This is the time of year when Martin Luther King, Jr., is in conversation for a scant few days as a public, semi-religious observance of a mostly secular saint and martyr. King died 56 years ago and immediately in that moment, King went from a radical voice for intersectional justice to a celebrated and warmly remembered emblem for a certain kind of publicly acceptable ideas about equality.

In point of fact, King was embattled throughout his career, he was largely despised by the American public while he was alive, and his vision for justice was refracted through truly radical spiritual lenses that we too often forget when we come back to King’s memory in this season.

The best, widely accessible account of the more realistic and turbulent parts of King’s later career is in the documentary, “King in the Wilderness.” If you have not seen it and wish to understand King, this is a great place to start. (This is a complex account that requires viewer discretion.)

But, as UUs whose intention is to take seriously the wisdom of religious traditions that inform how we think about justice, we are missing a lot when we don’t realize the powerful way that prophetic imagery and a view about the ends and the mysteries that bring them about is part of King’s vision. These images pervade his work, but it is perhaps most visible in his final speech––the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.

These resources can be part of our own visioning for the world we imagine for ourselves. And there is no more meaningful way to engage with King during this short time in the year when we have a full-throated reason to speak up for what King actually saw for a more just future.

Sometimes it is hard to tap into our spiritual selves or find time to nurture our creativity and intellectual curiosity. Here is a section that reflects on some nourishing materials from around the web and related media channels in order to get us thinking, get us feeling, and get us reflecting on the lives we are living in this big world. **Some Adult/Mature Themes May Appear in Links and Other Attached Material**

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Allan T. Georgia, MDiv, MTS, PhD

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