The "EveryBody" Insider
Communicating the Concerns of Black People

To Dream for Impossible Courage
by Kevin Johnson
August 25, 2002

The song “The Impossible Dream” is performed in the musical “Man of La Mancha” which is set during the time of the Spanish Inquisition in the late 1400s. It gives a message about the sincerity, commitment, and bravery of a skinny frail delusional fellow who in his heart is a truer gentleman and knight than any ever conceived. Outwardly, the fellow, Don Quixote, does not have the physical strength and agility of a knight. His armor is not shiny but rusty like his frail body. His mind sometimes loses touch with reality causing him once to attack a windmill that he saw as a giant. Nevertheless, inside of the frail body, rusted armor and delusional mind was the purity of intent and will to be ALL the knight that he could be in his heart and mannerisms, eloquence, poetry and courage.

The fictional character, Don Quixote, lacked sound body and mind; but, he did not lack the spirit of a fighter for right and an upholder of respect and good manner where due. He carried in his heart a song that touched those closest to him even through they too knew he was delusional and frail. He inspired them with his song.

                              “To dream the impossible dream;

                             To fight the unbeatable foe;

                             To bear with unbearable sorrow;

                             To run where the brave dare not go;

                             To right the unrightable wrongs;

                             To love pure and chaste from afar;

                             To fly when your arms are too weary;

                             To reach the unreachable stars….”

It is a good song both melodically and educationally. To me it speaks of the nature of courage. Courage is opposite of cowardice. Cowardice is to run from the fight that you really should fight. And cowardice is to make a fight in which you know you have the overwhelming upper hand in order to feel that you ARE courageous and powerful. In contrast, courage faces the fight that must be fought whether it can be won or not. Courage fights for justice only.

If you could place the courage, eloquence, poetry and mannerisms of Don Quixote into the heart and body of a man with a sane mind, marvelous things could be achieved. If a few people would follow the fictitious delusional Don Quixote because of his song, how many more would he attract if he were in full control of his faculties and in complete touch with reality?

A person who seemed to merge the heart of Don Quixote with sanity is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And, Mohandis Ghandi would also fit the bill. These men had the courage of knights fighting the fight that should be fought whether it could be won or not. They fought the giants; and they would have fought windmills had that been necessary.

Dr. King wanted to be a “drum major” for peace and justice. He inspired many to walk with him for the purpose of ensuring/achieving peace and justice. He fought for the right “to right the unrightable wrongs.” He and his allies strove to end injustice towards Black people in America. The injustice of violence, segregation and violation of civil rights was the evil enemy with whom King engaged in battle. He battled with the enemy using his speeches and his marches and his writings.

Even though his house was bombed, he wouldn’t shut up. Even though he got threatening calls, he wouldn’t shut up. Even though things were thrown at him and a Black woman stabbed him, he didn’t shut up. Even though water hoses and dogs were turned loose on people, he didn’t shut up. Even though he was thrown in jail, he wrote a letter that was even more powerful than his speeches so the message grew louder still. Even though the FBI monitored his every move and he KNEW it, he didn’t shut up.

Even though he won the Nobel Prize for Peace, he didn’t shut up. Even though more and more people came to know and love him, he didn’t shut up. He marched on. ‘Til that bullet struck him in the head he marched on.

What would King do today? The media has reported scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. What would King do? Would he say – I’m a Black BAPTIST in the South and that’s a White CATHOLIC problem mainly in the Northeast? No – He would say, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Whatever happened to those little Catholic boys and little Catholic girls happened to my own little children. He would say that I will spare no effort to help them heal and make them remember that they are still God’s children and that God loves them. 

Even though we are suffering, we still have the strength to love God and to do God’s will. The sick racist brothers couldn’t turn us from God in the 60s and neither can sick abusive brothers of the clergy turn us from God in 2002!

