SERVICE IS EASY...TRY LOVING YOUR ENEMIES

By Ronnie Polaneczky
Philadelphia Daily News
I CALLED VALRITA GORDON yesterday, because it was Martin Luther King Day. I
wanted to ask her how we might learn to love our enemies, the way the slain civil rights
leader had urged the country to do.
And the way Valrita has been doing since the random murder of her 18-year-old son,
Army National Guard Pfc. TJ Davis, in 2008 in West Philly, just after he'd finished basic
training.
I figured this would be a somber discussion. To gird myself beforehand with feel-good
love, I attended the kickoff of the 2010 Martin Luther King Day of Service at Girard
College.
There, a happy roar practically pushed the roof off the grand armory as thousands of
volunteers converged to answer, with action, what King once described as life's persistent
and most urgent question: "What are you doing for others?"
The armory's main floor was cordoned into work stations where volunteers could sort
canned goods with the Salvation Army, package MANNA breakfasts for delivery, build
neighborhood picnic tables alongside kids from Germantown Friends or lend muscle to
over 175 other projects and workshops around the historic school campus.
It's thrilling how this event, in the 15 years since its founding, has mushroomed into a
national movement. In the Philly region alone, 70,000 took part yesterday in over 1,100
service projects - that's up from 65,000 volunteers and 900 projects last year.
Only viruses grow faster.
Then again, who wouldn't want to join this feel-good party? It's not only noble to, say,
spruce up a shabby public playground. It's also a blast, especially when done alongside
chipper volunteers (and maybe get fed pizza while you're at it).
Public response to the Day of Service has been so enthusiastic, event founder Todd
Bernstein is expanding it into a year-round civic-engagement program called MLK365.
I hope to participate. But I'd also like to figure out how to honor a tougher aspect of
King's legacy: his call to love our enemies, no matter what they do to us.
It was on Nov. 17, 1957, that King stirred the congregation at Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church in Montgomery, Ala., by saying, unequivocally, that it was our "privilege and
obligation" to love those who'd seek to do us harm.
Said King, "To our most bitter opponents we say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict
suffering by our capacity to endure suffering . . . Throw us in jail, and we shall still love
you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour
and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you . . . "
Because one day, he continued, "We shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We
shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our
victory will be a double victory."
Even now, the magnitude and near-impossibility of what he asked takes my breath away.
No wonder I've always preferred to honor King's legacy by sprucing up a playground or
classroom for a grateful neighborhood. It's a nice thing to do, and no one gets hurt.
Except that King's life wasn't only about service, noted his good friend, former U.S. Sen.
Harris Wofford, at Girard College yesterday.
"He called for something more," said Wofford, a co-author of the legislation that created
the Day of Service in 1994. "That was just one aspect of who he was. We need to honor
the full body of his work."
On a whim, I suggested to Wofford that we institute a Martin Luther King "Love Your
Enemies Day," in addition to the Day of Service.
But we were both puzzled by how such a day would play out. Would there be
workshops? The chance to do secret favors for those who'd wronged us?
Pondering the possibilities reminded me of the advice a wise minister once shared with
me, "Pray for those you resent. Ask God to give them everything you want for yourself" -
a loving family, financial security, a good job - "and you'll find they no longer hold
power over you. You might even find that you love them."
Which brings me to Valrita Gordon, whom I met last summer as her son's accused killer,
Antionne Russell, 16, awaited a pre-trial conference.
She told me how she prays daily for Antionne and his family because, if her TJ had done
what Antionne had done, "I'd hope people would pray for us, too."
Yesterday, we spoke about how weirdly intoxicating it can be to know, unequivocally,
that you have been wronged deeply. And when you have been wronged as surely as
Valrita has been, who would argue with your right to hate your perpetrator?
Except Valrita doesn't want to hate the boy who killed her boy.
It would diminish her, she told me yesterday. It would keep her from feeling God's love
for all his children - including His love for her. And that would only strengthen the forces
that ended her son's life in the first place.
"Holding onto our own hatred is only human," she said. "Some days are harder for me
than others," especially as she counts down the days until the start of Antionne's murder
trial in May.
But on those days when she's able to replace the hatred with love, she transcends the
pettiness of the human condition.
She enters a place of grace.
Which is what King hoped for us all along.
E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:
http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly.com/ronnieblog.
Find this article at:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20100119_Ronnie_Polaneczky__Service_is_easy___
__try_loving_your_enemies.html