Harold A. Bosley - "What Are You Worth?" (November 6, 1960)
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| - | Yes, the new Testament has one specialty above others. | 0:23 |
| It is the capacity of throwing open doors on problems | 0:29 | |
| that are not only specifically Christian in nature, | 0:33 | |
| but universal in their compass. | 0:37 | |
| When Paul for example, was writing to the Christians | 0:41 | |
| in Ephesus, | 0:44 | |
| he urged them to live a life worthy of their calling | 0:46 | |
| as disciples of Jesus Christ. | 0:50 | |
| And in this advice, | 0:54 | |
| he was opening up a door on two problems. | 0:55 | |
| One universal and import | 0:57 | |
| and the other special significance | 1:00 | |
| to those who call themselves Christian. | 1:02 | |
| The import or the universal problem | 1:06 | |
| has to do with the meaning of worthiness in human life. | 1:08 | |
| A problem that escapes no one. | 1:13 | |
| Sometime ago, a reporter for one of our great magazines, | 1:17 | |
| was given the assignment of doing a story | 1:21 | |
| on one of the richest men in the world. | 1:24 | |
| He made an appointment to see him | 1:28 | |
| and his first question to his subject was, | 1:29 | |
| "How much are you worth?" | 1:33 | |
| The man for a moment hesitated | 1:36 | |
| and then answered quite honestly, | 1:39 | |
| "I just don't know". | 1:41 | |
| Now in reading this, | 1:44 | |
| I was impressed with question and answer. | 1:45 | |
| I like I must confess. | 1:47 | |
| How anyone could conceivably have so much money | 1:49 | |
| he didn't know how much he had, | 1:52 | |
| is and must remain a mystery to those of us | 1:54 | |
| who need to know and are able to know how much we have | 1:57 | |
| down to every fleeting penny. | 2:01 | |
| But apparently there are such. | 2:03 | |
| But in order to get the question | 2:06 | |
| and get it in its right perspective, | 2:09 | |
| I'd like to enlarge it a little | 2:11 | |
| in order to let it guide us in areas where we all live. | 2:14 | |
| Instead of asking how much are we worth, | 2:20 | |
| I'd like to ask, how worthy are we? | 2:22 | |
| It's still a matter of seeking our worth | 2:27 | |
| but in a broader sense. | 2:30 | |
| The first question, how much are we worth | 2:33 | |
| is a question of material resources. | 2:35 | |
| The question, how worthy are we is a question of character. | 2:40 | |
| Obviously, a man can be worth a lot of money | 2:45 | |
| yet be quite unworthy of it. | 2:48 | |
| He can be a Tommy Manville or a Nelson Rockefeller. | 2:52 | |
| There may be some question as how much money | 2:57 | |
| these men are worth, but reputedly it's a lot. | 2:59 | |
| But when you ask of each one of them or anyone else | 3:04 | |
| how worthy is he of what he has, | 3:06 | |
| the answer must be fashioned out of their life | 3:10 | |
| and their works. | 3:13 | |
| We can inherit worth if it's limited to money | 3:16 | |
| but we cannot inherit worthiness. | 3:20 | |
| Someone else may make the money for us | 3:23 | |
| and give it to us for us to use | 3:25 | |
| but no one can give us the worthiness to use it responsibly. | 3:29 | |
| Worthiness is an earned degree, | 3:35 | |
| there's nothing honorary about it. | 3:38 | |
| That is why any important inquiry and the worth of a person | 3:41 | |
| must necessarily reach far beyond his bank role | 3:45 | |
| or his lack of it. | 3:48 | |
| And must plumb the very depths of his character, | 3:50 | |
| his soul if you please, | 3:53 | |
| and admittedly and unavoidably painful procedure | 3:56 | |
| for a few of us are really worthy of the great gifts | 4:01 | |
| we take so for granted and enjoy so casually. | 4:06 | |
| Take this business of life or the shared life | 4:12 | |
| or the religious appraisal of life | 4:15 | |
| as we have it in our various religious traditions. | 4:18 | |
| Life is something we all have in varying degrees | 4:22 | |
