Yesterday, in a workshop, we were reminded that when we want to know where our commitment lies, we might look to where we put our bodies. This brought to mind why I’ve chosen to put my body here today as a clergy leader in Ethical Culture. Like most of us, I have needed to be where I can be most authentically myself. And like most, I’ve needed ethical heroes to learn where that might be. Let me tell you about three of my ethical heroes who have helped me figure out what is for me authentic and what tools I needed to live into that so that I could be here this morning . . . They are my mother, my life partner and my mentor. Mother first modeled the way for me. She lived a disciplined life that in her time was counter-cultural. In the l940’s, she stepped up to oppose the scourge of racism through a human rights initiative called the Council of Human Rights. The Council’s leaders were African-Americans who recognized the value of training white people to shift the racist system we all live in. Thanks to this involvement, there were some days Mother would come home in tears for being called a communist. She learned first hand what it was to be terrified through subtle and not-so-subtle intimidation. I also remember her tears the day she went to Court with a young woman called Raina Edwards to help Raina not lose custody of her child who had been bitten by a rat. Raina lived in the only place they could rent and it was filled with rats. In addition to Raina, Mother saw to it that I should meet some of the greatest unsung heroes I will ever know — like Richard Opprensem, a graduate student in economics from Ghana, who had a dream that he would learn how to improve life for his people in Ghana. Richard became my pen-pal throughout high school. He really listened to me no matter how trivial my questions. Richard had to convince me it was not safe in the 1950’s to walk together in public in the south side of Chicago where he came to visit me in college. He knew that wisdom cannot traffic with denial. Through Mother, I also met and became friends at 13 with Harley Flack. His parents, both college graduates, worked as housekeeper and janitor. They were founding leaders of the Council on Human Rights, where Mother learned how to confront racism using the tactics of non-violence. Harley’s father was to him what my mother was to me. Forty-five years later, Harley became the president of Wright State University, a school with 45,000 students. When he spoke at his inauguration, I heard him attribute his father’s patient perseverance for his success. By becoming clergy, perhaps I will somehow contribute to Ethical Culture’s growing into 45,000. When Mother earned her PhD in sociology at 57 years of age, she wrote about how racism infected the media coverage before, during and after the famous l963 March on Washington, when Martin Luther King, Jr., with the tactical support of Bayard Rustin, opened the eyes of our country to our sorrowful legacy. I learned through Mother’s stories and life example that the dream of liberation moves mountains when enough people participate in the same dream. I learned that courage doesn’t mean we won’t be frightened but that we will keep doing the right thing even when we are afraid. I learned that small changes are like seeds; when planted deeply they can make a difference even though it takes some time. And I learned that I must stretch out to places where no person is called stranger. Another ethical hero is my life partner Liz, with whom I’ve experienced an open relationship even though she runs the risk of being stripped of her Presbyterian ordination. We find that we are coming out every day. It keeps us in practice of uncovering the full force of simple honesty. Liz and I together give mutually the quality of love that demands that we be only ourselves. We live out loud, whether we are or not an anomaly of nature. In turn, we are energized by the inner breath of our soul fire when we face the task of telling truth to power. And we call each other to live out loud, she in her challenge to the Presbyterians, I in my effort to bring ethical frameworks of action based in human rights to UN agencies, governments and other non-governmental organizations wherever possible. One thing Liz and I know is that we will never succeed alone. Our witness happens because of others — and for the sake of others, and for the sake of our becoming our best selves . . . Finally, an ethical hero for me has been my mentor Rose L. Walker, who celebrated her 99th birthday four days ago: our beloved, feisty, hat-wearing, former president of National Service Conference who taught me the advantage of being intrepid. The United Nations is a place of enormous complexity and political maneuvering. Nevertheless, she convinced me that Ethical Culture needs to be there. She believes that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the Magna Carta of Ethical Culture. “The United Nations is our offspring!” she claimed in an interview we taped some years ago, by which she meant that it is the place where, in the midst of the greatest pluralism, we to help forge the way to peace. We in National Service Conference choose to identify the United Nations as the world’s largest convening body, the largest community center on earth. It has become my Council of Human Rights. Sixty one years after the proclamation of Declaration of Human Rights, we know that human rights are inextricably linked with earth rights, with the International Criminal Court, with the Millennium Development Goals of ending of racism and all forms of xenophobia and achieving freedom of religion — and from it. What we may still need to appreciate is how urgently we need to midwife Ethical Culture into the 21st century, into global community. Our ethical culture message is to bring human responsibility into bed with human rights. Finally, while Rose is my ethical hero, there is an incredible team behind the work. The executive council at National Service Conference is the linchpin for all our successes. . . . The greatest gift I have received from them is to be trusted. To be trusted because of who I am in my human mix of talent and determination, need and weariness. To be trusted because I am here to pass on the gifts that I have been given by my three heroes: courage despite fear, perseverance despite a climate of injustice and inequity, simple honesty despite the consequences, and above all, shared partnerships. In the end, I believe everyone in Ethical Culture might ask the question I asked that got me here today: Where should I put my body? Racism still wounds us all in this country, too many children in the world are hungry, too many cannot farm their fields any longer because we have been selfish. My hope is that we are one in our intent to pass on our Ethical Culture legacy of respect, fairness and dignity to as many as we dare to influence. My hope as well is that you will remember your heroes, the ones who gave their human gifts to you, the gifts of insight and commitment that are sorely needed today. We all need to pool our gifts to make a better world. Cultures of peace are much harder to birth than cultures of war. For that to happen, we can look to our spiritual ancestors, the great humanists in our lives, as I do, to keep us going and move us forward together. Nothing less will do.
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