The Person in a Different Skin

A woman shopping for groceries noticed an employee, a teenager, staring at her and her two small children. She was used to the attention, as both of her children were adopted and looked vastly different from each other. One had the dark chocolate skin of her Haitian parents and the other, a boy who hailed from Russia, was lightly complected with blonde hair. “Those your kids?” the youth eventually asked.

The proud mother answered, “Yes, they are!”

“They adopted?” he continued.

“Yes.”

“I thought so,” he surmised. “I figured you’re too old to have kids that small.”

I don’t imagine the young man meant any disrespect; it was an observation. He was struck by the age difference between the children and their mother, but didn’t seem to give much regard to what would have seemed obvious to others - the different races of the children. I find it gratifying in that our world has been shaped far too long by values we place on skin color.

I’m reminded of an email I received from a reader, Jeanne Green, who told me she is Caucasian and is married to a man of another race. They raised two mixed-race children, a boy and a girl. Their girl had no problem growing up biracial, but it was more difficult for her boy. He wrote a paper in school about living in a world that too often only pays attention to color.

"I am a person who was born to live in a skin with a different color from yours.

Thus, the color pigments embedded by the unchangeable hands of nature in your skin are perchance white while mine are black or brown or yellow.

But underneath I am just like you.

My muscles ripple in the same waves of power and thrill to the same throb of joyous action.

My mind has the same functions as yours.

I reach out, just the same as you do, in aspirations of the soul.

I love and hate, hope and despair, rejoice and suffer along with you. 

When my children lose their fair chances at life and become aware of the bitter road of prejudice they must tread, then I know what my color has cost. 

I offer you my hand in rebuilding an unjust world that you and I can make better than we found it. 

I am the person in a different skin." 

Mahatma Gandhi accurately said, “Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.” My only question is, will we pass that test?

--Steve Goodier

Image: flickr.com/Defence Images (used by permission)

A Cure for Intolerance

Globe in Hands

We live in an age of intolerance and extremism.

Intolerance is an infectious social disease. It has always been prevalent and is usually spread by fear and misunderstanding. It can infect any kind of group and most any individual. Humorist Mark Twain noticed it in the religious communities of his daytime. He once said that he built a cage and put a cat and a dog in it. After a while they learned to get along. Then he added a bird, a goat and a pig. After some adjustments they, too, got along. Then he added a Baptist, a Presbyterian and a Catholic. Soon there was nothing left alive in the cage.

The disease of intolerance is not communicated only in religious groups. I’ve seen it infect racial groups, economic groups and even whole nations (where it is often cleverly disguised as patriotism). Intolerance always fences people out. It creates one group we call US. And the rest we call THEM.

But intolerance can be cured. Let me give an example. An undated letter to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. can be found in the archives of The King Center. It was written by a certain Jefferson Poland who spoke about his grandfather. Here is an excerpt of the letter and King’s reply:

Dear Rev. King:
     This is something I think you will want to know.
     A few weeks ago a man in Panama City, Florida, one Ross Mullin, sent you a poem which criticized prejudice.
     This man was my grandfather. He had been against Jews and Negroes almost all his life. When I had gotten thrown in jail for sit-ins, he had been shocked and angered. Finally, after some 60-odd years of hate, he grew to the point where he wrote you that poem. I had not had time to write him of my pride and joy before I got a telegram telling me he is dead….

Dr. King replied:

Dear Mr. Poland,
     This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter of recent date. Your story was indeed moving. It is encouraging to know that it is possible to grow and change after a long heritage of prejudice. Certainly your participation contributed to this growth and understanding on the part of your grandfather….

His grandfather had been infected with the disease of intolerance. But his grandson showed him a different way and, to his credit, he was cured. As Nelson Mandela said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

There is a cure for intolerance. It requires learning a different way. A better way. The cure for intolerance is to recognize a fundamental truth about humanity: there is no US and THEM. The construct of US and THEM is entirely artificial. It is not real. There is only WE. One world. One people. One family. Only WE.

We can cure the disease of intolerance. We must do it if the world is to survive.

No us. No them.

Just we.

-- Steve Goodier

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A Golden Chain of Kindness

Image by Stephen Eastop

Writer and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, "Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together." But I was not thinking about a golden chain of kindness one day when a dilapidated automobile, possibly held together with glue and wire, parked in front of the house. During those years, we lived in a small mountain town next to a freeway. Our home was located across the street from the church I served, and travelers in need frequently found their way to our front door, usually aided by townsfolk who pointed out where they might get some assistance.