| depending upon what we've done the day before. | 4:25 | |
| And what a privilege and a blessing it is | 4:29 | |
| to have life and to be able to enjoy the ability to breathe, | 4:31 | |
| to see, to hear, to feel, to know, | 4:36 | |
| to appreciate the unending panorama of color | 4:38 | |
| and sound and silence. | 4:41 | |
| The joy of work and play, | 4:44 | |
| the strength of life, | 4:45 | |
| the challenge of work. | 4:47 | |
| Whether we put it in one way or another, | 4:49 | |
| life is a great gift and a priceless possession we have. | 4:51 | |
| We take it so for granted | 4:55 | |
| and we seldom ask, am I really worthy of all this? | 4:59 | |
| This life that we have and prize is never a solitary entity, | 5:06 | |
| a naked soul, | 5:10 | |
| it's a nucleus of relationships with others | 5:12 | |
| and whatever meaning it has is a shared meaning. | 5:14 | |
| Its deepest meanings ought to be found | 5:18 | |
| with and among other people. | 5:20 | |
| They are never our own alone alone. | 5:23 | |
| If we should take friends and loved ones | 5:27 | |
| and comrades out of our life, | 5:29 | |
| we would be little more than this in kind of spirit | 5:32 | |
| spinnings or the empty spaces of meaninglessness. | 5:37 | |
| If we should try to put our finger on the deepest drive | 5:41 | |
| in our own life, | 5:44 | |
| we would not be far wrong if we would phrase it | 5:46 | |
| in some such fashion as this. | 5:48 | |
| It is the quest for meaning through the deepening | 5:51 | |
| of creative relationships. | 5:55 | |
| Take the gift of the shared life, | 5:59 | |
| which we all enjoy. | 6:01 | |
| It's both a present factor | 6:03 | |
| and it's an unfolding possibility. | 6:04 | |
| We have parents and family. | 6:07 | |
| We have comrades in work and play. | 6:09 | |
| We have our sick loved ones | 6:12 | |
| for homes and families of our own. | 6:15 | |
| But do we ask as we stand on the threshold | 6:18 | |
| of these experiences, | 6:21 | |
| or seek to we evaluate them whether we are worthy? | 6:23 | |
| To the extent we are worthy? | 6:28 | |
| How we are unworthy of all that they open up to us? | 6:30 | |
| We usually have no difficulty asking | 6:38 | |
| whether someone else is worthy, | 6:40 | |
| but we hesitate to put the question to ourselves. | 6:43 | |
| But student can help wondering whether he is worthy | 6:49 | |
| of the opportunity to receive | 6:51 | |
| a thorough college and university training. | 6:53 | |
| How I wish we did not take that so for granted | 6:57 | |
| as are just do as something someone else owes us. | 7:00 | |
| We've heard it many times that probably, | 7:06 | |
| we wouldn't take it so for granted | 7:07 | |
| if it came a little harder to us. | 7:09 | |
| Last year I asked a high school senior | 7:13 | |
| what he was going to do this year. | 7:15 | |
| He said quite casually, | 7:18 | |
| "Oh, I suppose I'll try to go to college. | 7:19 | |
| My old man has his heart set on it." | 7:23 | |
| Startled I offered Andrew a seat with his old man | 7:26 | |
| and called him off if he didn't wanna go to college. | 7:28 | |
| But the boy said, "Oh, I suppose I might as well go. | 7:31 | |
| There's nothing else I'd rather do." | 7:35 | |
| Now, that's what I would call a slight interest | 7:37 | |
| in an education. | 7:39 | |
| I found it to be quite different there in Japan | 7:43 | |
| when I was visiting there five years ago this very month. | 7:45 | |
| Visiting on half a dozen campuses, | 7:50 | |
| I found the most intense students imaginable. | 7:52 | |
| They knew they were fortunate to be in college | 7:56 | |
| by a discipline of study that imperil | 8:00 | |
| the health of many of them. | 8:02 | |
| They tried to prove worthy of that privilege | 8:04 | |
| under the unfolding privilege of responsible leadership | 8:06 | |
| in the bedeviled life of their beautiful and beloved land. | 8:11 | |
