Martin Luther King Day 2009

Here's a new pic for Martin Luther King Day 2009 and a few thoughts on this Monday .... I've been watching some of the memorial programming on the tv and working on this painting today. The concurrence of Martin Luther King Day with the Inauguration
of Barack Obama is quite a remarkable coming together of memory and hope. Growing up as a preacher's kid in small towns in several western and midwestern states, I've heard my share of racist remarks. And even now, four decades from the Civil Rights Victories of the 60's you don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface of civility we usually encounter to find residual racism and bigotry. So I thought a cross was an appropriate metaphor of Christianity and the misuse of Christian symbols (the Klan) to place in this painting. And some thoughts on what we worship may be helpful....status, wealth, power, beauty, money ... or love, kindness, charity, and hope. Whenever I hear that Jesus died for our sins, I think that it might be more accurate to say that Jesus died because of the sins of his contemporaries. And the sins are the same we have today. Pride, arrogance, bigotry, hatred, jealousy. We killed Jesus just as we killed Martin Luther King. Jesus' death was a result of the power of a government afraid of one man, a state action, to stop a feared revolution perhaps. MLK's death was the result of an individual filled with anger, and resentment, and hate which was aimed at stopping a movement. I'd say both killings failed to achieve the desired ends -- so far anyway. So I'm in a contemplative mood, hoping for the best, awaiting Barack Obama's Inauguration tomorrow and thought I'd share this new painting today.