Samuel Proctor - "Setting in Order the Things That Are Wanting" (January 19, 1992)
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
I thank God for the privilege | 0:21 | |
of being with you here today, | 0:23 | |
to enjoy the fellowship of so many beautiful people, | 0:26 | |
to be inspired by the awesomeness of | 0:32 | |
this edifice, this place of worship. | 0:36 | |
And then to be lifted up by this ethereal music | 0:41 | |
of your choir. | 0:46 | |
I want to thank Dr. Willimon | 0:48 | |
and your Martin Luther King Memorial Committee | 0:51 | |
for extending to me this invitation | 0:55 | |
to come to Duke University once again. | 0:58 | |
The things that are wanting - | 1:04 | |
"I left you behind in Crete," | 1:09 | |
said the Apostle Paul to his young partner Titus. | 1:12 | |
"So that you should put in order what remain to be done. | 1:17 | |
"And should appoint elders in every town as I directed you." | 1:23 | |
In the more familiar King James Version, | 1:28 | |
it is not really any different meaning conveyed, | 1:31 | |
but this is the language that I heard first | 1:36 | |
when I read this as a boy in Sunday school. | 1:41 | |
"For this cause left I thee in Crete, | 1:45 | |
"that thou should set in order the things that are wanting." | 1:50 | |
It is interesting to me that the hard work | 1:57 | |
of establishing the young Christian community | 2:01 | |
in Asia Minor, in Europe, was done by Paul's partners | 2:04 | |
who were in their late 20's and early 30's. | 2:11 | |
They were at about the same age of the students | 2:16 | |
in undergraduate and graduate programs | 2:20 | |
here at Duke University. | 2:22 | |
Timothy and Titus, Silas, Demas, John Mark | 2:25 | |
were all young. | 2:30 | |
They were the children of Paul's own peers. | 2:33 | |
He referred to them as his sons in the gospel. | 2:37 | |
And I really wonder how they stood up | 2:42 | |
under the pressures of preaching a new religion | 2:44 | |
in a world filled with religions, | 2:48 | |
preaching among strangers. | 2:51 | |
And then the violence - | 2:54 | |
they were beaten often, arrested, | 2:55 | |
and they faced mob violence time and time again. | 2:58 | |
They traveled by foot without cash advances, | 3:03 | |
no American Express cards, no hotel reservation, | 3:08 | |
no letters of introduction. | 3:11 | |
What a way to go! | 3:14 | |
And all that they had, they wore. | 3:16 | |
And the only credentials | 3:20 | |
were what they said about themselves. | 3:21 | |
And here we have young Titus being sent | 3:26 | |
to one of the roughest assignments | 3:29 | |
in that part of the world, the island of Crete. | 3:31 | |
This small island lay in the center of the Mediterranean. | 3:36 | |
It was a very active port, | 3:42 | |
and sailors, pirates, con artists, | 3:44 | |
dealers in contraband and stolen goods | 3:49 | |
were all at home in Crete. | 3:52 | |
Traffic from three continents crisscrossed | 3:56 | |
over this tiny island. | 4:01 | |
And her ash heaps and dumping grounds | 4:04 | |
hid the debris from thousands of years of wars. | 4:07 | |
In good times, Crete saw Occident and Orient | 4:12 | |
bowing to one another. | 4:17 | |
But at other times it was soaked with the blood | 4:20 | |
of the armies of the Pharaohs, of Cyrus the Great, | 4:23 | |
Alexander the Great, Antiochus Epiphanes, Caesar Augustus. | 4:28 | |
My hometown was Norfolk, Virginia, | 4:35 | |
the prime navy town in the world. | 4:38 | |
So, I have some idea of what Crete must have been like. | 4:41 | |
Our streets were lined with persons | 4:46 | |
from somewhere else all the time, out-of-towners. | 4:48 | |
There's so many visitors and temporary residents, | 4:53 | |
local customs and traditions were tested constantly. | 4:56 | |
