The Burning House

The Burning House

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Runtime: 90 mins
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This year’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Commemoration on Sunday, January 19, presented by New York Public Radio and the world-famous Apollo Theater, in collaboration with March On, has as its theme The Burning House: MLK and the American Experiment.

The title is taken from a conversation with Dr. King, as remembered by his good friend and movement comrade, the late Harry Belafonte:

King goes on to say, “I’m afraid that America has lost the moral vision she may have had, and I’m afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised.”

This fiery metaphor has special resonance as we begin a new presidential administration fraught with feverish foreboding for many of us. Simultaneously, we are witnessing large swaths of the country burning in climate-change-induced wildfires.

The title to James Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time is taken from a line in a traditional African American spiritual, “God sent Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, the fire next time.” This harkens back to the scriptural history of the flood that destroyed and cleansed the known world and to God’s promise that water would never again be used as the means of destruction.

For Baldwin, the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement presaged building tensions toward a national racial conflagration. It is that same inferno to which King refers in his words to Belafonte.

However, there are several other fire references that come to mind, which may serve as signposts and encouragement now and in times to come.

In Buddhism, the burning house refers to the unsafe nature and worldly suffering in the realms of human existence and to the need to be liberated and enlightened. It signals that we must do rigorous inner work to achieve personal, community and global enlightenment.

The five elements of the Chinese zodiac are wood, fire, earth, metal and water. They exist in a cycle, with one creating or controlling the next. Wood fuels fire, which burns it and creates earth, which then exerts pressure underground to form metal, which is the parent providing nutrients to channel the waters that nourish the earth, and the cycle repeats.

Another example of this natural death-to-life cycle is the jack pine cone. These pine cones are dependent on fire, because their thick exteriors are covered in resin. The intense heat of a wildfire melts the resin, thus allowing the cone to burst open and release its seeds. The nutrients in the scorched earth are the perfect womb for new pine trees to sprout and become the next generation of forest.

The ancient Egyptian study of alchemy, a precursor to modern chemistry, was the practice of turning base metals into gold, to change one type of matter into another. Recently, while in Marrakech, I had some jewelry made. My old and broken gold jewelry was melted and reshaped into bracelets. During that transition process, the gold had a gray, dull, leadlike appearance until it was fired and buffed to a yellow-rose shine. Now it is luminous, beautiful, valuable and durable.

Let us advance King’s premonition and take a broader, higher, re-envisioned view of the burning house so that we may zealously ignite, energize, transform and move forward toward a moral vision worthy of our spiritual forebear’s sacrifices. Then we can rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the past into a new world of our making, one that is luminous, beautiful, valuable and durable for all.

March On!

Isisara Bey

Isisara Bey

Artistic Director

March On

Isisara Bey helps businesses thrive by empowering individuals to take action, overcome procrastination, and achieve peak performance. As a dynamic keynote speaker, she uses engaging content and interactive presentations to inspire audiences and foster stronger teams, with clients ranging from the U.S. State Department to the Apollo Theater.


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