| U faculty and students alike, | 8:17 | |
| are in one of the great universities of the world. | 8:19 | |
| There's no question about its worthiness | 8:25 | |
| but have you ever confronted yourself | 8:30 | |
| with a question of your worthiness to be here? | 8:32 | |
| Or do you regard it as an oyster to open with the sword | 8:38 | |
| of your own desire? | 8:44 | |
| Nothing more. | 8:47 | |
| We in the United States are in the midst | 8:51 | |
| of determining whether we are worthy | 8:53 | |
| of the disciplines of democracy. | 8:55 | |
| Nearly half of our adults will not take the trouble | 8:58 | |
| to vote next Tuesday and God alone knows | 9:01 | |
| how many of those who do, | 9:03 | |
| will have given very much thought to what they're doing. | 9:05 | |
| In fact, the entire political campaign has been | 9:09 | |
| and continues to be a kind of descent into a furnace | 9:11 | |
| for one who really believes in democracy as a way of life. | 9:16 | |
| Not that the image of our two chief candidates | 9:21 | |
| has not come through. | 9:24 | |
| They seem to be upright enough. | 9:25 | |
| Both of them. | 9:27 | |
| We have a very confident image of both of them now. | 9:29 | |
| Confidence we appreciate. | 9:32 | |
| Whether we appreciate the kind of cockiness, | 9:34 | |
| it says, "Move over Abraham. | 9:36 | |
| I am here now I'll take over." | 9:38 | |
| Is another question. | 9:41 | |
| I'm not really so worried about the image | 9:44 | |
| of the candidate that's coming through | 9:46 | |
| as I am concerned about the image of you and me, | 9:48 | |
| that I feel coming through their appeal | 9:51 | |
| to us and to our votes. | 9:54 | |
| What kind of an image of this country do you get | 9:57 | |
| as you look at the picture that comes through now? | 10:01 | |
| Well, some of the basic lineaments in that picture | 10:07 | |
| will be fear, | 10:10 | |
| hate, | 10:12 | |
| pride, | 10:14 | |
| anxiety, | 10:16 | |
| security, | 10:19 | |
| a perambulating pocket book, | 10:22 | |
| well stuffed. | 10:27 | |
| That's us. | 10:29 | |
| That's what we want. | 10:31 | |
| Apparently, spell it out a little more carefully. | 10:34 | |
| We are in fond at the things that will move us to vote | 10:40 | |
| one way rather than another are one, | 10:42 | |
| self-interest. | 10:46 | |
| My job. | 10:47 | |
| My income. | 10:49 | |
| My security. | 10:50 | |
| My future. | 10:51 | |
| Or two, group interest. | 10:53 | |
| Labor, | 10:56 | |
| management, | 10:57 | |
| religion, | 10:59 | |
| sectionalism, | 11:00 | |
| minority status of whatever kind | 11:02 | |
| or three, a casual glance at the world round about us | 11:04 | |
| in order that the world may be informed | 11:11 | |
| that we're number one. | 11:13 | |
| We're boss. | 11:16 | |
| We're the most powerful. | 11:19 | |
| We are the most righteous. | 11:20 | |
| We're gonna run things. | 11:22 | |
| I find myself wondering whether we are not trying | 11:31 | |
| to decide between one of two images | 11:34 | |
| of the leadership of this country. | 11:39 | |
| One, | 11:45 | |
| the great white father who will do all things for all people | 11:46 | |
| and who knows exactly how to go about it, | 11:50 | |
| will be able to do it if we just place our trust in him. | 11:53 | |
| Or the other image is the new Messiah. | 11:58 | |
| A Gallant Knight from the far east or the far west, | 12:01 | |
| who has been in doubt supernaturally | 12:05 | |
| with the necessary wisdom to bring into being full answers | 12:07 | |
| to the most complicated and perplexing problems | 12:11 | |
| that mankind has ever been called on to face. | 12:14 | |
| In any event, | 12:20 | |
| regardless of which image we're in time toward, | 12:21 | |
| we get the distinct impression | 12:23 | |
| that if we're just willing to vote for the right man, | 12:26 | |
| everything will be all right. | 12:28 | |
| Backing away from this incredible experience | 12:32 | |