Drunkenness was common. | 5:01 | |
Prostitution all over the downtown area. | 5:04 | |
Quick fixes of whatever kind were common. | 5:08 | |
Northrop was a tough town. | 5:13 | |
When I was a boy I learned early | 5:16 | |
what a seaport town was really like. | 5:18 | |
All of us had afterschool and Saturday jobs, | 5:22 | |
and at a very early age I was exposed | 5:26 | |
to an atmosphere that should have been hidden | 5:30 | |
from me much longer. | 5:32 | |
The casual and popular sins of the city | 5:35 | |
were right there in bold relief. | 5:38 | |
My first job was shining shoes at a barbershop | 5:42 | |
in the Berkley section of Norfolk. | 5:45 | |
One day the owner of the barbershop said to me, | 5:47 | |
"Go across the street | 5:51 | |
"and my wife will send something back to me." | 5:52 | |
I went over there and there was a baby carriage, | 5:56 | |
and she said, "Roll this carefully across the street | 5:58 | |
"and give it to my husband." | 6:02 | |
And as I began to roll the baby carriage, | 6:04 | |
I heard some rattling. | 6:06 | |
It didn't sound like a baby rattling, | 6:08 | |
and I looked and there were five gallon jugs | 6:11 | |
of corn whiskey from North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. | 6:15 | |
(congregation laughing) | 6:19 | |
Here I was, a 12-year-old bootlegger | 6:23 | |
in Norfolk, Virginia. | 6:27 | |
If my daddy knew what they were doing to me, | 6:30 | |
he would have come and broken the place up. | 6:33 | |
From there I went to Lee's Barbershop | 6:36 | |
on Monticello Avenue downtown - | 6:38 | |
more money and nicer place. | 6:41 | |
And I found out that I was not really expected | 6:44 | |
to do anything but sit and watch. | 6:46 | |
For at six o'clock the barbershop closed, | 6:49 | |
the curtains were drawn and then there collected | 6:52 | |
the most ecumenical group you ever saw - | 6:55 | |
A Japanese cook, a Chinese laundry man, | 6:59 | |
the white salesman from Sears Roebuck around the corner, | 7:03 | |
the black hotel bellmen from the downtown hotels, | 7:06 | |
automobile mechanics, | 7:10 | |
and they had the biggest poker game you ever saw | 7:12 | |
in the backroom of that barbershop. | 7:15 | |
And I found out that what I was really paid for | 7:19 | |
was to sit there and note, notify them | 7:21 | |
if any stranger appeared | 7:25 | |
or anything who looked like a policeman. | 7:27 | |
And when once my father found that out, | 7:30 | |
he and Mr. Lee had a terrible time. | 7:32 | |
That was Norfolk, | 7:35 | |
a seaport town much like Crete must have been. | 7:38 | |
And young Titus was assigned by Paul | 7:43 | |
to go into Crete and set in order | 7:46 | |
the things that are wanting. | 7:51 | |
Moreover, when we read this brief letter, | 7:54 | |
we discover that much of Crete | 7:56 | |
had already seeped into the church itself. | 7:58 | |
When Paul advised Titus on how | 8:02 | |
to select elders for the church, | 8:04 | |
what strange advice he gave. | 8:06 | |
"Be sure that each one has only one wife." | 8:09 | |
What on earth had those elders been doing? | 8:11 | |
"Be sure they're not hot-tempered and don't like to fight. | 8:15 | |
"Be sure that they're not hard drinkers. | 8:20 | |
"Be sure that the older ones are sober, | 8:23 | |
"and especially the women. | 8:26 | |
"Do not appoint anyone who likes to fight all the time." | 8:29 | |
What a place for young Titus! | 8:33 | |
A wild seaport with a church filled | 8:35 | |
with rough, unruly drinking parishioners | 8:39 | |
with questionable leaders in charge. | 8:43 | |
The situation, however, reminds us of where we are | 8:47 | |
right now as we approach the close of the 20th century. | 8:51 | |
