Resonant Chord

I can still hear my mother weeping watching the news on television in 1968. In April it was Dr. King; eight weeks later, it was Bobby Kennedy. Gunned down men. What kind of a world did I live in? My innocence shattered with the emotional echo of a trigger held on a nation.

Years later I understood the magnitude of those moments in my childhood.

Walking through a school corridor as a young mother, my heart screamed within me as I rescued my child from a system that penalized her for thinking outside their box. The administrators thought I was insane as I did them. How could they not understand that free thought is incumbent upon following the Shepherd and not the herd?

I nabbed my darling from the bureaucrats and for one frightening moment stood in the halls listening to the other children studiously striving to achieve their own intellectual slaughter.

My heart reeled. I couldn’t save them all, but I could save one.

The principal eyed me with fury.

“Mrs. McGrath, this is the best place for your child!” She shouted.

“Martin Luther King Jr. would not have survived these walls.” I whispered to her astonished face.

She had no reply.

The death of freedom is not as immediate as a gun but it is just as horrific; seeds of indifference and resignation are sown early.

Freedom that is Bible-based and Spirit-won flourishes in my family now.

The legacy lives on.