| of a political campaign, | 12:34 | |
| I find myself wondering whether we are worthy | 12:36 | |
| of democracy and freedom, | 12:39 | |
| if we persuade ourselves to cast our vote | 12:42 | |
| in the light of such appeals in such interests. | 12:44 | |
| We take freedom and democracy as our do. | 12:48 | |
| We assume we know what they are. | 12:51 | |
| We assume we understand them to the very depths | 12:55 | |
| of their nature. | 12:57 | |
| Is there any of the agonizing | 12:59 | |
| it went into the Federalist papers? | 13:01 | |
| Are we being treated to the kind of discussion | 13:05 | |
| that went abroad from one end of the colonies to the other, | 13:08 | |
| as we were trying to bring into existence | 13:11 | |
| this land that we love and the essential nature | 13:13 | |
| of our laws and our life? | 13:15 | |
| Not the offendi of any of our candidates can help | 13:17 | |
| and we're not being treated to it. | 13:19 | |
| We've got the answers. | 13:24 | |
| Why should we work? | 13:26 | |
| And if we don't have it, | 13:28 | |
| someone right over here who does have. | 13:29 | |
| Just vote for him and he'll do the rest of it. | 13:32 | |
| How worthy are we? | 13:38 | |
| Obvious great minority adventure | 13:42 | |
| known as the Democratic Enterprise, | 13:46 | |
| the latest arrival on the scene of human relationships. | 13:52 | |
| The one most widely discussed from one end of the world | 13:58 | |
| to the other by people who are unwilling to measure up | 14:02 | |
| to it's discipline. | 14:04 | |
| How worthy are we proving ourselves of it in this day? | 14:06 | |
| I'm sure we feel the same sense of unworthiness | 14:16 | |
| as we do in turn to our religious heritage. | 14:19 | |
| It's so easy to pass snap judgements off on that. | 14:24 | |
| I'm making common confession for all freshmen. | 14:29 | |
| I know when I say I never knew as much | 14:33 | |
| about my religious inheritance as I did | 14:35 | |
| when I was a freshman. | 14:38 | |
| I had more answers about it then than I've ever had since. | 14:41 | |
| The longer I've worked at it | 14:46 | |
| and the harder I've dug into it, | 14:48 | |
| the more complicated in some ways, | 14:50 | |
| the more simple in others, | 14:53 | |
| the more exacting in every way | 14:55 | |
| (indistinct) | 14:57 | |
| When I hear someone with a flip, | 14:59 | |
| way passing off the whole of the Christian heritage, | 15:02 | |
| the whole of the heritage of Hebrewism, | 15:05 | |
| as though he'd plumbed it to it's steps. | 15:07 | |
| Weighed it. | 15:11 | |
| Measured it. | 15:12 | |
| Founded wanting. | 15:13 | |
| I hardly know what to say. | 15:16 | |
| That it is open to criticism. | 15:19 | |
| Any reasonable person knows. | 15:21 | |
| But that it is on trial. | 15:24 | |
| Is another matter. | 15:29 | |
| Whether we have the courage to place it on trial, | 15:31 | |
| are worthy of the effort to understand it, | 15:35 | |
| is still another matter. | 15:39 | |
| Even those of us who are willing to grant that, | 15:43 | |
| the need for worthiness is a very real need in our life, | 15:46 | |
| have a right to ask whether there is a way | 15:50 | |
| in which we can grow from our present state | 15:52 | |
| of partial unworthiness or real unworthiness, | 15:54 | |
| into a state of greater worthiness. | 15:59 | |
| The facts are quite reassuring | 16:02 | |
| if a person is willing to travel a high and a hard road, | 16:03 | |
| the cultivation of worthiness, | 16:08 | |
| maybe more an art than a science. | 16:11 | |
| In the exact sense I know of no one | 16:13 | |
| who can diagram and exact pattern which if adhered to, | 16:15 | |
| will guarantee a increase in worthiness. | 16:19 | |
| But, every artist, every scientist, | 16:21 | |
| every thinker, and every responsible person | 16:24 | |
| knows that we can grow in this area. | 16:26 | |
| Zona Gale, a novelist, | 16:31 | |
