‘One Silence at a Time’: Community Marks MLK Day with Stirring Ceremony at United Methodist Church

When he first heard this quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” — Yanfer Martinez, a senior at New Canaan High School and ABC scholar, thought only of historically significant moments of great injustice.

Yet Martinez soon realized that “it was also about the small moments, the quiet ones, the moments where speaking feels uncomfortable,” he recalled Monday morning from the podium at United Methodist Church of New Canaan, addressing more than 150 people gathered for an annual service honoring King’s life and legacy.

“I grew up in a Dominican household in Bridgeport where racism was not an abstract idea—it was something you learned early, sometimes before you had the words to explain it,” he continued. “I saw that prejudice reaches children first, how it shapes the way they see themselves long before they understand why they’re being seen differently.”

When he came to New Canaan, Martinez said, he “arrived with hope.”

“I told myself that a new place might mean a new beginning, that maybe here I could finally breathe without being watched,” he said.

Yet he soon learned that the weight he had felt before “was still there.”

“It just rested on my shoulders more gently,” Martinez said. “And in fact I almost convinced myself it wasn’t there at all. I noticed it in the way people looked at me before they listened to me, and the pauses that came before compliments and how my hair and my skin were admired, not embraced. It was something like praise that reminded me that I was being noticed for standing apart, not standing with. Even when my talents were mentioned, it came with surprise, as if excellence for me was something to react to, not assume. And then there were jokes. The kind that don’t raise voices, the kind that don’t stop conversations. They were quick, casual, easy to laugh off. I laughed too. I told myself it was nothing. But jokes when repeated begin to leave marks, each one stayed a little longer than that last. What was meant to be harmless started to echo, and before I knew it, silence stopped feeling like something pushed onto me and started feeling like something I carried with me.”

It was Martinez’s own first name, Yanfer, that served as a turning point in remaining silent.

“For a long time I learned to make it smaller,” he said. “When it was said wrong, I smiled. When it was shortened, I answered. I told myself it was easier that way, easier to move on than to correct, easier to let a piece of myself slide past unnoticed. But someone once reminded me that our name is not just a word. It’s the first thing we are given.”

It gave Martinez pause, he recalled, because he thought, “If I can stay quiet about my name, something that carries so much of who I am, then I have to ask myself what else I have been learning to stay quiet about? “

Martinez realized he had been shrinking himself to ensure other people’s comfort and accepting praise with limits—causing more harm than peace. 

“I understood that staying quiet was not humility, it was surrender,” he said. “And surrender asks for too much. It asks for your voice, your confidence, and eventually your sense of self. So I began to speak—not perfectly, not loudly, but truthfully—I began to say my name that way it deserves to be said.”

He also began to question the casual jokes around him, to challenge moments when his own excellence was met with surprise. 

“Dr. King showed us that courage creates change, not only in the laws but in hearts,” he said. “Not only in crowds, but in everyday choices. And honoring his legacy means choosing voice over fear, truth over comfort, because our voices matter.”

Martinez received a standing ovation for his reflections—one of several highlights on a stirring morning that drew the crowd to its feet multiple times during the approximately 90-minute service.

Presented by the Interfaith Council of New Canaan and UMC, the 24th Annual Celebration Service for King featured testimonials from NCHS junior Chris Feliz and senior Kian Ragaza, both ABC scholars, a guest address from the Rev. Richard Williams, executive director and pastor at Pivot Ministries, songs from the men’s choir at Pivot as well as bass/baritone Roosevelt Credit, an interfaith prayer for peace led by Jennifer Zonis, singing of the hymns “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “We Shall Overcome,” an offertory benefiting the New Canaan Food Pantry, prayers led by the Rev. Gilbert Burgess of the Community Baptist Church the Rev. Mark Grorud of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church and comments by the Rev. Martha Epstein and Marla Chisolm, both of UMC. 

Municipal officials in attendance included First Selectman Dionna Carlson, Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll, Board of Education member Kate Brambilla, Town Council members Janet Fonss and Zonis, Board of Finance member Victor Alvarez and Inland Wetlands Commission Chair Angela Jameson.

In welcoming attendees, Epstein said, “We have all come together with peace in our hearts for this time of community celebration.”

“I hope that as we celebrate here today, we will heed those words that Dr. King said, that our lives begin to end when we stay silent about things that matter,” Epstein continued. “ If ever there was a time, now is the time. Our Bible is open to the Amos passage about letting ‘justice roll down like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream.’ May it be so. May we bring that power into the world and as the sun is shining over the beautiful snow, what a reminder that joy does come in the morning. Let us continue to share in celebration.

Burgess during a prayer of invocation quotes Psalms 24:7-10 and offered thanks for “allowing us this opportunity to once more again, gather to celebrate the gift that you had given.”

“Thank you, God, that we collectively come to celebrate unity, love, grace, mercy, passion, commitment,” Burgess said. “Help us, oh God, as we go forward, with a fresh anointing for these trying times. We need you. Speak to each of our hearts.”

Williams—a University of Maryland graduate who serves as an elder at Stanwich Church in Greenwich and has worked as executive director of Pivot since 2018—urged attendees to challenge the application of the idiom “silence is golden” beyond movie theaters, libraries or churches.

“In a world where dignity is denied, silence is not golden,” Williams said. “Silence doesn’t shine. It stains. It stains who we are and it stains who we are meant to be. ‘Silence is golden’ sounds wise until a slur lands, and everyone turns their head down. ‘Silence is golden’ sounds wise until a policy that hurts people made in God’s image is made and we stay silent because it’s not our business. It sounds wise until a neighbor suffers alone while we call our quiet ‘minding our business.’ Friends, these are moments when the world holds its breath. When dignity is denied and the powerful look away, when truth is buried and the comfortable stay quiet, when suffering is normalized and the rest of us treat it as just part of the scenery.”

In such moments, Williams said, “silence becomes a verdict.”

“In the words of Dr. King, ‘The hush becomes betrayal.’ We tell ourselves silence is neutral. It’s neutral at work. It’s neutral in church. It’s neutral in politics, but Dr. King said something far more uncomfortable: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

For Williams, King was talking about “the slow death of the soul.”

“He was talking about being quiet when truth is on the line, when justice is on the line, when someone’s humanity is on the line,” Williams said. “So the question that confronts us today friends: What happens to a people who choose quiet over conscience? What happens to a soul that keeps saying, ‘It’s not my problem, it’s not my business, it’s not my fight.’ What happens when we keep choosing fear and comfort and convenience over conviction? And fear and comfort and convenience keep having the last word? How do we become a people to break the hush? How do we become a people to break that hush with truth and love? Friends, when we keep choosing silence over conscience, something inside us begins to die. Silence does not spare us. It slowly hallows us out. It eats away at our courage. So today we remember Dr. King, not just for the price he paid, but the powerful lesson his life teaches us about the danger of silence.”

Williams asked those in attendance to recall a time that they may have remained silent about something that mattered.

“Have you felt that?” he said. “What did you do? You were in a conversation with someone who crossed the line about race, about addiction, about poverty, about ‘those people,’ and you knew it was wrong. You felt the nudge inside, ‘Say something, that was pretty cruel.’ And then that other voice: ‘Don’t make it hard. Don’t mess with the relationship. Don’t stir the pot. It’s not even your business.’ And you swallow the words, you laugh it off, you change the subject. On the outside, everything stayed calm, friends, but inside something strained.”

Williams said that no one wakes up one day and decides that they want to lose their integrity.

“We lose it one silence at a time,” he said.