We're asking our young generation - | 8:55 | |
university students and graduate students | 8:59 | |
in all of the various fields | 9:02 | |
to prepare now to go out into our Crete, | 9:04 | |
and set in order the things that are wanting. | 9:08 | |
The problems may be different somewhat, | 9:13 | |
but the magnitude of the problems would surely be the same. | 9:17 | |
Our problems and our failures are stacked like cordwood, | 9:22 | |
and the voice comes to us, | 9:27 | |
"For this cause left I thee | 9:30 | |
"in the Crete of today, | 9:33 | |
to go and set in order the things that are wanting." | 9:37 | |
I have been thinking about | 9:42 | |
young Martin Luther King during these days. | 9:44 | |
And how he was called to set in order the Crete of his time. | 9:47 | |
Martin Luther King did not intend | 9:53 | |
to be a civil rights leader. | 9:55 | |
He did not intend to have his picture on Time magazine, | 9:57 | |
or on the evening television news, | 10:01 | |
being arrested by Bull Connor's policemen in Alabama. | 10:04 | |
He was not that kind of a person. | 10:09 | |
He had grown up in a Baptist parsonage, | 10:11 | |
had gone to Morehouse College. | 10:14 | |
to Crozer Seminary and Boston University. | 10:17 | |
And he used to say to us all the time | 10:20 | |
that he wanted to be an intellectual black Baptist preacher, | 10:22 | |
like Howard Thurman and Benjamin Mays | 10:26 | |
and Mordecai Johnson and Vernon Johns and the like. | 10:29 | |
He wanted to be an interpreter of the Christian faith | 10:34 | |
for persons who would listen and think. | 10:38 | |
And he accepted a call to a church in Alabama | 10:41 | |
which was made up of people like that. | 10:46 | |
The membership of his church | 10:48 | |
was made up largely of the faculty and staff | 10:50 | |
of Alabama State College in Montgomery. | 10:53 | |
He used to brag to me saying, | 10:56 | |
"Sam, I've got 39 PhDs in my church." | 10:57 | |
And I would always answer, | 11:02 | |
"How many Christians have you got in your church?" | 11:03 | |
(congregation laughs) | 11:07 | |
He didn't know what I knew. | 11:08 | |
That the President of the college was | 11:11 | |
on the beacon board of his church, | 11:14 | |
and anybody who had a job at the college | 11:15 | |
had to attend the President's church. | 11:17 | |
That's why he had 39 PhDs in his church. | 11:19 | |
He wanted to wear those cane-striped trousers | 11:25 | |
and speak in those cutaway coats, | 11:28 | |
and the ascot ties. | 11:31 | |
He wanted to be a great pulpiteer and that was it. | 11:33 | |
He wanted to write books and give lectures. | 11:37 | |
He didn't have in mind leading a bus boycott. | 11:40 | |
He didn't have in mind getting beatin' | 11:44 | |
and crossing the Pettus Bridge, and all of that, | 11:46 | |
and being hailed in court time and time again. | 11:49 | |
This was not what he went to school to learn to do. | 11:53 | |
He wanted to be a preacher to persons | 11:57 | |
who were literate, and who were thinking people, | 12:00 | |
and who could benefit from his analysis of the gospel. | 12:03 | |
But, my soul, what a Crete he faced. | 12:09 | |
Drafted, | 12:12 | |
drafted when Rosa Parks refused to move | 12:14 | |
and asked to lead the bus boycott. | 12:19 | |
And from that evolved one of the great careers | 12:23 | |
of social change and one of the great pioneers | 12:27 | |
of novel situations in American and in world history. | 12:31 | |
I'm afraid that the generation that sits before me now | 12:37 | |
will discover that they too are going to be called | 12:42 | |
to set things in order in Crete. | 12:47 | |
Because we've got an awful lot of things | 12:50 | |
that need to be set in order. | 12:53 | |