| was wanting to ask for her social creed. | 16:32 | |
| She replied, "I have determined do increase | 16:35 | |
| the area of my awareness as long as I live". | 16:39 | |
| Look at that for a moment | 16:44 | |
| and you may feel as I do about it, | 16:45 | |
| that this is the creed of a creative life. | 16:47 | |
| It reminds me of what Henry James once said | 16:51 | |
| when he was asked how to pursue the art of writing. | 16:53 | |
| He answered, | 16:57 | |
| "Try to be one of those persons on whom nothing is lost." | 16:57 | |
| That's hard advice. | 17:02 | |
| Harder than we'll ever know until we try to become | 17:04 | |
| the open kind of person on whom nothing is lost | 17:07 | |
| in whom there is a sensitivity and a conscientiousness | 17:11 | |
| in our relationships with other people | 17:15 | |
| that actually receives them openly and deeply | 17:17 | |
| on their own term as human beings. | 17:21 | |
| Only one who is aware of and is prepared to pay the price | 17:28 | |
| of ever grading awareness of other people | 17:31 | |
| will understand the agony that goes into it. | 17:36 | |
| It's so much simpler, | 17:40 | |
| so much less painful, | 17:41 | |
| so much more peaceful, | 17:42 | |
| to operate within the well-defined categories | 17:45 | |
| of what I like and what I want, | 17:48 | |
| and what I fear and I hate and what I believe. | 17:49 | |
| Just stay within the wall. | 17:53 | |
| I say it's simpler, | 17:56 | |
| for the same reason, | 17:58 | |
| it is simpler to try to sail a boat inside | 18:00 | |
| a well sheltered harbor than to take it out on the ocean. | 18:04 | |
| If we are proud of our prejudices, | 18:08 | |
| if we want to make a virtue of blindness, | 18:10 | |
| we will not carry to explore the meaning | 18:13 | |
| of greater sensitivity and awareness | 18:16 | |
| in our relationships with other people | 18:18 | |
| and we will close out permanently, | 18:21 | |
| the meaning of greater worth for our own life. | 18:24 | |
| One of the first and possibly the hardest battles | 18:28 | |
| that we have to fight, | 18:31 | |
| if we are to increase our own worthiness, | 18:33 | |
| is an internal one, | 18:35 | |
| mainly with our inherited | 18:38 | |
| and our deeply beloved prejudices. | 18:41 | |
| We all have them differing only in degree. | 18:44 | |
| Prejudice is to race or religion or culture, | 18:49 | |
| build walls around us, | 18:53 | |
| put blinders on us. | 18:55 | |
| They permit us to see only what they want us to see. | 18:57 | |
| They block out all else leaving us conscious | 19:00 | |
| of the things that nourish them. | 19:03 | |
| And they will admit nothing yet repudiates them. | 19:08 | |
| In time of crisis whether in war or depression | 19:11 | |
| or a period of great uncertainty, | 19:14 | |
| fear and hate apply for the job as dormant of our spirit. | 19:17 | |
| And if we hire them, | 19:21 | |
| they will admit only those things that nurture | 19:23 | |
| our fears and our hates. | 19:26 | |
| You see this in every war man has fought. | 19:28 | |
| In World War II, we called and permitted ourselves to call | 19:32 | |
| the Japanese little yellow monkeys | 19:37 | |
| but never referred to as the children of God. | 19:39 | |
| We knew we were wrong as we did it. | 19:43 | |
| We knew we were defaming our great people, | 19:45 | |
| but that's why we were out to do. | 19:48 | |
| We weren't out to do justice to it | 19:50 | |
| we were out to get ourselves in a frame of mind | 19:53 | |
| where we can carry on a war to victory against him. | 19:55 | |
| Just how deeply we sinned against him I didn't know, | 19:59 | |
| until I was in their homes and schools, | 20:03 | |
| and churches for an extended period of time recently. | 20:06 | |
| Well, anyone deny that wars grow out of such situations. | 20:11 | |
| Situations in which people like ourselves, | 20:16 | |
| either blind themselves or permit themselves | 20:19 | |
