I Have a Dream!

Written by Martin Luther King Jr.
Adapted by Melissa Gillespie (for a "Teachable Moment" that has inspired me more than it probably will them)

…I cannot walk alone.
And as I walk, I must make the pledge that I shall always march ahead.
I cannot turn back…

…I keep in mind that I have been through trials and tribulations… I have endured much loss and defeat. I lived in a town that said I would never leave and a society that said I would never graduate high school. I came from a society that said I wouldn’t attempt to go to college and that I would never pass up my peers. I came from a grandfather that only went to school through 8th grade and who let me fill out his checks in middle school because he couldn’t see or read it. I came from a family who only saw that girls get pregnant, then married. I came from a family with underpaid jobs but were the hardest workers, and the one red light town that I grew up in said I wouldn’t make it… but I go back knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

I will not sit in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though I face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and care for those who are without rather than worrying about war and money and spending… that our country would take more pride in the people that we invest in and what they need, rather than what we get out of it.

I have a dream that one day in the place that I came from that people will stand together, rather than a part and will work toward a cause, not toward hatred.

I have a dream that one day even those that are seen as the greatest hate crime offenders and those who cannot stand in the same room as someone different will work together for a greater good and will achieve what Mother Teresa considered the most important work… love.

I have a dream that my family will one day adopt children from other countries and places and different backgrounds where they will grow to learn, love, and appreciate other cultures, languages, foods, and most importantly, that they would learn to value people and the families and traditions that they know well from their past.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day students will learn to get along and it will not matter what city they came from, what color their skin is, what color their t-shirt is, how expensive their clothes were and what kind of music that they listen to, that they will stand together and work toward a greater cause… that they will not be held back by what the world believes about them, that they will initiate change, that they will not accuse and excuse the hatred the world, that they will not be silent, that they will have a voice, one louder than has ever been heard, and they will not settle, that they will reach their goals and work toward higher ones, that they will not lower themselves to the expectations of other people, that they will remember the greater cause and work toward that, that they will be remembered as a generation who made a difference, not the empathetic, no good things that so many people have forced them to believe they are.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day grace will be extended to all people that they may know a love deeper and greater than they have ever felt or experienced, that they will know freedom because they have tasted and seen it and felt it flowing through their veins like blood and they will take into consideration those that are longing for the same love and they will extend that love and grace to them.

This is my hope and faith. With this faith we, together, will be able to beat the odds and come together to understand one another.

This will be the day when all men are free, that no one has to work out of debt or despair and that no child has to thirst or hunger, and that no woman has to worry about being degraded by a man or group of people who do not value her because she is “just a woman.”

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"