Let me confess: kindness can be difficult and thankless work. Though the little community generously donated to help with this cause, I grew weary of the numerous strangers who constantly rang my doorbell. My life was busy, my work was demanding and I was tired. I was also beginning to feel “put upon.” One time our property was vandalized by a man I had invited to spend the night in the warmth of the little church; once I drove 30 miles through a hazardous blizzard to carry a couple of hitchhikers to shelter who showed no appreciation for the sacrifice; frequently I was awakened in the middle of the night to get out in the bitter cold and give assistance to someone passing through; too often travelers manipulated or lied or stridently complained that I didn’t give them more.

Not that I need a lot of thanks. But my work with these people was volunteer and I was losing the warm feeling I once had by doing it. At one time I felt I was truly helping. Now I felt stressed and harassed. Early on it seemed like I might be doing some good, but as of late I wondered if that was true.

It seemed as if the golden chain of kindness was broken. Instead of binding me closer to others, I felt increasingly distant.

I also felt guilt for feeling sorry for myself. “I should WANT to be more helpful,” I told myself. I questioned my motives. Am I doing all of this so people will value me, or because there is a need here I can help meet? Is this about me or about them? I still offered assistance where I could, though more than once I silently wished that people wanting something from me would just go away.

But on this day, a young man with a week-old beard climbed from the broken-down automobile. He had no money and no food. He asked if I could give him some work. I offered him some gasoline and a meal. I told him that if he wanted to work, we'd be pleased if he'd cut the grass, but work wasn't necessary.

Though sweaty and hungry, he worked hard. Because of the afternoon heat, I thought he might give up before the job was completed. But he persisted and, after a long while, he sat wearily down in the shade. I thanked him for his work and gave him the money I promised. Then I offered him a little extra for a task particularly well done, but he refused. "No sank you," he said in heavily accented speech. I insisted that he take the money but he stood up and once again said, "No sank you. I want to work. Joo keep the money." I realized his dignity was at stake and thanked him again for the good job.

I never saw that man after he drove away. And interestingly, he probably thought I helped him that day. But that is not the way it was. I’m sure I didn't help him as much as he helped me. In his honesty and sincerity, he reminded me of the innate decency of people. He helped me recall just why I wanted to reach out to strangers in the first place. Something that had almost died inside seemed to wake up. I remembered my real reasons for reaching out and immediately began to feel better…more hopeful, more useful. I believed, again, that the little I was doing could actually make a difference.

This stranger (I don’t even recall his name) helped me to once again WANT to do something for those who are in need. I wish I could thank him for giving me back a little optimism I had lost somewhere along the way. Because of him I felt that once again the golden chain of kindness binding us to one another was restored. We were brothers. I may have fed his body that day. But he fed my soul.

-- Steve Goodier

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Sticking Together

It must be our highest priority.

An old story is told of two men who went fishing in a small boat. The day was uneventful until one of them hooked a huge fish, which, in the struggle, pulled him overboard. He couldn't swim and began to panic.

"Help!" he yelled. "Save me!"

The friend reached over and grabbed the man by the hair to pull him closer to the boat. But when he tugged, the man's toupee came off and he slipped down under the water again.

He came up shouting, "Hey, help me! I can't swim!"

So the friend reached down again and this time latched onto the struggling man's arm. But when he pulled, the arm came off! It was an artificial limb.

The drowning man continued to kick and thrash around and his friend reached out a third time. This time he grabbed a leg and pulled. You guessed it -- a wooden leg.

The man continued splashing and sputtering and calling out, "Help me!" until his friend finally called back in disgust, "How can I help you if you won't stick together?"

And that is a metaphor for each of us. How can people in marriages and families stand a chance when they won't stick together? How can religious communities, civic groups, schools and businesses get anywhere when they won't stick together? And how can a nation or even our global village function well when it won't stick together?

None of us lives in isolation. This experience we call life is a group outing. We're in it together. And some conflict along the way is inevitable. But our highest priority, when all is said and done, has to be commitment to each other – sticking together.          

Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it this way: 

“We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know. We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome: black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all. We all belong to this family, this human family, God's family.”

I can't say it any more clearly.

-- Steve Goodier

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How Do You Know the Night Has Passed?

Many years ago Bertrand Russell, the English philosopher and mathematician, was imprisoned for opposing World War I. "When I reported to the warder," Russell said, "he asked me the customary questions - name, age, place of residence. Then he inquired, 'Religious affiliation?'”

Russell replied, "Agnostic."

The poor man looked up. "How do you spell that?"

He spelled it for him. The warder wrote the word carefully on the admission form, then sighed, "Oh, well; there are a great many sects, but I suppose they all worship the same God."

I'm sure Russell could not help but chuckle.

