Reminders From the Storm

By Jonathan McCoy –

The following speech was given by Jonathan McCoy at the 2025 MLK Prayer Breakfast hosted by the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County.

In the speech, Mccoy reflected on the power of resilience and community in the wake of Hurricane Helene. He also shared quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that encourage us to create the unified relationships needed to do the difficult work needed to bring about Dr. King’s dream.

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I am going to tap into the preacher and teacher in me and let you know throughout my speech where you can find the quotes from Dr. King that I use. So, you will be able to go home and do your own research and see for yourself the depth of Dr. King’s thinking and teaching.

Our theme today is inspired by Dr. King’s “I have been to the Mountain top” speech which he gave the night before he was killed. In it he said: “Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”

The mountain he was speaking about getting to the top of symbolized the fear, lies, violence, and frustrations we face fighting for racial equality, social justice, and community unity.

Climbing mountains is challenging work. It is a struggle through seen and unseen obstacles, setbacks, slips, and falls. But the struggle is worth it because the inspiring view from the mountain top is of a beloved community which our efforts give us the opportunity to create.

The Beloved Community

The beloved community is what Dr. King dreamed of. Saying that they were communities where poverty, hunger, and homelessness will not be tolerated because human decency will not allow it. Where racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. Where love and trust triumph over fear and hatred. Where peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

The tragedies and hardships of tropical storm Helene gave us some harsh reminders, the first being that Dr. King’s dream of a beloved community is still a vision, it is still a dream.

This is the hard truth folks ignore when they mindlessly quote the portion of his “I Have a Dream” speech when he says, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Truth be told, our wishes for peace on earth and goodwill to men only goes from Dec. 1st to Dec. 25th. We are still a nation that continues to judge one another by appearances and assumptions instead of by interactions and insights that help us focus on a person’s character.

Character is defined by Merriam-Webster as having moral excellence and firmness. Following Helene, across Western North Carolina, folks showed their moral excellence and firmness. We heard, saw, and experienced neighbors finally meeting and talking with one another, working side-by-side. Not only cutting trees, clearing debris, or shoveling out mud, but also providing food, water, and shelter to one another; giving financial aid and spiritual comfort along with mental and emotional support.

Helene reminded us that we exist in a world Dr. King wrote about in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” writing: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

The storm reminded us that the heartfelt acts of character we exalt in times of crisis should be everyday acts of character we exemplify in times of peace. Yet this is not happening because our view of character has become misinformed, misdirected, and mistaken.

Love, Caring, and Unity

As Dr. King said in his speech “A knock at Midnight,” “Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and the customs of a particular community… This mentality has brought a tragic breakdown of moral standards, and the midnight of moral degeneration deepens.”

Our surprise at people’s post-Helene demonstrations of love, caring, and unity shines a spotlight on the fact that Dr. King’s dream has not yet been realized. But Helene also showed us that it can be fulfilled.

It can be fulfilled if we embrace loving one another the way Dr. King outlined in his sermon “Loving your enemies” when he said, “Love is not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”

This is the Agape love he continuously spoke about; he goes on to explain that: Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. What theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them.

Helene reminded us in three ways that Agape love gives us the unity of spirit and effort to rise up with a greater readiness and determination to make Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community a reality. This is why I entitled this speech “Reminders from the storm.”

Clarity, Courage, and Commitment

The three reminders from the storm are Clarity – the insight of the work that needs to be done. Courage – the will to do the work, and Commitment – the understanding that the work never ends.

When Helene disconnected us from the rest of the world we stopped focusing on a person’s race, color, gender, religion, sexual identity, wealth, or any of the other label’s society has trained us to use to emphasize our differences instead of highlighting our shared humanity.

But now that we are reconnected to the world, we have quickly gotten back to being dismissive, divided, and divisive to one another. These limited ways of thinking have trapped us in a stagnated stasis of social angst, moral apathy, and spiritual animosity.

