There is an image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that I keep coming back to you as I seek to understand the journey of leadership and vocation. It’s not an image we normally associate with Dr. King as the charismatic leader of the civil rights movement. I’m not thinking of Dr. King defiantly walking across the Edmund Pettis bridge from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, or stirring the masses on the Washington Mall with the eloquence of “I Have A Dream” or writing boldly from a Birmingham jail. Powerful as these images are, there is another that draws my attention.

“In Her Arms” by Savannah Pryfogle

In the midst of the Montgomery bus boycott — an event in which King, without planning, is thrust into leadership — in the midst of the daily evening worship services to rally the faithful who would not ride the city transit line until blacks could sit where they chose, King grows weary. One of the faithful, Mother Pollard, notices. She, whose famous statement marked the spirit of the boycotters — “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested” — walks to the front of the church after King speaks, and they embrace. She then asks him a question he doesn’t anticipate: What’s wrong? She sees through King’s attempt to hold it all together. Her seeing through King unsettles him at first, but ultimately he receives the gift of Mother Pollard’s insight.

King recalls the moment this way:

I attempted to convey an overt impression of strength and courage, although I was inwardly depressed and fear-stricken. At the end of the meeting, Mother Pollard came to the front of the church and said, “Come here, son.” I immediately went to her and hugged her affectionately. “Something is wrong with you,” she said. “You didn’t talk strong tonight.” Seeking further to disguise my fears, I retorted, “Oh, no, Mother Pollard, nothing is wrong. I am feeling as fine as ever.” But her insight was discerning. “Now you can’t fool me,” she said. “I knows something is wrong. Is it that we ain’t doing things to please you? Or is it that the white folks is bothering you?” Before I could respond, she looked directly into my eyes and said, “I don told you we is with you all the way.” Then her face became radiant and she said in words of quiet certainty, “But even if we ain’t with you, God’s gonna take care of you.” As she spoke these consoling words, everything in me quivered and quickened with the pulsing tremor of raw energy. [from “Antidotes to Fear,” a sermon included in King’s Strength to Love]

I want to attend to this image of Mother Pollard and Dr. King, she blessing the young leader, he wise enough to receive her blessing. In this image I see the difference between successful and soulful leadership. “Successful” is the culturally informed notion of what constitutes leadership, i.e. leadership is production, leadership is controlling, leadership is making things happen; whereas “soulful” is the continual letting go of these constructs and the coming into a way of being that is gift, a way of being that encompasses strength and weakness, light and shadow, and as gift is received rather than made.

Soulful leadership is the reception of the gift of another. Dr. King receives the grace of Mother Pollard. In her blessing is God’s blessing, and God’s liberating word: the movement doesn’t depend on us making it happen. The Spirit moves. God provides. And we are simply, yet powerfully, invited to participate. “God’s gonna take care of you,” Mother Pollard reminds the preacher.

I believe there is so much to learn from this one image. It is a lens by which to interpret King’s teachings on nonviolence. Violence is more than resorting to arms. Fundamentally, violence is an attempt to control, to make things happen. Violence is at heart a refusal to receive grace. It is a failure to trust in God’s provision. The temptation to violence may be more pronounced in a noble cause. What’s at stake is plain, and leadership is construed as taking charge, ensuring that the goal is achieved. Nonviolence, in this regard, looks so foolhardy, so weak. Leaning on “God’s gonna take care of you” feels irresponsible.

Yet to receive this gift of another, and the gift of that great Other, is to come into an energy we could never manufacture. Strangely yet wonderfully, to acknowledge our weakness, to receive ourselves as we are, is to come upon a force that is the beating heart of the world.

The invitation is to trust. Our reception situates us in a flow. Our participation draws us up into a movement that is making all things new — by gift, by grace. Here, as Dr. King said, everything in us quivers, everything is quickened “with the pulsing tremor of raw energy.”