| to be progressively blinded, | 20:23 | |
| to the realities of the life of other people. | 20:26 | |
| The problem of awareness is the first step | 20:31 | |
| toward worthiness comes very close home | 20:33 | |
| when we asked how large our awareness is | 20:36 | |
| of other religions and other races and other nations. | 20:38 | |
| Are we willing to become one of those | 20:42 | |
| on whom nothing is lost as we approach a Jew | 20:44 | |
| or a Negro or a Catholic or a Muslim or a Buddhist | 20:48 | |
| or an alien or anyone other than ourselves? | 20:52 | |
| Are we alive to them as persons, as human beings, | 20:56 | |
| as children of the living God, | 20:59 | |
| or do we have a lot of ready-made categories | 21:02 | |
| dug deep by our prejudices into which we dump | 21:05 | |
| and dump them all? | 21:08 | |
| Are we alert on each of the things about them, | 21:11 | |
| the characteristics in them that offend us | 21:13 | |
| and therefore nourish our hate and suspicion | 21:17 | |
| or are we open enough to admit the things | 21:20 | |
| that contradict these impressions? | 21:23 | |
| No law I know of can make us do this | 21:27 | |
| and I doubt whether even God himself can force us | 21:30 | |
| to attempt it or keep us at the effort | 21:33 | |
| unless we are willing to try it. | 21:36 | |
| But unless the entire witness of our faith is wrong, | 21:40 | |
| we must move in the direction of increasing | 21:43 | |
| and deepening our awareness of other people, | 21:45 | |
| other religions, other races, and other ways of life. | 21:48 | |
| If we are to cultivate the growth of worthiness | 21:53 | |
| necessary to live in this world teetering as it is | 21:55 | |
| on the edge of annihilation. | 21:59 | |
| Blindness is not a virtue | 22:02 | |
| even when practiced by good people | 22:05 | |
| and blindness is evil | 22:09 | |
| when it is practiced by those who confess to believe | 22:12 | |
| in one God, who is the creator, | 22:17 | |
| the sustainer and the Redeemer of all men. | 22:21 | |
| But until then, unless we can win | 22:26 | |
| this profoundly personal battle, | 22:27 | |
| we haven't a ghost of a chance to win victory | 22:30 | |
| for the world community. | 22:32 | |
| Some years ago, | 22:36 | |
| one of our playwrights put this line in a play. | 22:37 | |
| We live in a time when the truest voices | 22:41 | |
| are struck down by the loudest. | 22:44 | |
| I can't forget it. | 22:47 | |
| Each time I try to forget it, | 22:50 | |
| there arises new documentation of its authenticity. | 22:52 | |
| But let us remember this, | 22:56 | |
| the loud voices of hatred, anger, fear and prejudice | 22:59 | |
| are first lifted not in the marketplace | 23:02 | |
| or on the radio or television, | 23:05 | |
| but within the sanctuary of our own soul. | 23:08 | |
| Once lifted there, | 23:12 | |
| they move swiftly to the microphone, | 23:13 | |
| the classroom, the pulpit in the church council. | 23:15 | |
| And once they move in anywhere | 23:18 | |
| they dominate everything else. | 23:20 | |
| They narrow our field of awareness, | 23:22 | |
| letting us see only the things they want us to see, | 23:25 | |
| hear only what they want us to hear | 23:29 | |
| and feel only what they want us to feel. | 23:31 | |
| I'm all for the laws and the policies and the institutions | 23:34 | |
| that lead toward the control of prejudice, bigotry | 23:39 | |
| and discrimination in every form, | 23:43 | |
| but let us never deceive ourselves | 23:46 | |
| as to where the first and all important battle | 23:48 | |
| against these things must be fought | 23:50 | |
| namely within our own personal selves | 23:53 | |
| in the depths of our own souls. | 23:57 | |
| And if we can't win it there, | 23:59 | |
| we won't win it anywhere else | 24:01 | |
| with any degree of significance. | 24:04 | |
| As we struggle along the road toward worthwhileness, | 24:08 | |
