Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)

Feb 24 2021

Dear reader, 

this week I decided to cover Patty Griffin’s Up to the Mountain (MLK Song).  Griffin delivers each lyric with passion and yearning….Still, I decided it was worth being compared to this master to sing this song to you. 

When I first was introduced to this song I understood the words were directed at Griffin’s God. As I reflect on the parenthetical end of the title — (MLK Song)— it seems clear that she’s at least partially speaking to MLK. The lyrics point to a difficult upward journey that requires open eyes and ears, a life of moral action and the sweat of good work. 

MLK’s legacy is that of the efficacy of non-violent resistance, subversive action, love in the face of hate, justice oriented rage (I could go on). A benefit of the lyrics being sung to a man like MLK is that he both stood on the shoulders of those who came before and was also surrounded by the complimentary revolutionaries like Malcolm X. 

This encourages us to sing a song of yearning for peace in the midst of struggle and struggle in the midsts of a beautiful world because those who have come before us have in earnest asked us to. It also reminds us that the work towards substantial peace in this world— not complacency, not apathy, not even calm—will most likely not to be seen in this lifetime as the last verse of the song suggests : 

“The peaceful valley
Just over the mountain
The peaceful valley
Few come to know
I may never get there
Ever in this lifetime
But sooner or later
It's there I will go
Sooner or later”

Revelations happen on mountains often in our collective spiritual stories don’t they? “I went up to the mountain because you asked me to” doesn’t mean a revelation that wraps things up nicely and allows us to stamp “solved” on it. Instead going to the mountain is perilous and tiring and the revelation painful. Racial justice of course should be the prominent yearning in the undercurrent of the song but also an anticapitalist struggle for the poor and disenfranchised as MLK looked towards the Poor People’s March at the end of his life. Lastly, I hear an undercurrent of strategic direct action that exposes the many evils  in these troubled times. That demonstrates the benefit of gazing into the eyes of the oppressor in order to reveal what is ugly and sinister to the light of day just like we can climb up past clouds and get exposed to the direct like of the sun if we go high enough up a substantial mountain. 

Will you join me in the yearning of these undercurrents? A hope for substantial peace, for struggle that doesn’t bow to the powers of destruction in this world and eyes to see and hands to do. Our predecessors have asked us to go up to the mountain, to receive revelation and to struggle in this life for that which promotes thriving, love and justice. 

May we find times of health and motivation to do the good work asked of us. 

Until soon, 

Remona Jeannine