My favorite MLK quote:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

[from Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Beacon Press, 1968), p. 62.]

What’s funny about the above quote is that, when I first heard it, I didn’t know it was from MLK. Brad Corrigan threw that phrase into an interview we did sitting together on the floor of a tiny hotel room in Managua, Nicaragua, the day before the first Dia De Luz in March 2007. What a beautiful thing to say, I thought. That Braddigan sure can turn a phrase.

I’m such a dork. Such an uneducated, ignorant, socially unaware dork.

I got home later and was writing up some articles about Dia De Luz — which was a profound thing to have experienced, and if you don’t know anything about it you should at least read this recap of it and watch this video and, if you’re really interested, listen to this short sermon I gave about it at Easter — and I realized that Dr. King had first written those words. He repeated them, with a slight revision, in his address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967.

Anyway. Thank you, Dr. King, for shining light in the darkness and injecting love into the hate. We could all use less darkness and hate. We could all use more light and love.