It is almost embarrassing and heretical how much the recent iteration of the Dune movies factors into my religious workings.

The Bene Gesserett, that secretive political force shaping the arc of intergalactic history, are witchy types with breathtaking ruthlessness. They would just as quickly kill the child they carefully guided into existence.

When Reverand Mother Mohiam, a powerful leader in this order of women, finds out with disgust that Lady Jessica’s decision to birth a male - who could be a future messiah figure - has messed with her plan to raise a powerful young girl child, she scolds the lady but is not thrown.

“We measure our plans in centuries” she intones. This is the famous line in a much longer line that launched a thousand memes. The Bene Gesserett take the long view, never pinning their hopes and philosophy on the frailty of a single human being.

Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan leader in our galaxy, speaks of a mature faith that doesn’t set oneself up as a special holy person whom God is using, but an ordinary person blessedly equal to all others, who by humble acceptance of their humanity and frailty can become a conduit for goodness and mercy. The ego-based desire to be a Very Special Prophet and Person can be the undoing of a person and movement within a movement. The humility it takes to realize that anyone anywhere could choose to live a life of goodness and justice is the humility that keeps a person in the game. Humility leads to real hope and interdependence we desperately need to find peace on earth or any semblance of an inclusive American dream.

This was what the White Supremacist who killed Martin Luther King Junior failed to grasp. This is why MLK Jr is the only non-president to have a national holiday. The famous Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days, where Black Americans and allies refused to use the segregated bus system, and walked miles and miles instead. That kind of stubbornness, to reject ease and convenience, because you have become so convinced of your humanity and worthiness! What a conviction. What a commitment.

This is what I choose to celebrate on January 20th, 2025, which is a national holiday to honor the Civil Rights leader MLK Jr and the day on which a race-baiting, criminal, insurrectionist rapist is sworn in again for the second time as president.

350 years before MLK Jr legendary 13-year run leading the American people into a peaceful and legal charge to tear down the society’s bedrock of White Supremacist law, Americans in unmarked graves and unnamed in our history, toiled together to bring goodness and mercy to their blood-soaked lands.

There were White ladies who quilted secret messages to risk their lives to assist the Black geniuses running the Underground Railroad. Black women were pretending to be simple cooks and maids, ferreting information to others to free their chained siblings. There were bougie, well-heeled Black ladies who could have counted themselves lucky for escaping and growing sizable wealth, who turned around to raise money for the cause of real freedom.

The light in the dark was never solely ascribed to the power of one politician, one wealthy businessman, or a single campaign. The commitment to goodness and liberty for all was always greater than the span of an administration of men hell-bent on preserving the status quo of legal and social inferiority for women and people of color.

I know. We wanted to see a whip-smart, capable, and patriotic Black and South Asian woman named Kamala Harris standing on the dais today. We tried to catch up with the rest of the world, which has seen the goodness and worth of a woman in leadership in many ways. We wanted to believe that this country would stop voting for sexual predators. We wanted to see a person with a plan and not concepts of chaos lead us through the climate and social disasters that are coming to collect on our negligence.

And, like many generations before us, we will not be getting that today. And like many generations before us, we will go to bed and wake up tomorrow committed, still. Committed to the God-given fact that we have always mattered. That there is no status quo we cannot change. That no hatred today has not already been faced by a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. That we will find peace, joy, hope, patience, community, and goodness anyway. We will continue to imagine a neighborhood where everyone is counted and considered. We will live as if it is so for these next four years and beyond. We will do for one what we wish we could do for all. We will measure our hope in centuries and think of the moral arc of the universe that MLK Jr invited us to hold in our hearts. There will be four long years of an administration of objective misogynists, racists, and mediocre men hired based on their skin color and donations. We will watch as a future generation of young men and women with thoughtless parents accept and take on a shiner form of racism and sexism. And we will remember, even then, that we have always won one mile at a time, despite darkness on the road. God is very good at preparing feasts in the presence of those who declare themselves enemies. Please take care today.

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

“Revolution of Values,” 1967 - Martin Luther King Junior