It is true, however, that there exist many spiritual paths. The world has always teemed with a wide variety of spiritual thought and many differing journeys of the heart. But too often the world has used these differences as a weapon. How much agony has been wrought by what should be a thing of beauty - religious passion?

I appreciate an old Jewish story that tells of a rabbi who asked his disciples, "How do you know when the night is giving way and the morning is coming?"

One of the followers stood and said, "Teacher, won't you know that night is fading when, through the dim light, you can see an animal and recognize whether it is a sheep or a dog?"

The rabbi answered, "No."

"Rabbi," asked another, "won't you know that the dawn is coming when you can see clearly enough to distinguish whether a tree is a fig or an olive?"

"No," responded the teacher. "You'll know that the night has passed when you can look at any man and any woman and discern that you are looking at a brother or a sister. Until you can see with that clarity, the night will always be with us."

The night has been long. Isn't it time for dawn to break? No matter who we are, no matter what religion we profess, isn't it time for us to see one another as the sisters and brothers we are? All of us? Only then will we know that night has passed and a new day has dawned.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: freeimages.com/Emin Ozkan 

We Are Meant to Be One

Where is true peace to be found? Archbishop Desmond Tutu might say it can be found in the African concept of “ubuntu.”

He says, "Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate.”

He also says that if the world had more ubuntu, there would be no war. The powerful would help the weak. That is where peace is to be found.

A story from World War II shines a spotlight on ubuntu. In 1942, the American consul ordered citizens home from the Persian Gulf, for fear they might get caught in the spreading conflict. Travel was difficult, and some civilians secured passage on the troop ship Mauretania. Passengers included thousands of Allied soldiers, 500 German prisoners of war and 25 civilian women and children.

The ship traveled slowly and cautiously, constantly in danger from hostile submarines patrolling the ocean depths. It was Christmas Eve and they had traveled for a full two months. They had only made it as far as the coastal waters of New Zealand and all on board were homesick, anxious and frightened. 

Someone came up with the idea of asking the captain for permission to sing Christmas carols for the German prisoners, who were surely as homesick and lonely as the passengers. Permission was granted and a small choral group made its way to the quarters where the unsuspecting prisoners were held. They decided to sing “Silent Night” first, as it was written in Germany by Joseph Mohr and was equally well known by the prisoners.

Within seconds of beginning the carol, a deafening clatter shook the floor. Hundreds of German soldiers sprang up and crowded the tiny windows in order to better see and hear the choristers. Tears streamed unashamedly down their faces. At that moment, everyone on both sides of the wall experienced the universal truth – that at the core of our being, all people everywhere are one. They experienced ubuntu. Hope and love broke down the barriers between warring nations and, for that moment at least, all were one family.

We are meant to be one. And only after we realize that amazing truth can we find what we need – true peace. 

-- Steve Goodier

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Peace on Earth

In the midst of a world at war, Eleanor Roosevelt captured the mood at Christmas 1942. "How completely the character of Christmas has changed this year," she wrote in her newspaper column. "I could no more say to you a 'Merry Christmas' without feeling a catch in my throat than I could fly to the moon!"

In September 1945, U. S. Navy chief radioman Walter G. Germann wrote his son from a ship anchored in Tokyo Bay to tell him that the formal surrender of Japan would soon be signed. "When you get a little older you may think war to be a great adventure -- take it from me, it's the most horrible thing ever done…I'll be home this Christmas..."

Home. To a world at peace.

In 1955 a thirteen-year-old Japanese girl died of "the atom bomb disease" -- radiation-induced leukemia. Sadako Sasaki was one of many who suffered the after-effects of those bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Japanese myth has it that cranes live for a thousand years, and anyone who folds 1000 paper cranes will have a wish granted. So during her illness, Sadako folded paper cranes, and with each crane she wished that she would recover from her illness. She managed 644 cranes before she left this life behind.

Sadako's classmates folded the remaining 356 cranes so that she could be buried with a thousand paper cranes. Friends collected money from children all over Japan to erect a monument to Sadako in Hiroshima's Peace Park. The inscription reads:

This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace on earth.

Each year people place paper cranes at the base of the statue to recall the tragedy of war and to celebrate humanity's undying hope for peace. In some places around the world, people fold paper cranes each holiday season to use as decorations and as a symbol of their deep desire for lasting peace.

I, too, have a deep desire for a day when war will become a relic of the past. I yearn for a day when we join hearts in union with one another, while beating swords into plowshares…and folding paper into cranes.

Peace on earth. The generation to accomplish it will truly be the greatest generation ever.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: flickr.com/Marie T

Aren't They All Our Children?

There are few things in this life more difficult to experience than the loss of one's child. Jim Wallis, in Who Speaks for God? tells about a sad and terrifying incident that occurred during the tragic war in Sarajevo not too many years back. A reporter who was covering the violence in the middle of the city saw a little girl fatally shot by a sniper.

The reporter threw down his pad and pencil and rushed to the aid of a man who was now holding the child. He helped them both into his car and sped off to a hospital.

"Hurry, my friend," the man urged, “my child is still alive.” A moment or two later he pleaded, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still breathing." A little later he said, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still warm."

When they got to the hospital, the young girl was gone. "This is a terrible task for me," the distraught man said to the reporter. "I must go tell her father that his child is dead. He will be heartbroken."

The reporter was amazed. He looked at the grieving man and said, "I thought she was YOUR child."

The man replied, "No, but aren't they all our children?"

I think that is one of the great questions of our age. Aren’t they all our children? It is a question that deserves an answer.

Aren't they all our children? Those who live under our roof and those who reside with another family? Those to whom we are related as well as those whom we have never known?

Aren't they all our children? Those on our side of the border as well as those on the other side? Those of our nation no more or less than those of another?

Aren’t they all our children? Those who worship like us and those who worship differently? Those who look like us and those who do not?

Aren’t they all our children? The well-educated and the under-educated? The well-fed and the under-fed? Those who are secure and those who are at risk?

Aren’t they all our children? The highly valued and highly esteemed as well as the castaways and the lost?

Aren’t they all our children? Aren’t they all our responsibility? ALL of them? Ours to nurture? Ours to protect? Ours to love?

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that the survival of our world hinges on the answer to that question.

To say they are NOT all our children is to condemn the world to more struggle – family against family, group against group, nation against nation.

Aren’t they all our children? If we say yes, can we ever again pit them against each other? "If we have no peace," said Mother Teresa, "it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

Aren’t they all our children?

There may be no greater question for our generation. And how we answer that question will determine the shape of our world for years to come.

-- Steve Goodier

A God Too Small

I enjoy a story about baseball great Joe Garagiola. He once stepped to the plate when his turn came to bat. Before assuming his stance, however, fervent Roman Catholic Joe took his bat and made the sign of the cross in the dirt in front of home plate. Catcher Yogi Berra, also a devout Catholic, walked over and erased Garagiola's cross. Turning to the astonished batter, Berra smiled and said, "Let’s let God watch this inning."

If I were God (and thank goodness I’m not), I think I would have wanted to simply watch the inning.

I likewise appreciate the story about an old Quaker who stood during the church meeting and told his fellow Friends about a young man who was not a Quaker and who lived an undisciplined life. This young man invited a pious Quaker friend to go sailing one day. A sudden storm came up and the wild young man was drowned. Having made his point, the old Quaker sat down.

Silence returned to the meeting until the old man once again arose. This time he said, "Friends, for the honor of the truth, I think I ought to add that the Quaker also drowned."

And if I were God (and again, thank goodness I’m not), I think I would have felt sadness for both losses. Neither was a greater tragedy than the other.

I know that religious piety can be a wondrous and beautiful thing. But it disturbs me the prominent role religions have historically played in wars and brutality over the ages. If I imagine a god so small as to favor those who think like me, worship like me and act like me, then I know very little of life and less of faith. I can’t help but think this world would be in better shape if the gods many of us believed in were a little bigger.

-- Steve Goodier


flickr/via tsuji

Millennium Dream

The daughter of comedian Groucho Marx was once denied admittance to an exclusive country club swimming pool with her friends because she and her family were not members. Realizing what had happened, embarrassed officials sent the Marx family an apology and an application to join. Groucho declined the invitation with the comment, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”

Someone still tried to smooth over the incident by persuading the comedian to allow an application to be submitted for membership. The country club was embarrassed further when the application was denied. The reason? The Marx family was Jewish and the club was “restricted.”

True to form, Groucho wrote back: “My wife is not Jewish. Can she go swimming and let our daughter wade up to her waist?”

I love his use of humor, but Groucho effectively shines a spotlight on the prevalence and absurdity of prejudice. He must have felt, as did Sir Isaac Newton so many years earlier, that we “build too many walls and not enough bridges.”

I yearn for a time when we courageously break down those walls that divide and build wide bridges between one another. I long for a super-highway of compassion and acceptance spanning our differences that will unite us as one. As we ease into a new millennium, I dream of an age when people will finally be connected heart to heart and mind to mind.

My greatest desire is that we somehow learn what it means to be family.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: flickr.com/Ryan Ebelt