One of the passages most commonly read at weddings is from Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. realized that the message Paul spoke to those believers so long ago was still deeply relevant in his time, as powerful in modern America as it was in ancient Corinth. What follows is Dr. King's own adaptation of that oft-quoted letter. He calls it, "Paul's letter to the American Christians."

"...love is the most durable power in the world. Throughout centuries men and women have sought to discover the highest good. This has been the chief quest of ethical philosophy...What is the suumum bonum of life? I think I have found the answer, America. I have discovered the highest good is love. This principle is at the center of the cosmos. It is the great unifying force of life. God is love. Those who love have discovered the clue to the meaning of ultimate reality; those who hate stand in immediate candidacy for nonbeing...The greatest of all virtues is love...In a world depending on force, coercive tyranny, and bloody violence, you are challenged to follow the way of love. You will then discover that unarmed love is the most powerful force in the world."

For the Sake of Strangers

By Dorianne Laux

No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another - a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms, a child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself, from the thing that calls to me
as it must have once called to them -
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.

Readings of July 10, 2005