In 1963 I went on that famous March on Washington, and the clearest memory I have of it is standing near the Lincoln Memorial hearing the song "We Shall Overcome" sung by the quarter of a million or so people who were there. And while I listened, my eye fell on one very old Negro man, with a face like shoe leather and a sleazy suit and an expression that was more befuddled than anything else; and I wondered to my self if, quite apart from the whole civil-rights question, that poor old bird could ever conceivably overcome anything.

He was there to become a human being. Well, and so were the rest of us. And so are we all, no less befuddled than he when you come right down to it. Poor old bird, poor young birds, every one of us. And deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome some day, as he will, by God's grace, by helping the seed of the kingdom grow in ourselves and in each other until finally in all of us it becomes a tree where the birds of the air can come and make their nests in our branches. That is all that matters really.

Becoming truly human

This other war is the war not to conquer, but the war to become whole and at peace inside our skins. It is a war not of conquest, but of liberation, because the object of this other war is to liberate that dimension of selfhood that involves the capacity to forgive and to will the good not only of the self but of all other selves.

This other war is the war to become a human being. This is the goal that we are a really after and that God is really after. This is the goal that power, success, and security are only forlorn substitutes for. This is the victory that not all our human armory of self-confidence and wisdom and personality can win for us—not simply to be treated as humans but to become at last truly human.

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