Where are the leaders?

Yesterday -- the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Quaker Dave at the Quaker Agitator had a very compelling post with a collection of photographs of iconic leaders that many of us are familiar with -- all, sadly, dead. He wondered who is stepping up now to fill those shoes. This is something I think about a lot. Like many people, I am hungry for someone who can pull us together and lead us out of this dark time in which we are living. I can't believe there isn't someone out there to take up the mantle of Dr. King.

It's a little bit like waiting for the Second Coming (John Lennon, of course, is who I mean.) I'm not sure it's going to happen in the way I'd like it to, which is a thought that can make me feel quite sad.

In the sixties, people came together around the big ticket movements, civil rights and ending the war in Viet Nam. One would think that the war in Iraq and the rising fascism here in the U.S. would pull people together in the same way, and perhaps that is still to come. Right now it seems like there are many people putting energy toward good causes, but the focus seems very fragmented between many different things.

So I was walking to the post office this afternoon and thinking about this, and thinking about people who do good in the world, and wondering whether small actions will add up to the big changes that I want to see happen. It occurred to me that, while it appears fragmented, all of these small actions are the fruit of the movements from the sixties. That is, that the activism of the sixties instilled in many people a desire to make a difference in the world, and to seek out ways in which to do that. That idealism is precisely what led me to public school teaching.

And that sense of giving back has continued, so that you get people like my friends: 20 year old Laina who just returned from helping someone rebuild their house in New Orleans, or Madeline who retired and joined the Peace Corps this year at age 60, or Mike Boehm, a local Viet Nam veteran who shepherds an ongoing project between my Monthly Meeting and the people of My Lai.

Is this enough to save us? I don't know. But while I wait for the big movement to grow, it helps me to remember that there are many small seeds sprouting in many places. Here's what one of my favorite optimists, Pete Seeger, had to say in last winter's issue of Sing Out!:

"I confess I'm more optimistic than ever. Why? In spite of the horrendous things coming out of Washington, our country is full of hundreds of thousands of good little things going on. The powers that be have so much money that they can kill any big thing they want to. Attack it from the outside, corrupt it from the inside. But what can they do about ten million little things? Wipe out one and two more like it spring up."

We can hope.