Crossing Thresholds – Martin Luther King Jr & The Edmund Pettus Bridge

By Paul Callan

Like all great leaders, Martin Luther King’s life was characterized by an alternating pattern of high and low, a dualistic mosaic familiar to all whom have walked the hero’s path. In King’s life, soaring achievements were offset by bitter defeats; sun-lit days of unbridled optimism were contrasted by ink-black nights of deepening gloom; distant visions of a promised land were blocked by un-scalable walls of opposition and doubt. This rhythm of loss and victory, death and rebirth, despair and hope, desert and oasis, seems to be the essential cauldron needed to produce transformation and the necessary crucible to attain greatness. It is the basic pattern in all heroic pursuit. Martin Luther King’s quest, Like Odysseus’ 10-year voyage to Ithaca generations before, would be determined by King’s ability to cross thresholds and move forward, onward, towards home.

One such threshold presented itself to King in 1965 in the form of a small bridge, whose crossing would constitute, symbolically, the ongoing transformation of King and the evolving manifestation of his vision. In that fateful year King was leading a march from Selma to Montgomery and Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge was simply on his route. He would soon discover, to his dismay, that the bridge was more in his way than on his way. You see…King needed to cross the bridge to continue onwards to Montgomery, but more so, to continue on in his mission. King’s opponents didn’t want him to cross that bridge. A line had thus been drawn and the bridge represented that line. Viewed symbolically, the bridge was like a mythic dragon whose slaying would either make or break King as a man, as a leader, and as a champion.

As King stood at one end of the bridge and peered across to the other side, he was confronted with the real and present danger of an angry opposition, but equally, by his own inner fear and self-doubt. This was a decisive threshold moment: Should he cross and pursue his destiny, or turn back and seek safer ground? To move forward would be risky, of uncertain consequence, and would move King into new territory that would forever change him. To turn back would be safer and would reunite him with firmer ground.

King chose to cross the bridge. The structure he crossed that day may have been short in physical distance, but it was immense in terms of social and historic significance, and in the making of a heroic life. He stared into the abyss, fell into it, and then emerged on the far side….stronger.

As leaders, we too will often come to such thresholds in our lives. And Like King, when we reach these crossings, we’ll find ourselves standing on the near side of the threshold—the side representing our present state and our present condition–and be confronted with the decision of whether or not to cross over to the far side–a new state and new condition. Will we move forward and pursue our destiny? Will we summon the courage to move into an uncertain future? Will we endure the crucible of risk and trial to achieve growth? Or, will we turn back and seek safer ground? Such is the nature of all threshold decisions: Do we leave our comfort zone or return to it?

In my own experience, and when confronting such threshold decisions, I’ve often referred to this quote from Father James Smith, in which he uses a desert metaphor, in much the same way I used a bridge, to describe the necessity of facing our demons on the ground they inhabit:

“It is very tempting to avoid the desert. But we avoid the desert at our own peril. You are less then you could be. But if you survive the desert, you come out a different person. The desert is not something you do; it is something you endure. It isn’t something you make of yourself; it is something that makes you.”

I am glad Martin Luther King crossed that bridge back in 1965. I am glad he didn’t avoid the desert. As leaders, we must all meet challenge in its own lair, and on its own terms—where ever it presents itself. This is the only path to a heroic life and towards heroic leadership.

« return to the blog

Comments

Leave a Reply