In his 1967 speech, “A Time To Break The Silence,” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great […]
Category: MLK
People want to accumulate engagement and experiences of engagement like they collect stuff, thinking all the time that the more they gather, do, think, talk about, wonder, and dream, the more engaged they’ll become. The Heartspace Teachings show that engagement is happening here, right now, in our day-to-day movements and ways of being. All of […]
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Savor Small Things
Recently, the folks at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Oakland shared this status on their facebook page: We as a people take the little things for granted. Life may be moving fast but that doesn’t mean we neglect the things that are important to us. Young people from the MLK Center touring the […]
Personal Engagement is the sustained connection a person has to the world within themselves. —Adam F. C. Fletcher A fellow traveler from the 13th century once wrote, “I once had a thousand desires, but in my one desire to know you all else melted away.” That was the Sufi poet Rumi, and the “You” he was addressing […]
In order for any community engagement to be successful, it must be deeply rooted in personal engagement. We have to have lasting connections to the world within us before we can be connected outside ourselves. The 21st century provided many great examples of social change leaders who did this work thoroughly, including Caesar Chavez, Helen […]
Those of us who have engaged in changing the world or in changing ourselves may have the experience of running out of steam occasionally. The days get longer, the forces get more challenging, and the culture seems more hardened than ever before. Despite being passionate about the topic we’re working on, our jobs just […]
Across our country and around the world there are burning crises that must be addressed right now. That is what Dr. King meant when he demanded we pay attention to The Fierce Urgency of Now. Sitting by the sidelines and watching life pass us by is the work of the dead who don’t have a choice. Luckily, we […]
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” The core of this statement forms an essential understanding of Heartspace. Everyone should be connected to something larger than themselves. In order to be engaged […]
The following quotes are about common action, working together, and the web of life to which we all belong. They help drive my work every single day. ”It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. […]
In 2003 I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate at an Ivy League school for her dissertation on youth involvement in social justice movements. Following are some thoughts I shared with her worth sharing. Question: So many of a person’s ideas and opinions about the world change- sometimes radically- over the course of childhood and […]
