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Daytona Beach Florida King Birthday Celebration Ecumenical NOT Interfaith
A report from Clark Dark’s mom, Blanche Africa Reilly Dark on her experience of Martin Luther King’s Birthday celebration in Daytona Beach, Florida.
I had the pleasure of being in central Florida during the days leading up to the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama. As you know the day before this momentous occasion was the official federal holiday celebration of the birthday the slain civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who would have been eighty years-old.
I was invited by friends to join members of the Daytona Beach community at a breakfast, march and church service sponsored by the good people of the Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church where Father Phil Egitto is the pastor.We arrived for breakfast in the church social hall around 845 on the morning of January 19. The menu was simple with church ladies assisting by serving the guests coffee, water, breakfast quiche, grits and corned beef hash along with assorted pastries.
Father Egitto blessed the meal with a prayer that not only sounded Baptist in its delivery but gave me the idea he just might deliver a sermon before the meal.
After we went directed to the sanctuary to receive our instructions for the march which would begin at 930AM.
Our Lady of Lourdes offers a beautiful sanctuary of modern design. For this very special occasion on the wall at the front of the church was a painting of a black Jesus with broken chains and shackles on His wrists. The pulpit area was also decorated with boat sails of African patterned cloth symbolic of the ships that brought people from Africa against their will to these shores more than 400 years ago.
While we waited for marching instruction we sang with the church and school choir in an atmosphere that was tinged with excitement, warmth and love. It was a beautiful thing to see and experience. There were blacks and whites, people of goodwill all gathered together at this place of worship.
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