Unity urged during Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast Monday

People in the United States have a problem, Apostle Adrian Taylor said Monday at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebratory breakfast, and that problem is, everyone talking, but no one is listening.

Taylor said the talk in society now is more rhetoric than talk, designed to be thought provoking, but what’s being provoked isn’t valuable thought, but indignation and anger.

The sentence “black lives matter” can be taken as individual words, he said, words that celebrate ideas, but when those words are put in a specific order, there’s a group of people who get angry.

Consider another sentence: “Make America great again,” said Taylor of Lighthouse in Cape Girardeau.

“These are two interesting ideas,” Taylor said. “The problem is, if you use any of these phrases, you’ll make people upset.”

Margaret A. Holladay embraces the emotions of the music Monday during the Martin Luther King Jr. luncheon in the Salvation Army gym in Cape Girardeau.KASSI JACKSON

And, he said, “As long as we fuss back and forth, we will not find an opportunity to find unity.”

That same “foolishness,” he said, is why the government is shut down right now.

Taylor said value of one is not diminished by valuing another: “If I value a dog, does that mean your cat is not important? If I value a black person because I love them, that does not mean somehow automatically I hate white folks.”

The reason he brings this up, he said, is these issues need to be dealt with.

“We’ll talk privately, but we can’t talk in large groups because everyone wants to get upset,” he said.

The Martin Luther King Jr. luncheon Monday in the Salvation Army gym in Cape Girardeau.KASSI JACKSON

Unless, he said, that conversation is around young people getting shot by law enforcement.

“I’m not against law enforcement,” Taylor said, noting he has served as police chaplain, in an attempt to encourage positive policing.

But, he said, he has heard preachers saying the young people getting shot might have done bad things, and thus might have deserved it.

“I have a problem with us saying we love God if we’re OK with the death and destruction of anybody,” Taylor said.

“I’m trying to understand,” Taylor said. “When did we lose our minds?”

Taylor said most people know conversation, talking through issues, is therapeutic. But, he said, productive conversations between Caucasian and black people, even white people who want to understand, can be difficult because white people aren’t necessarily aware of how intense stories of racial problems are.

Furthermore, he said, “I want you to understand, there will never be real conversation if black people are constantly being told to be quiet.”

Taylor said there is a lot of pain that needs to be healed, “and the only way that happens is by having meaningful relationships. They can’t be one-sided, comfortable for you, uncomfortable for me.”

It’s hard, he acknowledged, as we live in a disconnected society where people would rather socialize on phones than in person. That leads to a loss of conversational etiquette, which breaks down relationships, which breaks down young people’s understanding of how to exist in the world.

“You can’t ask to be respected without being respectable individuals,” Taylor said.

Look at King, Taylor said. King graduated from college, earned a doctorate, married a woman and settled down to pastor “a sweet little church” — and began to do his work right where he was.

“We must understand: Before we can see real change in our nation, we need to be faithful ... right where we are,” Taylor said.

Because of King’s faith in God, Taylor said, he was able to come up with a strategy that began to effect change in his small town, then his state, which then began to spill over into the whole country.

By the time he was 39 years old, Taylor said, King had changed the world.

“I challenge us today: Before trying to do big things, that we think small first,” Taylor said.

He called for more momentum for events such as the breakfast, asking that more people attend, as when he last spoke at the breakfast in 2011, the event was so large it needed to be held in the Osage Centre instead of at the Salvation Army.

Taylor noted the absence of elected officials at the celebration on the national holiday.

Debra Mitchell-Braxton later thanked Cape Girardeau School District superintendent Neil Glass for attending.

Taylor said the national day of service should call people to serve not just on that one day, but every day.

“It doesn’t do us any good to serve today if we are not treating each other right tomorrow,” he said. “This ought to be our way of life.”

And, he said, “We must learn each other’s stories, take responsibility for things we’ve done to mistreat others, whether black or white. None of us are perfect.”

It isn’t about trying to be impressive, Taylor said. It’s about being like Christ.

“If we want people to value our lives, we need to be valuable people,” Taylor said. “If we want to make this a great nation, then we must become servants, which means we can’t be selfish, and need to figure out how to help somebody else.”

mniederkorn@semissourian.com

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