Divine Dissatisfaction

picture from Lookout Mountain, TN - January 17, 2011

This was shared by Martin Luther King, Jr at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference address on August 16, 1967. It rings so true for today too: 

"Let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction.

Let us be dissatisfied

until America will no longer have

a high blood pressure of creeds

and an anemia of deeds.

Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls

that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort

and the inner city of poverty and despair

shall be crushed by the battering rams

of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied

until those that live on the outskirts of hope

are brought into the metropolis of daily security.

Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast

into the junk heaps of history,

and every family is living

in a decent sanitary home.

Let us be dissatisfied

until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools

will be transformed into bright tomorrows

of quality, integrated education.

Let us be dissatisfied until integration

is not seen as a problem

but as an opportunity to participate

in the beauty of diversity.

Let us be dissatisfied until men and women,

however black they may be, will be judged

on the basis of the content of their character

and not on the basis of the color of their skin.

Let us be dissatisfied.

Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol

houses a governor who will do justly, who will love

mercy and who will walk humbly with his God.

Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall,

justice will roll down like waters and righteousness

like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied

until that day when the lion and the lamb

shall lie down together, and every man

will sit under his own vine and fig tree

and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied.

Let us be dissatisfied until that day

when nobody will shout White Power!

—when nobody will shout Black Power!—

but everybody will talk about

God’s power and human power.

The road ahead will not always be smooth.

There will be still rocky places of frustration

and meandering points of bewilderment.

There will be inevitable setbacks here and there.

There will be those moments

when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed

into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams

will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted.

The road ahead will not always be smooth.

There will be still rocky places of frustration

and meandering points of bewilderment.

There will be inevitable setbacks here and there.

There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope

will be transformed into the fatigue of despair.

Our dreams will sometimes be shattered

and our ethereal hopes blasted.

Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on

in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future."