Right now, confidence in our national leadership | 12:57 | |
is at an all-time low. | 13:01 | |
People do not believe. | 13:03 | |
They do not hear resonating some great ideas, | 13:05 | |
some idealistic themes about America | 13:10 | |
and what we can do and become. | 13:13 | |
The persons in charge are on the defensive, running hard, | 13:17 | |
trying to escape the toughest questions that can be asked. | 13:22 | |
There is not much reason for sanguine belief | 13:27 | |
in the persons in charge, not right now. | 13:32 | |
Corruption in high places has bred | 13:37 | |
a deep and tragic cynicism. | 13:40 | |
I never believed that I would ever hear the names | 13:43 | |
of such well-established corporations | 13:46 | |
being hailed before Federal Courts | 13:48 | |
for just simply stealing. | 13:51 | |
Persons responsible for making prudent and safe predictions | 13:55 | |
have all guessed so wrong. | 13:59 | |
We didn't even guess that the Soviet Union | 14:01 | |
was about to become unglued. | 14:04 | |
Almost 90 days ago nobody would have believed | 14:09 | |
that this would have been happening. | 14:13 | |
Who predicted that the economy would be dragging | 14:16 | |
like it is now? | 14:18 | |
We want to trust the people who sit in high places, | 14:20 | |
but now here we are terribly confused. | 14:23 | |
"For this cause left I thee in Crete, | 14:27 | |
"that thou should go and set in order | 14:30 | |
"the things that are wanting." | 14:33 | |
Whoever thought that Eastern Airlines | 14:35 | |
would be out of business? | 14:37 | |
Drexel Burnham would be bankrupt. | 14:39 | |
Drexel Burnham, bankrupt? | 14:41 | |
Pan Am, | 14:44 | |
Macy's, the greatest department store in the world, | 14:45 | |
almost ready for chapter 12 sometime next week. | 14:49 | |
And Donald Trump bankrupt, who would have believed it? | 14:53 | |
Who would have believed that we would be borrowing | 14:59 | |
$50 billion to bailout banks that have failed? | 15:01 | |
But that's on one side of it. | 15:07 | |
We have a generation now | 15:09 | |
that has learned how to live on chemical substances. | 15:11 | |
And I don't mean just people in the streets | 15:15 | |
in the ghettos, the wild people with disregard. | 15:18 | |
I'm talking about people | 15:21 | |
from prominent families in high places, | 15:22 | |
learning how to depend on chemical substances | 15:25 | |
to make it from one hour to the next. | 15:28 | |
We're giving high school students contraceptives | 15:31 | |
at public expense. | 15:34 | |
I never thought that would happen in my lifetime. | 15:35 | |
33 million persons in poverty. | 15:39 | |
22 million persons functionally illiterate. | 15:42 | |
"For this cause left I thee in Crete | 15:46 | |
"that thou should go and set in order | 15:49 | |
"the things that are wanting." | 15:53 | |
Find that vision and that discipline to go | 15:55 | |
and do something about it. | 15:59 | |
And everyday, we hear more and more evidence | 16:04 | |
that our diverse and pluralistic society | 16:10 | |
is barely holding together. | 16:13 | |
This is our Crete today. | 16:17 | |
And I don't care if I'm the only optimist left. | 16:20 | |
I think we can handle all of this. | 16:24 | |
I think we have young people now | 16:28 | |
with the dedication, with the inventiveness, | 16:30 | |
and the discipline to do something about | 16:33 | |
the Crete of our time. | 16:35 | |
If we keep gazing at the long list, | 16:39 | |
we can become petrified at the magnitude of it all, | 16:41 | |
and we could walk out of here feeling terrible, | 16:45 | |
terrible about our impotence and about our confusion. | 16:48 | |
Or perhaps we could group these challenges together | 16:52 | |
and make our own short list. | 16:56 | |
