Today is Martin Luther King Day

Yes, it is an American holiday, but it commemorates one of the great civil rights activists of all time. Having spent the last semester in Memphis, where Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, I was able to see first hand some of the successes and failures of the Civil Rights Movement in the US. As an atheist, it is difficult for me to reconcile the idea of a benevolent, omniscient entity with past and current world events, but nonetheless, I find many of Dr. King's words move me to tears with their ideas of possibility and hope.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" - I Have a Dream Address at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.