  At one point, I'd have said that Winnie Mandela was a Civil Rights major figure.  Then there were ugly allegations and a divorce, and I wasn't sure what to think anymore.

It will always be interesting to wonder what would have happened, had MLK lived.  Would he have been a Nelson Mandela like figure?  His death transformed the nation and world in certain ways; his passage from middle age to elder would have done so too.


I find this article in today's The Washington Post particularly relevant for today.  I particularly love the conclusion:  "Every era finds the King it needs. The version we need now is a King who pressed on through doubt to see a radical vision, as we must find one to match the challenges we face. King ran out of certainty but never faith."

I have also been thinking about those who are thrust into prominence and those who thrust themselves into prominence.  I've been thinking about the Parkland students who have taken an activist role after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.  They are fierce and fearless--I'm thinking of how often those of us with mortgages and bodies aging more quickly than we expected count on the youth for their fearless activism.

I am wondering if there had never been a shooting at their school, how their lives' trajectory would have been different.  I am thinking about all the moments which turn our lives in a different direction.

I'm also thinking of Maggie Smith and her poem "Good Bones" and the way her life has changed because of that poem.  She had one of the headliner spots at an evening reading at the AWP conference, and I wondered if she marveled at how she had come to be on that stage.  I wondered, as I always do, if she was famous for the poem she loved best or if she wanted to say, "Hey, guys, I have these better poems over here."

I am marveling at the way that our new technology has changed the ways our poems might become famous.

As I weave these threads together this morning, I am also thinking of all the ways we could make ourselves ready.  I have seen news articles about the high school's approach to education with its emphasis on humanities skills like debate.  I'm thinking of the generations of Civil Rights workers who trained themselves to be ready when the right times for justice opened.  I'm thinking of our poems making their ways in the world, of the manuscripts that I hope we have when the publishers knock on our doors.

I am thinking of all the ways that we can transform the world for the better.  Let us do our part, each day, every day.