Then, ask ourselves, what would that short list look like | 16:58 | |
if we decided to take Crete on | 17:01 | |
and do set in order the things are wanting? | 17:04 | |
How would we begin? | 17:07 | |
How would we approach our Crete today? | 17:10 | |
Well, for one thing I think the basic problem is spiritual, | 17:14 | |
and therefore, I think the gospel has more relevance now | 17:18 | |
than at any other time in the history of the church. | 17:21 | |
We've been smart enough to know | 17:24 | |
how to pull all kinds of tricks and rationalizations | 17:27 | |
about our condition. | 17:29 | |
This is the best time of all | 17:31 | |
to apply the teachings of our master to the human condition. | 17:35 | |
We've got to commit ourselves | 17:40 | |
to that basic fundamental that was so important to Jesus. | 17:41 | |
The fundamental that lies at the very foundation | 17:46 | |
of our faith and at the foundation | 17:48 | |
of a free and democratic society. | 17:50 | |
The most important notion of all and that is | 17:52 | |
the worth and dignity of every single person. | 17:55 | |
This came to me really with such poignancy. | 18:01 | |
I was in Africa running the Peace Corps | 18:06 | |
for President Kennedy back in the 60's. | 18:08 | |
I had been drafted from A&T College to go over there | 18:11 | |
and invent the first Peace Corps group abroad | 18:15 | |
and I had a good time with it. | 18:18 | |
And so many experiences taught me so much. | 18:20 | |
I had a driver, | 18:24 | |
a driver who was very close to me. | 18:27 | |
We were not allowed to drive vehicles ourselves; | 18:29 | |
it was much too risky. | 18:31 | |
He and I had gotten to be close, | 18:33 | |
and I thought that I had taught him everything that I knew. | 18:35 | |
We talked and talked and talked | 18:38 | |
on those long, lonely journeys, | 18:40 | |
over those long and hot dusty roads. | 18:43 | |
But one day we came to a bridge, a narrow bridge, | 18:46 | |
and I stiffened up because it looked like | 18:51 | |
the bridge was rather delicate and | 18:53 | |
I didn't want to be dropped in | 18:55 | |
the deep ravine out there. | 18:56 | |
I said, "Tonjie you all right?" | 18:58 | |
"Fine." | ||
And just as we were ready to cross the bridge, | 19:01 | |
a young girl appeared with a large clay pot | 19:05 | |
filled with water on her head. | 19:07 | |
And she was walking along, assuming, of course, | 19:09 | |
that the bridge, like, always, would be vacant, | 19:12 | |
she could walk on across. | 19:15 | |
And there was this American Jeep, | 19:16 | |
she hadn't seen one, hardly ever. | 19:18 | |
And she was frightened, she looked at it, | 19:21 | |
she started across the bridge, | 19:23 | |
and Tonjie bore down on the horn | 19:25 | |
and made her turn around and run. | 19:27 | |
She dropped the pot, lost her water, | 19:29 | |
and was scared stiff. | 19:32 | |
She was just screaming and running. | 19:35 | |
I said, "Tonjie, what did you do that for? | 19:39 | |
"Why didn't you let her cross the bridge? | 19:44 | |
"What was the problem? | 19:46 | |
"We have time." | 19:47 | |
And he made one sentence to me that brought to mind | 19:49 | |
everything I had ever read in the Gospels, | 19:53 | |
in the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence. | 19:57 | |
He said, "she's just a little bush girl." | 20:00 | |
Meaning that she did not register. | 20:05 | |
She did not matter at all. | 20:09 | |
And he said that wrongest thing to me. | 20:12 | |
"She's just a little bush girl." | 20:15 | |
I have forgotten how I started, | 20:19 | |
but I got a sermon off on him that moment. | 20:21 | |
(congregation laughs) | 20:24 | |
I don't recall the texts | 20:26 | |