Clarity is being able to see that when folks are united in love through their words and deeds, it puts the unity in community. It reminds us that we must continue our post Helene efforts at being good neighbors who respect and value one another.

Which Dr. King noted in his sermon entitled “On Being a Good Neighbor,” pointing out that “Our unswerving devotion to monopoly capitalism…means that one does not mind what happens to the people outside his group. The ultimate tragedy of this narrow provincialism is that it causes one to see people as entities, in short as things. So seldom do we see people in their true humanness. We fail to see them as fellow human beings made out of the same basic stuff as we are, molded by the same divine image.”

Helene reminded us that before the storm we were morally and socially shortsighted in our interactions with each other based on character. Making it clear, we did not realize that for years we had been in the middle of a social revolution.

Merriam-Webster defines revolution as: an activity or movement designed to effect a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something.

This means we need to stop avoiding the question Dr. King raised in “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution,” Now the great question facing us today is whether we will remain awake through this world-shaking revolution and achieve the new mental attitudes which the situations and conditions demand.

The storm also reminded us of what Dr. King pointed out in this speech, telling us that we are “Challenged to rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. The individual or nation that feels that it can live in isolation has allowed itself to sleep through a revolution. The geographical togetherness of the modern world makes our very existence dependent on co-existence. We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools. Because of our involvement in humanity, we must be concerned about every human being.”

Heeding the storm’s reminder of clarity enables us to see that we must take on the challenge of developing the courage needed to remain united in the love of our shared humanity instead of in the hatred of our diversity.

We need courage built on love in order to rise up with a greater readiness and determination and grow beyond the socially accepted willful ignorant fears of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Fears that create false equivalents to injustice attempting to convince us that we must not, should not, and cannot create the unified relationships needed to do the difficult work to bring about beloved communities.

Courage is what will empower us to not only survive the challenges of Helene but thrive in repairing and reinventing our communities. In his book “Strength in Love” Dr. King emphasized how important courage is, writing: Courage is that quality which enables us to stand up to any fear…Courage is the inner determination to go on despite obstacles and frightening situations; cowardice is the submissive surrender to the forces of circumstance.

We must use the reminder of clarity to bolster our courage to do the unpopular work that needs to be done. The courage to break our addiction to the toxic, nauseating fumes created by the lies of gaslighting.

We must have the courage to act in ways that prove we really do value character and do more than quote Dr. King on his holiday. To make our proclaimed love and respect for him, his words, and his deeds not yearly talking points and social media post but yearlong heartfelt habits of action.

We must have the courage to admit what Dr. King pointed out in “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution” when he said, “The great problem confronting man today is that he has allowed his mentality to outrun his morality. He has allowed his technology to outdistance his theology. He has allowed the means by which he lives to tower above the ends for which he lives.”

Looking at our experiences before and after Helene are uncomfortable reminders that we have lacked the courage to continue doing the work that needs to be done. I think about President Kennedy’s challenge to the nation in his 1963 speech, “We choose to go to the Moon” when he said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

Our country bravely took on the challenges of science and technology to reach the moon within six years. Yet, since our birth as nation in 1789, we still fearfully avoid the challenges of achieving social equality and justice.

Issues that Concern All of Us

It is 2025, is it not time for us to have the courage to rise up with greater readiness and determination in our efforts to make Dr. King’s dream real and truly become a beloved community?

Helene reminded us that inclusive and affordable housing are not me vs them issues or just those people’s concerns. They are issues that concern all of us. Fair and livable wages are not me versus them issues or just those people’s concerns. They are issues that concern all of us.

Medical care that is restricted due to a person’s gender, pronouns, or means are not me vs them issues or just those people’s concerns. They are issues that concern all of us.

Comprehensive and inclusive environmental policies to provide clean drinking water and protect natural resources are not me vs them issues or just those people’s concerns. They are issues that concern all of us.