| we shall need to cultivate the art of being quite humble | 24:12 | |
| and honest about ourselves, | 24:15 | |
| of engaging in candid criticism of motif and D | 24:17 | |
| instead of talking about abstractions | 24:23 | |
| like a member of another race, | 24:26 | |
| whether it be Jew or Negro | 24:29 | |
| or Oriento, | 24:32 | |
| we need to talk in terms of someone we know | 24:35 | |
| who belongs to that group. | 24:38 | |
| The law of association can help mightily | 24:42 | |
| if we give it a chance in this regard. | 24:44 | |
| When we hear the word Jews spoken, | 24:47 | |
| of whom do we think someone who may have rubbed us | 24:50 | |
| the wrong way or of those like Jesus Christ or Paul, | 24:52 | |
| or many of our dearest and sincerest friends | 24:57 | |
| in home and community. | 25:00 | |
| What image do we conjure up with over at Roman Catholic, | 25:03 | |
| those of us who are Protestant? | 25:05 | |
| Do we think of some ecclesiastic | 25:08 | |
| who's needle this the wrong way | 25:10 | |
| tried to dominate the life of our community? | 25:11 | |
| Or do we think of St. Francis of Assisi | 25:15 | |
| who has rendered a kind of richness to us all | 25:18 | |
| that we can never repay no matter how hard we might try? | 25:21 | |
| Here is everywhere else, | 25:26 | |
| we need to be humble and honest | 25:27 | |
| about how best to live in this world of which we are a part. | 25:28 | |
| This suggests that we need to extend the lines | 25:34 | |
| of our own personal relationships | 25:37 | |
| until there isn't a single chasm in the human family | 25:39 | |
| that we haven't thrown a personal bridge across. | 25:43 | |
| I need to know and be deeply open to | 25:47 | |
| and appreciative of members of other groups. | 25:50 | |
| I need to know... | 25:58 | |
| be grateful for knowing men like Martin Luther king. | 26:00 | |
| You know a man like that he's to know beyond all arguments. | 26:05 | |
| Get anything that separates him and what he stands for | 26:10 | |
| from status on the plane of equality | 26:16 | |
| and life in the spirit of fraternity here and everywhere | 26:19 | |
| he is evil and it has been evil from the beginning | 26:22 | |
| of the world. | 26:24 | |
| Personal bridges like these, | 26:29 | |
| are the only bridges that are strong enough | 26:33 | |
| to bear the weight of what must be born | 26:35 | |
| if we are to build a kind of a world | 26:40 | |
| that is waiting to be built. | 26:43 | |
| I should like to suggest as the culmination | 26:46 | |
| of our thrust toward worthiness, | 26:48 | |
| that we engage in the serious and sustained practice | 26:51 | |
| of worship of the one God who made us all. | 26:57 | |
| When we try to build one world, | 27:01 | |
| we're not tugging at our bootstraps. | 27:03 | |
| We're trying to bring into actuality and reality. | 27:07 | |
| Something is planted deep within us | 27:11 | |
| by a wheel out there and greater than our own. | 27:13 | |
| And we're offering to be servants of that wheel. | 27:17 | |
| We need to learn how to worship | 27:22 | |
| as individuals in the privacy of our own rooms. | 27:25 | |
| Here in a great company like this, | 27:30 | |
| where we confront ourselves with the fact of God | 27:34 | |
| and spiritually prostrate ourselves | 27:39 | |
| before the one in whom we live | 27:41 | |
| and move and have our being. | 27:43 | |
| It's a hard thing to take our cherish prejudices | 27:46 | |
| to an alter like this and ask God to bless them. | 27:51 | |
| It takes a good deal, more self-righteousness | 27:57 | |
| and most of us have. | 27:59 | |
| We need to share in services like this steadily | 28:03 | |
| with peoples of all groups | 28:08 | |
| in order that we may know who we are. | 28:12 | |
| We are the sons of God. | 28:17 | |
| God help us. | 28:19 | |
| And we are by his wheel brothers one of another, | 28:21 | |
| and may he truly help us. | 28:27 |