Dr. King would go on to compare the child molestations to the lynchings of Black men in the past by people in robes bearing the emblem of the cross. He would explain that in years past, Black men were captured, beaten, castrated and hanged by folks wearing white robes and claiming to be servants of Jesus. Those folks wore those robes but did the work of evil seeking to destroy not only the Black man himself, but also his soul. They wanted to strike FEAR into the hearts of Black people by committing a heinous act. They wanted to castrate the Black community itself. By suffering the castration of the Black man, the community would not be able to reproduce. And, the Black community would be deprived of COURAGE. These evil deeds were attempts to spiritually lynch and kill Black people as a people.

Martin Luther King, Jr. would explain that genitals are not our souls and they’re not our source of COURAGE either. Our COURAGE comes from God. As long as we have faith in God, we have our COURAGE. The evil and sick can strike at any part of our body, but they can’t have our soul. They can hit us in the eye or below the belt. They can cut us, poison us, beat us, lie to us, enslave us, dunk us underwater, tie us up, catch us off guard, trick us, blind us, deafen us, lynch us, forbid us to read, etc. But we’ll still love God, retain our soul, and have the COURAGE to fight the unbeatable foe!

The Reverend Dr. King would say – My brothers and sisters, the current problem is not a Roman Catholic problem in the United States. It’s not even a Christian problem in the U.S. It is a problem of good versus evil in the whole world.

Rodney King once said, “Can’t we all just get along?” Why can’t there only be good in the world?  Well, if that was all we DID, then that’s all that we’d HAVE. If we loved our brothers and sisters, we wouldn’t hate them. If Black could get along with White, there would not be trouble between them. If the Israelis and Palestinians could act like brothers, maybe they could BE brothers.

If the mere thought of doing harm to anyone was not present on Earth, there would be no intentional harm and the unintentional harm would be promptly and justly addressed.

Dr. King would also say – The children who were abused in the 70s are the same age as my children in many cases. They have been “spiritually raped” by clergy that they deeply trusted. I cannot begin to imagine the great pain that these victims and their families are suffering. To learn that some of the perpetrators of these evil crimes have yet to find it in their hearts to make right that which they have made wrong is very saddening. I continue to pray that God will soften their hearts to reach out to apologize and try to do their part to heal their victims and to thereby start to heal themselves and to commit to only doing GOD’s will. 

I ask the Holy Father – Pope John Paul II – in the Vatican to take seriously the efforts of the leaders of The Church in the United States to deal with this situation and to continue to pray for healing of all of the Church’s children. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the big dreamer. He wanted to eliminate racism. But, he also wanted to eliminate all evil on Earth. In his famous speech at the March on Washington August 28, 1968 he said –

“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 in the words of that old Negro spiritual – 

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty! 

We are free at last!”

The dream transcends the demand for an end to the evil of racism and strives to end all evils. The dream looks for the day when we ALL are free of all evil. The dream is the “impossible” dream of the end of all evil. And, King had the COURAGE to fight to achieve the realization of that dream.

Did the dream end when one piece of lead hit one man in the head on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968? I think not!

The enemies of good wanted to kill the dream. They wanted to kill the soul of the quest for justice by killing the man they saw at its core. They wanted to kill him before he made another speech, wrote another book, led another march or fathered another CHILD!

The enemies of TRUTH also tried to kill The Church by killing the SOULS of the children of The Church by spiritually raping and spiritually killing the children. The enemies of TRUTH and the enemies of The Church will fail in their evil missions because the TRUTH cannot be hidden and the enemies of TRUTH will be exposed. The enemies’ lies, deceit, arrogance and COWARDICE will prove to be their own undoing because TRUTH is marching on.

Praise God! Glory Hallelujah!

The enemies tried to kill our COURAGE and tried to destroy the SOULS of our children. They tried to kill our commitment to do God’s will and preserve and grow God’s church. But, faith and the love of God rise above FEAR and wickedness in high and/or low places.

Glory to God in the Highest – and Peace to His People on Earth!