Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dearest husband on your
70th Birthday! Oh how I have cherished our years together.
Here is just one of your special moments.

Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory!

It was 1965, 50 years ago this spring.
You had just turned 20, and I was 17.
We’d dated a few times and had been writing
letters to each other for a little over a year.

It was the year of the march to
Selma, Alabama; and there you were, in the midst of
making history.

You had gone off to Morehouse College, the alma mater
of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on a student exchange program . . .
one of 3 white students at an all black college for men.

I wondered: “what was this tall, blonde, handsome, Scandinavian
guy doing – – going off to risk so much in these turbulent times?
What had awakened you to this movement for civil rights?”

Yet, in your passion to know – off you went – to learn and grow and be
forever changed.

The details of that experience are for you to tell.
I only know that there were risky moments
when dangerous encounters could have gone not well.

Besides the thousands who walked to Selma, there were
other supporters in action around the U.S. You marched
around the court house in Atlanta in solidarity with fellow
students whose request was simply to be seen as men and women
like any others – and to be allowed the right to vote as citizens
of the United States.

You were fortunate to experience the presence of Dr. King
and the vibrancy of his message of hope.

Your passion for peace and justice was molded in those
months at Morehouse; and in our correspondence,
our bond together grew in deep and mysterious ways.

This moment in history became the vision for a path
we would walk together in service for humanity.
For you had been to the mountain top and seen
a glimpse of freedom and mercy for all.

You knew deep within your soul that by the grace of God,
“we shall overcome some day”.

For you had seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord,
as he was present in that moment of history in the past;
and is present even now, through all of our moments of
great love and peace, with compassionate justice for all.

And to this day, I sometimes catch you in a moment
of remembering, and know, with sighs too deep for words,
your loving heart sings out ~ ~

Mine eyes have seen the Glory!