Dependable and accessible infrastructure resources like roads, utilities, and the internet are not me vs them issues or just those people’s concerns. They are issues that concern all of us.

Inclusive and empathetic policies concerning business development, gentrification, homelessness, food insecurity, and other policies are not me versus them issues or just those people’s concerns. They are issues that concern all of us.

Helene has reminded us we need clarity, to find the courage to act in Agape love. Because love is the mighty engine that drives people’s efforts to become beloved communities.

Love enables communities to find and sustain the energy needed for perseverance to overcome pessimism. And for determination to overcome defeat.

In his speech “Tough mind and tender heart” Dr. King explained why Agape love is important and how we need to practice it:

“The hard-hearted person never truly loves, never experiences the beauty of friendship because he is too cold to have affection for another and too self-centered to have joy in another’s joy and sorrow in another’s sorrow. The hard-hearted individual never sees people as people…the good life demands combining the toughness of the serpent with the tenderness of the dove. To have serpent-like qualities devoid of dove-like qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. To have dove-like qualities without serpent-like qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless.”

Only with the clarity of understanding the power of love do we gain the courage to do the hard work needed to become communities committed to readjusting our views of one another and our actions toward one another so that we can respond to the third reminder of the storm, commitment.

Commitment, the understanding that this challenging work never ends is the unspoken truth we must acknowledge! The fact that we are a society that is always changing and that the goalposts are always being moved means that the work never ends!

This is why we must stay committed in our efforts to rise up with a greater readiness and determination to become good neighbors and make the beloved community a reality.

In “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious” Dr. King said, “If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it. If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don’t want peace. If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated, and segregated, I don’t want peace.”

We must stay committed to continue the fight for equal and just education beyond applauding the Supreme Court’s 1955 Brown v. Board decision that integrated schools. Which means we need to stop quietly watching the defunding of public schools and the censorship of fact-based teachings in the classroom take place.

We must exercise our commitment to not only having access to the ballot but also making sure our vote is counted and certified by continuing to fight against contrived voter crisis’s created by the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision that is being used to dilute the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

We must hold on to our commitment in the belief of marriage equality gained in the Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving decision on interracial marriage and reinforced in their 2015 Obergfell decision on gay marriage by defending our freedom to love against the growing efforts to restrict who is and who is not allowed to be loved.

It calls for us to use those clarity and courage reminders from the storm to recognize that our lack of commitment to inclusive accessible health care gained with the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision not only led the court to overturn it with their 2022 Dobbs decision, but has also increased the threat of ending Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare.

Our lack of committed efforts rooted in Agape love is how the Supreme Court in its 2023 Student Affairs v. Harvard decision opened the floodgates to doing away with Affirmative Action programs and efforts that center on racial, gender, religious, and economic equality.

Make the Beloved Community a Reality

We need to leave here today on the same page. Knowing that the reminders from the storm reinforce the message, ministry, and efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s, call for us to work with clarity, courage, and commitment to become the beloved community he dreamed we could and should be.

These are reminders to us that we need to stop investing our time, energy, and focus on remaining beguiled, beleaguered, and befuddled communities living in a dream world but not living Dr. King’s dream.

They call for us to stay united in the proclamations we have made, declaring our commitment to doing the work needed to build beloved communities. The promises we have made as we have celebrated together the themes of this breakfast over the past forty-three years.

The promise to hold on to Clarity through “Audacious action during uncertain times,” which gives us the Courage to “Keep hope in challenging times,” because we have made the Commitment to do the work knowing we need to: “Still March forward: fighting for justice never ends”

Only by working to fulfill these promises will we be able to rise up with a greater readiness and determination and create the beloved community Dr. King dreamed of. Then we will truly be empowered to do as the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement proclaims and:

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise. High as the list’ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Jonathan McCoy is the Director of the Center for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Instructor of History at Mars Hill University, and the interim pastor of Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Mars Hill, NC.