Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Influence on The Nap Ministry
Happy MLK Day! In performing research on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and napping, I came across a few things, none necessarily pointing to Dr. King as a habitual napper, though the picture below suggests that he did it at least once in 1964. Below, Dr. King is pictured napping on his way to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for which he received $54,123 (over half a million dollars adjusted for 2023), all of which he donated to further the civil rights movement.
Dr. King’s philosophy, including his deep analysis of systemic oppression, informs the philosophy of The Nap Ministry, a decade-old spiritual (not overtly religious) movement formed by Tricia Hersey, “The Nap Bishop,” and directed largely (but not exclusively) at Black and Indigenous peoples. Hersey, who was profiled by the New York Times in October 2022, published Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto as a response to the “grind culture” that affects much of the world (would also note that I’m a GTD guy — more later on the relationship between GTD and napping). I love this quote from the Nap Bishop at the end of the NYT article:
“I judge success by how many naps I took in a week, and how many times I told somebody no; how many boundaries I upheld,” Hersey said. “To me that’s justice, that’s liberation, that’s freedom.”
So in the spirit of Dr. King, do some good today, the national MLK day of service. And in the spirit of TND and The Nap Ministry, grab a snooze when you’re done.