Dear LREI Community,
As we head into the long weekend in observance of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am settling into my annual reading of his Letter from Birmingham Jail. (There are many versions of this document to be found online, though there seem to be slight variations between versions.) I make sure to read King’s brilliant essay each year to hear his voice, to be reminded of the clarity of his conviction, and the eloquence of his writing, and the deeply moral message that comes through in each word. When you consider the conditions under which this letter was written…just amazing. If you have never read it, please do. If you have, join me in reading it again in honor of a true leader and a true champion of justice and peace.
Reading this beautiful and dynamic letter should remind us all of the power of the written word. In his statement, Dr. King apologizes for its length. For many, our attention span for the written word has drastically decreased, yet we see in this letter, the power of the long-thought, the development and reinforcement of ideas, and the impact of soaring rhetoric. The willingness to be drawn into a long thought, to hang in there, to give yourself the time to be enveloped and then to come out the other side, that is a truly rigorous experience, both the reading and the writing, and one that I am fortunate to see, in age appropriate ways, throughout LREI. From our earliest writers whose goal is to learn to get their thoughts out, getting their ideas down, then go back and make it perfect. Then comes peer editing, research, a variety of genres, sharing more publicly, and so on. Writing continues to be an essential skill and a way to connect what we are learning in school to the lives we are living.
The need to communicate your ideas in writing, clearly, forcefully, and maybe even beautifully, will never go away, at least I hope not and we will continue to put this skill, this craft, squarely in our classroom experience.
From the Parents Association Community Service Committee, here are a number of service opportunities for this weekend.
Monday 1/15/2024 from 9am-12noon
Annual MLK day of service at the Manhattan Church
48 East 80th Street
“Community meal & clothing distribution for community guests who live marginally and or may be experiencing homelessness. In between our music & recorded MLK speeches, we will have opportunities for our community guests & volunteers to read poems, original words of affirmation and snippets from speeches. We will also have some of our writers & poets from our community guests offer some of their words.”
If anyone is interested in this community service opportunity please contact Carl Garrison directly – carl@manhattanchurch.org.
Other opportunities:
“If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness. By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.
Wishing you peace and hope,
