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Participants in the Patterson New Age Civic Organization’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. event walk down the street named for the late civil rights leader on their way to a ceremony held
to honor his legacy at Park Street Park Monday. (The Daily Review/Geoff Stoute)

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The Rev. Jaylan Grogan, minister of Congregational Care & Prayer at St. John Baptist
Church in Belle Place, delivered the keynote address. (The Daily Review/Geoff Stoute)

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Attendees practice COVID-19 safety protocol Monday during the Patterson New Age Civic Organization’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ceremony. (The Daily Review/Geoff Stoute)

Honoring King's dream

At Patterson event, audience hears love cures divisiveness

The act of love — toward friends or foes — is something the world should strive to do.
That was the message among speakers at the Patterson New Age Civic Organization’s ceremony celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy Monday at Park Street Park. The messages centered around the service’s theme, “What does love have to do with it?”
The event, which began with a walk from City Hall to the park, also featured prayer and song as the late civil rights leader was honored and a call for love and unity was expressed.
“We live in a time where love should be prevalent more than ever,” said the Rev. Jaylan Grogan of St. John Baptist Church in Belle Place, Monday’s keynote speaker. “We live in a time where we are divided by color. We live in a time where we are divided by politics. We live in a time where we are divided by religion, but if anything is going to bring us back together, it’s going to be love.”
Grogan said if people want to live to God’s fulfillment for them, then they must “walk according to love.”
Quoting King, Grogan said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”
Grogan said loving generously is the way love can conquer hate.
Myra Condell of One Faith Fellowship said that while it’s easier to hate your foes, it’s not what God wants.
“We are a people that say that we love God, but we hate our brother and sister,” she said. “We love a God we cannot see with our physical eyes, but we hate the brother that we can see with our physical eyes.”
That, she said, “is a problem” and that hate should cease.
While a COVID-19 vaccine is widely discussed, the Rev. Lee Condelle of One Faith Fellowship said, “Love is the vaccine needed to heal this sin-sick world.”
Love also is something that should be invested in, the Rev. Richelle Castine of Zion Chapel AME Church in Patterson said.
“Why? Because there’s no failure in love,” she said.
Castine noted that King literally made an investment in love with the money he received along with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, using it towards causes of nonviolence and peace.
“A man who traveled, left his family alone, had young children, gave up a monetary price of over $50,000 for the cause he greatly believed in,” she said.
As for the nation, audience member Alfreida Edwards of Franklin, a Democratic State Central Committee member representing portions of St. Mary and St. Martin parishes, said history will be made Wednesday with the inauguration of Kamala Harris as the nation’s first African American vice president.
“It is not just a historic day, but it is a day that a portion of Dr. King’s dream is going to be fulfilled,” she said, explaining that King said character, instead of skin color, is how people should be judged.
However, she and others also addressed the recent attack on the U.S. Capitol, which she called “a great setback” and showed her that the United States is split into two nations: a black one and a white one.
“Separate, hostile and unequal, but we’re going to get there to get things right,” she said.
Condelle said while the act of the participants in the attack was wrong, the love of God, rather than hate, should be shown to those who participated.
Grogan said when Americans learn to love like Jesus, “America will then heal herself.”
He said right now America is not following God’s ways and is “bleeding” greatly.
“We got killings every other week,” he said. “We got officers that we can’t trust. We got a corrupt government, but yet Jesus is on the throne and he’s simply waiting for his people to humble themselves and come unto him.
“He’s waiting for his people to learn how to love in spite of black and white, in spite of Democrat and Republican, in spite of left-wing or right-wing,” Grogan added. “Now, he simply wants us to love one another as he has loved the church.”

Participants in the Patterson New Age Civic Organization’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. event walk down the street named for the late Civil Rights leader on their way to a ceremony held to honor his legacy at Park Street Park Monday.

The Daily Review/Geoff Stoute

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