but I know I said to him over and over again, | 20:27 | |
"Tonjie, there's no such thing in our world | 20:29 | |
"as just a little bush girl. | 20:33 | |
"Everybody is a child of God, | 20:36 | |
"and a person of consequence." | 20:39 | |
We've got to start there. | 20:41 | |
The Psalmist said we're made a little lower than the angels, | 20:43 | |
and crowned with glory and honor. | 20:46 | |
We have the image of God. | 20:48 | |
God created us and breathed into us | 20:50 | |
the breath of life. | 20:52 | |
We don't act like God knows every hair on our heads. | 20:54 | |
We have lost something. | 20:57 | |
The vulgarity, the materialism has reduced us to something. | 21:00 | |
It just isn't right. | 21:06 | |
Since my retirement, I've had a lot of time | 21:08 | |
to see some early morning television, | 21:10 | |
and I am shocked at what I have been missing. | 21:13 | |
Running out every day, | 21:15 | |
I'm amazed at what my wife has been looking at | 21:17 | |
while I've been gone. | 21:20 | |
I said, "Bess has this been going on everyday?" | 21:22 | |
All day long, one childish, simple-minded | 21:24 | |
sex story after another. | 21:29 | |
Is this all people have to talk about? | 21:32 | |
Every talk show, one right after another, | 21:34 | |
reducing us to just a bag of desires | 21:38 | |
and neurological necessities and glandular urges. | 21:42 | |
Hardly ever is it transcended. | 21:46 | |
Something has happened and it's deeply spiritual. | 21:48 | |
"For this cause send I thee into Crete." | 21:52 | |
To elevate this mess. | 21:56 | |
To set in order the things that are wanting. | 21:59 | |
It's a spiritual problem. | 22:02 | |
Little wonder, then, that we need these chemical substances | 22:04 | |
to make it from one moment to the other, | 22:07 | |
because we have resigned our deeper spirituality. | 22:09 | |
And Crete is in bad shape, | 22:15 | |
and that's why we're not moved | 22:18 | |
by this underclass that has grown around us. | 22:20 | |
We're not disturbed about hundreds of thousands of | 22:23 | |
lives that are wasted. | 22:26 | |
Because our understanding of the human person | 22:29 | |
has been so diminished. | 22:32 | |
We've become so indifferent toward the fact | 22:35 | |
that it takes $40,000 a year | 22:39 | |
to keep one career felon in prison. | 22:41 | |
We ought to think of something better | 22:45 | |
to do with the human life than to put it in deep freeze | 22:46 | |
and spend that kind of money on it. | 22:50 | |
Something better than building | 22:54 | |
more sophisticated electric chairs. | 22:55 | |
How did we settle for this? | 22:58 | |
It's a spiritual problem and I fear that our priorities | 23:00 | |
are based upon trying to preserve our economic supremacy, | 23:04 | |
and then our real greatness is being forfeited. | 23:08 | |
Our real greatness lies in showing the whole world | 23:12 | |
what a free and democratic society can be | 23:17 | |
with all of our diversity and our pluralism. | 23:20 | |
And we ought not to resign from that challenge. | 23:24 | |
"For this cause left I thee in Crete | 23:27 | |
"that thou shall straighten this out." | 23:31 | |
And then we need to affirm the possibility | 23:34 | |
of a genuine community in America. | 23:37 | |
We just cannot allow our society to fall apart. | 23:39 | |
We've worked too hard at trying | 23:44 | |
put distance between us and slavery, | 23:57 | |
between ourselves and colonialism, and all of that. | 24:00 | |
And now we cannot come to the end of this century | 24:03 | |
and start learning how to be mean | 24:06 | |
and nasty toward one another all over again. | 24:08 | |
For all of these 50 years | 24:11 | |
that I've been butting around out here, | 24:13 | |
this has been the main theme on my agenda. | 24:16 | |
