In a week meant to honor Martin Luther King Jr., Stephen Bauman notices how easily remembrance can be eclipsed by noise—by endless distractions, algorithmic outrage, and the numbing churn of digital life. In this reflection, he resists the urge to look away and instead returns to King’s words as a spiritual and moral discipline: a way of re-learning what courageous leadership sounds like in moments of confusion and conflict.
Sitting with King’s insistence on conscience over convenience, Stephen invites listeners into the harder work of honest seeing—of making a clear-eyed assessment of what is, even when it’s uncomfortable. Avoidance is tempting; clarity requires humility, intention, and community. This episode is a call to shared courage: to help one another see truthfully, to stand where conscience leads, and to choose fidelity to the common good in a time of challenge and controversy.
Don’t deflect. Don’t pretend you have no role to play. Don’t look away.
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Don’t look away...
This week began with our nation’s annual remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr. But there’ve been so many hot distractions and AI slop clogging our attention, his day came and went without much notice. Which seems especially unfortunate considering the focus of his work--the reclamation of the promise enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and clarified in the blood of the Civil War that all persons are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Man! does that seem to fall on deaf ears today given the raucous, violent discontent in current conditions. Like you, I’m upset, confounded and distracted by pummeling news feeds and algorithms. To cope, I turn tech off, take long walks, refresh my spirit, open my heart and mind, yearning for a greater wisdom.
As my own personal discipline, I revisited some of what King said, re-tasted what authentic inspiring leadership looks, sounds and feels like. And in that, I heard the call to bravely assess our situation today. To take a clear-eyed look. I know from experience that’s actually a very hard mission for most of us, much of time--to make an honest-to-gosh searching assessment of what is--to really see it, to get it. That requires a humble intentional commitment--an honest, searching assessment of what is, to see it as clearly as possible. And you likely know very well that we can beat around the bush forever in a state of convenient avoidance of the truth most days. Can’t recount the times I’ve witnessed this when working with people over the years and disturbed to discover this tendency in myself.
For my part I’ve been sitting with two related sentences from King’s writings.
The first: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
And the second follows right along: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Which begs the question: where am I standing today?
I have these quotes in a corner of my screen where I can’t avoid them. I so want to really see what’s going on in our culture and politics... and I need compassionate friends to help me with that. We need each other... to help us see clearly, and then to stand firm in what our conscience tells us what’s right, to stand tall on the side of truth, of our common good, in this time of challenge and controversy. The life of Martin Luther King Jr. provides a model for this sort of collective courage. Don’t deflect, don’t pretend you have no role to play. Don’t look away. Faith, hope and love reside in joining our hearts and hands in this critical moment.