Trying to find creative ways to edge this along, | 24:19 | |
move toward community. | 24:23 | |
The thought first struck me when I was | 24:25 | |
a boy watching our church on fire. | 24:27 | |
The Bank Street Baptist Church - | 24:30 | |
a beautiful old, elegant church downtown. | 24:31 | |
Church that people right out of slavery | 24:36 | |
bought from a Presbyterian group. | 24:39 | |
We were so proud of it and there, | 24:41 | |
it was just enveloped in flames one Sunday morning. | 24:43 | |
All of us were awakened about four or five o'clock. | 24:46 | |
The whole congregation standing in tears. | 24:48 | |
And there stood Dr. Melton. | 24:51 | |
Dr. Melton, the pastor of the white first Baptist church. | 24:55 | |
We saw his pajamas underneath his gaberdine trench coat, | 25:00 | |
and the tears just flowed down his face. | 25:04 | |
And as a little boy, something said to me, | 25:08 | |
"See there, see there. | 25:10 | |
"People say all white folk are mean and ugly. | 25:12 | |
"Look at Dr. Melton crying because our church is on fire." | 25:16 | |
Oh, what a precious memory. | 25:21 | |
It broke right through a whole lot of bad education | 25:24 | |
I had received about the human spirit. | 25:28 | |
Later on, I went to Crozer Seminary | 25:32 | |
because he recommended it to me | 25:34 | |
and his church provided a scholarship. | 25:36 | |
He gave me books, he prayed for me. | 25:38 | |
Dr. Melton, Freemason Street Baptist Church | 25:42 | |
in Norfolk, Virginia. | 25:45 | |
And the first day at Crozer, I sneaked off the campus | 25:48 | |
to go downtown to get a haircut. | 25:50 | |
I came back, all of the student body standing | 25:51 | |
in front of the main building, | 25:55 | |
and I thought they were all watching me. | 25:57 | |
I was the only black boy in the whole school. | 25:58 | |
And I had sneaked downtown to get | 26:03 | |
an authentic black haircut down in Chester. | 26:04 | |
I didn't think they paid any attention to my hair. | 26:10 | |
As I walked along facing them, | 26:13 | |
the longest 50 yards I ever walked in my life. | 26:15 | |
All by myself, first day I was there, | 26:18 | |
up north for the first time. | 26:20 | |
And a great big red dude stepped out in front, | 26:23 | |
walked straight to me. | 26:25 | |
"What on earth is this about," | 26:26 | |
I thought to myself. | 26:28 | |
Red hair, freckles, he looked like he was on fire. | 26:30 | |
(congregation laughs) | 26:34 | |
He said, "your name is Proctor?" | 26:36 | |
"That's right." | 26:39 | |
"My name is Raymond Roules, | 26:40 | |
"from Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina." | 26:41 | |
"Oh quite a way from here, I'm from Norfolk. | 26:44 | |
"Where you been, Proctor?" | 26:47 | |
I thought that was presumptuous, asked me where. | 26:49 | |
"I've been downtown." | 26:52 | |
"What for?" | 26:52 | |
"To get a haircut." | 26:53 | |
"I see you got a haircut." | 26:55 | |
"Now, I wanna tell you something." | 26:56 | |
Now, here we are about 10 yards from the gang. | 26:58 | |
He pointed this big, thick red finger right at my chest. | 27:00 | |
He said, "I'm the barber on this campus | 27:04 | |
"and I cut everybody's hair." | 27:08 | |
(congregation laughs) | 27:11 | |
"And I'm gonna be your barber as long as you're here, | 27:12 | |
"and I'm here with you." | 27:15 | |
"Oh?" | 27:16 | |
I wish I had a picture | 27:17 | |
of what my face looked like when he said that to me. | 27:19 | |
(congregation laughs) | 27:22 | |
"Do you wanna be my barber?" | 27:23 | |
(congregation laughs) | 27:25 | |
I said, "okay." | 27:28 | |
He said, "if I catch you going downtown again." | 27:29 | |
And he was big and convincing. | 27:31 | |
"If I catch you going downtown again to get a haircut," | 27:34 | |
"I'm gonna (muffled squeaking)." | 27:36 | |
I cannot repeat what he said to me. | 27:39 | |
(congregation laughs) | 27:41 | |
It was not seminary talk at all. | 27:42 | |
(congregation laughs) | 27:44 | |
I went up to my room, went to my mirror, | 27:46 | |
started another conversation with myself. | 27:49 | |
You know, I talk to myself all the time | 27:52 | |
for those first 24 hours, | 27:54 | |
"Sam, you're here at last." | 27:55 | |
"Sam did you hear what that dude said to you | 27:57 | |
from Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina?" | 27:59 | |
"I heard him I was right there." | 28:01 | |
(congregation laughs) | 28:03 | |
"You gonna let him cut your hair?" | 28:05 | |
"Well I'm here, it's brand new." | 28:07 | |
"But a lot of things are new." | 28:11 | |
"This is novelty for me, I'm going to accept it." | 28:14 | |
"I'm going to step one bold step right out" | 28:18 | |
"of my rearing, my tradition, my background," | 28:22 | |
"and I'm going to have a redheaded barber" | 28:25 | |
"from Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina." | 28:27 | |
(congregation laughs) | 28:30 | |
What would it take for us to learn how | 28:33 | |
to crawl out of our own little corners, | 28:36 | |
to transcend all of our narrow experiences, | 28:40 | |
and to find our way toward the creation | 28:45 | |
of a genuine community in America? | 28:48 | |
This was the great contribution of Martin Luther King. | 28:51 | |
He did not give up on this idea. | 28:54 | |
People thought he was naively simplistic about it | 28:57 | |
but he thought that America was ready | 29:00 | |
to move toward a blessed community. | 29:03 | |
My soul, what a wonderful thing to set in order in Crete. | 29:05 | |
And finally, while setting our Crete in order, | 29:11 | |
let us acknowledge the principle of justice and fairness. | 29:15 | |
This is the main thing and it is slowly | 29:19 | |
stealing away principle of justice and fairness. | 29:23 | |
Calls for rationality, | 29:29 | |
for facts that do not contradict themselves, | 29:32 | |
for earnestness in dealing with the truth. | 29:36 | |
It is so difficult to convince people | 29:41 | |
who have a great advantage that they ought to be fair. | 29:44 | |
I know how hard it is. | 29:50 | |
John Rawls wrote a wonderful book called | 29:53 | |
"A Theory of Justice," | 29:55 | |
in which he challenged John Stuart Mill | 29:56 | |
for saying that justice was | 29:59 | |
the greatest good for the greatest number. | 30:01 | |
Who is going to say what the greatest good is? | 30:04 | |
The people who are the greatest number? | 30:07 | |
No, we need another absolute standard | 30:09 | |
for the greatest good than what the greatest number say. | 30:12 | |
Darwin, you know, that thing is right. | 30:16 | |
Which survives, you know, the mightiest, | 30:20 | |
the strongest, the best adjusted, | 30:22 | |
let that be our clue to what is right. | 30:25 | |
No, he went on to say that all of us | 30:28 | |
have come into the world, | 30:31 | |
at what do you call it, the original position. | 30:32 | |
We are born not having earned or deserved anything, | 30:35 | |
but some of us open our eyes | 30:39 | |
and saw ourselves just drowning in benefits. | 30:41 | |
And they have fought at us throughout our lives. | 30:45 | |
Some others open their eyes | 30:48 | |
and saw nothing but poverty, and ignorance, and violence. | 30:50 | |
And they too have followed them all of their lives. | 30:54 | |
So, justice and fairness, | 30:57 | |
is when those of us who had been benefited | 31:01 | |
in ways that we did not deserve will reckon. | 31:04 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund