Carlyle Marney - "Our Present Higher Good" (November 5, 1972)

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	(choral music)	0:02
	(organ music)	0:47
	(choral music)	1:59
-	Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father,	2:50
	and from the Lord Jesus Christ.	2:53
	Christians are a people who would be men	2:57
	and women who sees things as they are,	2:59
	who call things by their right names.	3:03
	Whose work is valid, and whose world is whole.	3:06
	Here as we worship together, we hear the word	3:12
	that tells us what we were meant to be, and we stand before	3:15
	the one who has created us and given us life.	3:20
	And here also before the presence of his holiness.	3:25
	We confront our denied discipleship,	3:28
	our weak idolatries, and our faithlessness.	3:32
	But it is also here that we hear the word	3:36
	of repentance and of hope.	3:39
	For Jesus' words to Jerusalem speak also to us.	3:42
	I am to come to call the righteous,	3:47
	but sinners to repentance.	3:50
	Let us confess our sins before each other,	3:53
	and to God, our Father.	3:57
	Let us pray.	3:59
	Almighty and most merciful God,	4:06
	we thank you for this opportunity of confession and renewal.	4:10
	Some of us have carried about with us the burden of memory	4:17
	and regret, of failure and remorse,	4:21
	and it has sapped our vitality and made us languid	4:26
	in service and feeble in witness.	4:29
	Help us now, God, to acknowledge our transgressions,	4:34
	and to face with utter honesty the evasions,	4:39
	compromises, and cowardices of which we have been guilty.	4:43
	We believe it is your will for us to rise,	4:49
	to higher life, to learn from the mistakes of the past,	4:51
	and to live in firm dependence upon your grace.	4:57
	To this end, we open our lives anew,	5:02
	to the coming of your searching light.	5:06
	You remember the words of our Lord when he said:	5:11
	judge not, that you be not judged.	5:13
	Well God, our heavenly Father who shines upon the evil	5:18
	and the good, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust,	5:22
	forgive us our hasty discriminations, we ask.	5:27
	Forgive us if we label men,	5:31
	if we substitute slogans for thought,	5:34
	and estimate our fellows without	5:38
	firsthand knowledge of them.	5:40
	Forgive us when we fail to see people,	5:43
	because we are preoccupied with abstractions like law,	5:46
	and justice, and tradition.	5:50
	Forgive us when we are more intent on being right	5:54
	than on being reconciled.	5:58
	Forgive us, too, when we refrain from judgment,	6:01
	for the wrong reasons, through fear of recrimination,	6:04
	or a lack of sensitiveness.	6:08
	Oh God, whose justice demands truth in our inward parts,	6:13
	and whose anger is upon the uncaring,	6:17
	have mercy upon us.	6:21
	Forgive us our complacence with killing.	6:24
	Rebuke our shrugs at poverty and war,	6:28
	as though we could do nothing about them.	6:31
	Confront us who can feed and protect our own children,	6:35
	that we rest not until all parents can feed	6:39
	and protect their children.	6:42
	Oh God, our Father, we pray your forgiveness	6:48
	for the sins of our hearts and our wills.	6:49
	For not thinking deeply.	6:54
	For being often too intense.	6:57
	For being inattentive to your word, and to your voice.	7:00
	For the lack of feeling and intercession	7:06
	for the needs of our families.	7:08
	For the oppressed, for the hungry,	7:11
	for those in temptation and those without hope.	7:14
	We ask your forgiveness for ignoring other people.	7:20
	For taking ourselves too seriously.	7:25
	For sins of exhibition and for sins of inhibition.	7:29
	For failure to think and pray and act deeply	7:33
	for the mission and unity of the church.	7:37
	For trying to imprison you in words and institutions.	7:41
	Oh Lord, forgive what we have been,	7:47
	sanctify what we are, and order what we shall be.	7:51
	That we may delight in your will,	7:58
	and walk in your ways, through Jesus Christ our Lord.	8:00
	Amen.	8:06
	Hear this good news.	8:12
	To be a Christian, a member of Christ's body,	8:14
	is to be established already, here and now in this world,	8:17
	in a state of reconciliation, which at once accepts	8:22
	oneself and embraces the whole world.	8:27
	To be a Christian is to receive and know	8:32
	and participate in the unconditional, extravagant,	8:35
	inexhaustible, expendable love of God.	8:40
	For all that he has made and called into being.	8:44
	In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.	8:49
	Glory to God.	8:53
	Amen.	8:55
	(organ music)	9:11
	(sweeping organ music)	10:04
	(epic choral music)	10:33
	(soaring choral music)	12:14
	(uptempo choral music)	16:00
	(somber choral music)	20:16
-	The Lord be with you.	20:59
	Let us pray.	21:02
	Let us offer unto God a prayer of thanksgiving,	21:06
	for the gifts that are ours.	21:10
	Oh God, invisible and eternal,	21:15
	you of a thousand names, but ever the same in mercy,	21:20
	and in love, we praise you for creation and all its power.	21:24
	For the things made in the beginning,	21:32
	the things that have come in the harvest season,	21:35
	we lift our praise and our thanksgiving, oh God.	21:38
	Our five senses praise you, our father,	21:45
	for large autumn sights, for brisk air,	21:50
	for sounds within sounds, and gifts within gifts.	21:55
	We thank you for suffering transformed,	22:01
	we thank you for sorrows comforted,	22:05
	and for joy extravagantly given.	22:08
	Oh God, we praise you for the small places of peace	22:13
	in our lives.	22:16
	A child at play,	22:19
	hands honestly at work.	22:22
	Love in the eyes of a friend.	22:25
	Forgiveness in the words of an enemy.	22:29
	A parent who listens when we speak.	22:34
	We glorify you, our Father,	22:39
	that undergirding all Earth's teeming life,	22:40
	all its chaos and calm,	22:45
	all its clamor and its silence,	22:48
	there is your peace, awesome,	22:52
	amazing, and eternal.	22:56
	Oh Lord, amidst all this color, we thank you	22:58
	for the rhythms of our life.	23:01
	We praise you for the rhythm of seasons.	23:04
	For warm noons and cool nights.	23:08
	For sunset and sunrise,	23:12
	and for the new moon.	23:15
	We praise you, oh God, our Father,	23:18
	for the rhythm of the cycle of the seasons,	23:21
	for the cycles of the octaves,	23:23
	the cycles of the leaves and the cycles of the spirit.	23:26
	Oh Lord creator, we thank you for birth,	23:35
	and for rebirth, for childhood and parenthood,	23:39
	for man and for woman, for light and life to come.	23:44
	For the cycle of salvation and the rhythm of life	23:51
	by which we live, and move, and have our being.	23:55
	Oh Lord, we thank you especially in this place,	24:05
	and at this time, that we are called into the fellowship	24:08
	and service of Jesus Christ, and that he is able	24:12
	and willing to use us to proclaim the kingdom of his love.	24:16
	We thank you that we are called to use the work	24:22
	of our hands, the opportunities of professional	24:24
	and business life, the vocation of parenthood,	24:28
	of son-ship, and of home-building to share with others	24:33
	the love of Christ, that has come to us.	24:38
	We thank you that we are called into discipleship,	24:43
	to extend his healing reign.	24:48
	To keep alive the conscience of the world,	24:51
	and to carry out his commission to go	24:54
	and proclaim the kingdom of God	24:57
	to all men and to all nations.	25:00
	And now we lift before you, oh Lord, our Father,	25:06
	a responsive prayer of intercession for our world,	25:10
	for our brothers and our sisters in need.	25:16
	And our supplications for ourselves.	25:20
	Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church,	25:25
	that we all may be one.	25:29
	Grant that every member of the church may truly,	25:33
	and humbly serve you.	25:36
	(congregation replying)	25:39
	We pray for all bishops, priests, and deacons.	25:42
	(congregation replying)	25:46
	We pray for all who govern and hold authority	25:50
	in the nations of the world.	25:53
	(congregation replying)	25:56
	Give us courage to do your will,	26:00
	in all that we undertake.	26:02
	(congregation replying)	26:05
	Have compassion on those who suffer	26:07
	from any grief or trouble.	26:10
	(congregation replying)	26:12
	Give to the departed eternal rest.	26:16
	(congregation replying)	26:19
	We praise you for all your saints who have entered into joy.	26:23
	(congregation replying)	26:27
	Let us pray in silence for our own needs,	26:32
	and those of others whom we know.	26:36
	Almighty God, to whom our needs are known before we ask,	26:47
	help us to ask only what accords with your will,	26:53
	and those good things which we dare not,	26:57
	or in our blindness cannot, ask.	27:00
	Grant us for the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.	27:03
	Amen.	27:08
-	The lesson appointed for today comes from Job,	27:18
	the 19th chapter, and the second chapter of the Philippians.	27:20
	Oh that my words were written.	27:26
	Oh that they were inscribed in a book.	27:28
	Oh that with an iron pen and lead,	27:31
	they were graven into rock forever.	27:34
	For I know that my redeemer lives,	27:37
	and at last, he will stand upon the Earth.	27:40
	And after my skin has been thus destroyed,	27:44
	then without my flesh, I shall see God.	27:47
	Whom I shall see on my side,	27:50
	and my eye shall behold, and not another.	27:53
	My heart faints within me.	27:57
	Few say: how we pursue him!	27:59
	And the root of the matter is found in him.	28:02
	Be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment	28:06
	of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.	28:09
	Have this mind among yourselves,	28:20
	which you have in Christ, Jesus.	28:23
	For though he wasn't the form of God,	28:25
	and did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,	28:27
	but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,	28:31
	being born in the likeness of man,	28:35
	and being found in human form,	28:38
	he humbled himself and became obedient unto death.	28:40
	Even death on a cross.	28:44
	Therefore, God was highly exalted,	28:47
	and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.	28:49
	And that at the name of Jesus,	28:54
	every knee should bow, in heaven and on Earth,	28:56
	and under the Earth, and every tongue confess	29:00
	that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.	29:03
	Here endeth the lesson.	29:07
	(organ music)	29:09
	(melodic choral music)	29:19
-	Let us affirm our faith.	29:53
	We believe in God who has created and is creating,	29:55
	who has come in the true man, Jesus,	30:01
	to reconcile and make new.	30:04
	Who works in us and others by his spirit.	30:07
	We trust him; he calls us to be in his church,	30:11
	to celebrate his presence, to love and serve others,	30:16
	to seek justice and resist evil,	30:21
	to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,	30:24
	our judge and our hope, in life, in death,	30:28
	and life beyond death, God is with us.	30:33
	We are not alone.	30:37
	Thanks be to God.	30:39
-	On a street of a nearby village,	30:54
	we ran into the president of a neighboring institution	30:57
	earlier this morning.	31:01
	And President Friday said, twas not a bad day	31:04
	to preach at Duke, considering yesterday.	31:07
	I answered: any day is a good day to preach at Duke,	31:12
	in spite of the fact that I no longer produce sermons	31:17
	like a weekly run of sausages,	31:21
	but there are enough of my permanent, beloved community here	31:25
	to make me ache to say a new, or an additional,	31:30
	or an advanced word.	31:35
	You see, I've had my five years on Wolf Pen Mountain,	31:39
	waiting for God to say something.	31:44
	And God has had ample time to tell me,	31:47
	and I have clawed and climbed and sawed and mowed	31:51
	and chopped and waited, and even prayed,	31:56
	but God has been as silent as if I were Elijah, on Sinai.	32:00
	I really am very sad about this.	32:06
	I really had hoped, but the inscrutable,	32:09
	mysterious silence has simply	32:14
	pushed me back upon resources,	32:17
	people, books, memories, ideals, I already had.	32:20
	I report with candor and regret, no new equipment.	32:26
	Does this mean then when I come here,	32:33
	that I am doomed anew, simply to repeating	32:37
	condensed gruel we have fed each other before?	32:42
	Not at all.	32:47
	For if God has not moved, I have.	32:49
	I have moved past and out of my	32:55
	30-year preoccupation	32:59
	with man, the unconscious.	33:01
	It was a good preoccupation, necessary for me,	33:05
	and unendingly helpful; I have stood with my hat in my hand	33:10
	before a competent psychiatrist, psychologist,	33:15
	sociology, art, history, drama, to say:	33:17
	correct me my notions of man.	33:20
	And it was a good preoccupation,	33:24
	and I now know for you that	33:27
	there is a cellar set of drives	33:31
	behind you; Freud must be pleased that he is established.	33:35
	The unconscious is relevant and determinative.	33:41
	I now know that all leaders, especially religious	33:45
	and political ones, who are warped and twisted,	33:49
	are warped and twisted by their warped and twisted loyalty	33:53
	to a warped and twisted leader,	33:57
	and the little battalion of their family.	33:59
	I know now that all people revert to the stance they took	34:03
	in their primal groups, when they are under pressure,	34:08
	and that all of us use masks and lies and humor	34:12
	and subterfuge and transference and mirrors	34:17
	as means of escape from the need to reveal the self.	34:20
	I know now that few of us really love the self.	34:26
	And that many of us have been trapped in an endless round	34:30
	of pseudo-self disclosure, naval gazing,	34:35
	or as Luther calls it: curvatus in se	34:39
	But I also know that the end of this process	34:44
	may well be a kind of health, an experience of community,	34:47
	a new self-love, a new understanding, involvement,	34:52
	commitment, and a kind of undeniable human dignity.	34:58
	The end may be, for some, a kind of exhibitionism,	35:03
	a faddish and destructive progression from group to group,	35:07
	of half-born persons, hoping for the highly unlikely.	35:12
	Enough of that has happened to make me ask:	35:17
	were we criminally wrong?	35:21
	Did we follow, these 30 years, a will o' the wisp?	35:25
	Did we lead the folk into a demonic cul de sac,	35:30
	where each turns in on each?	35:34
	Did we really abandon what gospel is about?	35:37
	I still think not.	35:42
	Rather, we learned, did we not,	35:45
	that group is of the essence of humanhood.	35:48
	There is no way from I to thou	35:53
	that does not add up to an us-hood.	35:57
	We learned, did we not, that church happens	36:03
	anywhere the group is really such that	36:07
	it's safe to be me.	36:11
	And that the Lord, Christ, still appears on the road	36:14
	between folk.	36:18
	We learn that being Christian and being human	36:21
	are the same high thing, and that guilt	36:25
	and insufficiency	36:30
	and self-hate fall away on the road to humanhood,	36:32
	and I can love me only as I love us,	36:36
	and come to see that	36:41
	some of the us's love me too.	36:43
	This is enough to have learned for now,	36:48
	from the Freud combine, but there's more,	36:51
	a great deal more, a whole lot more.	36:55
	We were wrong if we stopped with inner declaration	36:59
	and self revelation, for there is more.	37:03
	And I have moved out of and into a new concern	37:09
	with man as responsible, able,	37:14
	agent of a higher selfhood.	37:18
	Whatever you are, you are more than a set of determining,	37:22
	shaping memories.	37:27
	Really now, your parents are only here for today,	37:30
	and their voices are growing weaker.	37:33
	Really now, you are more than a childish and warped loyalty	37:37
	to a warped loyalty, long abandoned in your romance-ified	37:42
	childhood, you have moved to town, you're a big girl now.	37:47
	Your memories, real enough, are memories only.	37:54
	And you work, worth, witness humanhood	37:58
	to accomplish in the present.	38:03
	Having orchestrated the voices from behind you,	38:07
	there is a being to be for the future, for you,	38:11
	and this task, I'm convinced, calls for a higher notion	38:16
	of self, higher than my preoccupation	38:22
	with the unconscious can provide.	38:26
	Which is to say: knowing these things about myself,	38:31
	accepting these things about myself,	38:36
	coping with these things about myself,	38:39
	I set out to make something of myself.	38:43
	Bildung a structured form, life,	38:48
	and history,	38:53
	a drama, a play, an episode,	38:55
	I've become consciously	38:59
	directed by the tip of my iceberg that shows best.	39:01
	But the direction I take	39:06
	is deliberately toward the recovery	39:10
	of a set of myths.	39:14
	We threw away myth too soon.	39:18
	We demythologized too fast.	39:23
	For man, myth-bearer	39:28
	and myth-born,	39:33
	always is as sick	39:35
	when he absolutizes reason,	39:38
	as he is insane	39:42
	when he worships unreason.	39:44
	The higher self is available to us only through	39:48
	our immersion in a set of reasonable myths.	39:52
	And what are these myths I must buy, or re-buy?	39:59
	What is the composition of that dream	40:05
	I must reify,	40:08
	live out, for me?	40:11
	Number one is the myth, in spite of all my experience	40:14
	with the unconscious,	40:18
	the myth that I am a conscience.	40:20
	I really am, before or after the election,	40:25
	I am a conscience.	40:30
	Number two is the notion from Plato and earlier	40:35
	that will and passion are	40:39
	forces of the ego, I direct.	40:43
	I drive will and passion.	40:48
	Number three, from dear Frederick Denison Myers,	40:53
	is the myth that I am under a law to love.	40:56
	Paul Tillich noted the emergence in the '40s	41:04
	of a new form of Christianity, in the context	41:07
	of a person and community that I am,	41:10
	he said it was to be expected and prepared for,	41:13
	but not yet to be named.	41:18
	Let us name it now.	41:21
	Let us name it here.	41:24
	When my power, my will and passion,	41:26
	serve my sense of justice, conscience.	41:31
	I am loving.	41:36
	When my love really guides my use of power,	41:39
	will and passion, I serve justice.	41:45
	And when my love and my commitment to justice	41:50
	are rightly connected, I have true power.	41:55
	Or, when conscience, justice, and will	42:00
	are properly related, I really love.	42:05
	And when loving and willing go together, I am just.	42:10
	And when will and conscience go the same road,	42:16
	I have power.	42:20
	Put this, all this, as a capstone overlay,	42:24
	dominant feature of my profile,	42:30
	landmark of my landscape,	42:34
	over my acceptance of the pit from which I was dug,	42:37
	and the goal is in sight.	42:43
	Humanization.	42:47
	Full humanity, as Abraham Maslow called it,	42:49
	and what Jesus Christ is	42:54
	comes within my grasp.	42:57
	My high self is present to me, and all these others	43:02
	are fellow diners at a feast.	43:07
	For here, I am home at last.	43:11
	I not only like me, I love me,	43:14
	and hence I can love you, good or bad.	43:17
	And the wine and the bread of our daily daily,	43:22
	become condiments of life as feast,	43:26
	in such a company of the glad and the human	43:29
	become so satisfying to me that when some distasteful,	43:33
	ungodly, ludicrous and overwhelming	43:38
	outsider like Herod,	43:42
	the king, sends for me to come to him,	43:45
	I can, with total assurance, say as Jesus said:	43:48
	go tell that old she-fox that I'm here at supper today,	43:53
	shall be here tomorrow, and the next day.	43:58
	I intend to go to Jerusalem.	44:01
	Let him meet me there if he wishes to see me.	44:03
	Given this strong an "I",	44:08
	this conscience, will, and love,	44:11
	based upon an acceptance of the self.	44:14
	However, it's still not enough.	44:18
	For much has happened in our time to dissipate the person.	44:21
	The person cannot make it to personhood,	44:28
	apart from communion.	44:31
	And community is at a premium here and now.	44:34
	Indeed, there may not just now be a new and confident word.	44:39
	Quite the contrary.	44:45
	In our contemporary situation, all the old words,	44:47
	especially that old 12th century word, acedia,	44:52
	the word for sloth, all the words are back onstage.	44:56
	And whether it has been with dust with Dostoevsky	45:02
	and Konrad and Kafka and Freud,	45:05
	or Plato or Santayana, Nietzsche,	45:06
	the new madness has taken the visions in hell	45:09
	of the old masters and vulgarized them as chic.	45:14
	And Beckett and Leonesco and Sangille	45:19
	are all old-fashioned now.	45:22
	The masters are out of date, now.	45:24
	The masters of invective have lost their usefulness, now.	45:27
	Over against the pop madness of tarot cards	45:31
	and astrology and occultism and drugs,	45:35
	and the tragic comic Satan cults,	45:38
	and the farthest out symbol of the madness revolution,	45:41
	which is Charlie Manson praying to be dead in the head.	45:45
	Over against such a backdrop,	45:50
	is there a current word to be said?	45:53
	Let me offer to this man of love and will and conscience,	45:58
	who has examined his own innards and come to accept them,	46:04
	let me offer as the content of a new and confident word,	46:08
	an old and not yet heard word,	46:13
	the myth of a common	46:16
	good to be worked for.	46:19
	I can hear you now,	46:23
	across the miles that separate us,	46:26
	that old saw, common good?	46:29
	That old subterfuge of politicians?	46:34
	That old banner of a worn-out, Burke-ian aristocracy?	46:37
	That old chimera communism fostered and festered	46:42
	over the heads and guts of a billion, 400 million people.	46:46
	A common good?	46:51
	Whom do you kid, friend?	46:53
	That old, dead American dream.	46:56
	That old utopian fraud, it's as dead as freshman courses	46:59
	in ethics and as moribund as legal morality,	47:05
	there is no common good!	47:09
	Nature won't stand for it.	47:11
	Maybe so, but,	47:14
	common good is the myth that made Western Civilization	47:17
	a civilization, it's the myth that holds every political,	47:22
	social, moral, economic, and religious entity together,	47:26
	west of the Euphrates, west of Abraham, even west of God.	47:30
	It's the old, 2,500-year driving force behind	47:36
	everything that is worth doing and keeping,	47:41
	since the fall of Troy or the end of Darius the Persian.	47:43
	Common good is the kernel of the German tribal,	47:49
	(speaking German), which means now: freedom.	47:54
	Upon which every Western enterprise,	47:58
	from economic to heavenly is nourished.	48:01
	It's the gut dream of European expansion,	48:04
	it's the justifiable motif of every emigration	48:07
	and every immigration of all the white lemmings	48:10
	of tribal Europe, it's the only justification	48:14
	of all the revolutions, charters, documents,	48:17
	pronouncements, political organizations,	48:21
	and religious bureaucratizations, from King John of England	48:23
	to Gandhi of India and Mao of China.	48:27
	It is the great, unrealized, forever elusive,	48:30
	utterly attractive dream, common desire,	48:34
	longest hope of mankind.	48:37
	It is what all Christendom would have been about,	48:40
	if Christendom had ever been Christian.	48:44
	It is a common good, the notion without which,	48:48
	says Flewelling, the sins of our children	48:53
	would long since have accomplished our destruction.	48:56
	But who really talks about it,	49:00
	or takes it seriously anymore?	49:02
	Literally no one, except the kind of man who seeks	49:06
	and gets high political office.	49:11
	And what he means by the common good,	49:15
	is so fragmented as to have dissipated its meaning.	49:19
	For by common good, the politico, locally and nationally,	49:23
	means: casa nostra.	49:28
	He means our house, our barrio, our corral,	49:31
	our county, our precinct, our family,	49:35
	common good means my club, my firm, my foundry,	49:39
	my property, my principles, my theologies,	49:43
	my institutions; common good means our community,	49:47
	our sideboards, and prejudices and misjudgments.	49:52
	Our thing, he means, when he says the common good,	49:55
	he means our thing, the whole thing,	50:00
	which and with respect of which we are willing to say	50:04
	to any who buy our localisms: try it, you'll like it!	50:07
	But to which our neighbor may say: I ate the whole thing,	50:12
	and I thought I was gonna die.	50:17
	I had a different teacher here.	50:22
	I had a different political teacher here.	50:25
	Arthur Murphy, professional philosopher.	50:29
	Chairman at Cornell, Washington and Texas.	50:34
	Lonely bachelor, challenger for debate with any of them,	50:38
	Whitehead to Dewey.	50:42
	Dead of a liver ailment in his 50s.	50:44
	Modest, separated, rare.	50:47
	No Christian, and hence, probably utterly Christian.	50:50
	Among his papers, the best work of his life,	50:54
	a presidential address to the American Philosophy Society	50:58
	at Toronto, during the McCarthy sea of troubles,	51:02
	in which he spoke of the common good as a myth	51:07
	to be recovered, lest we die.	51:12
	But there's something in our way, here.	51:18
	You and I have lived all our political lives	51:22
	in a situation of managed credulity.	51:25
	What we can believe is managed for us.	51:31
	The atmosphere is politically managed to preserve	51:36
	the emotional power of words that sound like reasons,	51:39
	but will not bear the examination of good minds.	51:44
	We have so many saviors in North Carolina, too.	51:48
	Too, the appeal is always on behalf of shared ideals,	51:54
	common goods, with wordy enticements,	52:00
	so that the problem becomes: I can't identify the ought.	52:03
	For description is not justification,	52:10
	and command is not justification,	52:13
	and party loyalty is not justification,	52:15
	and verbal promises in a situation where the believing	52:18
	power is managed is prima fascia a distortion of the ought.	52:22
	Because what I ought in a situation is not the "is"	52:27
	of group approval or aversion.	52:32
	Because what is right is just not what is dominant opinion,	52:35
	because moral authority in the service of a common good	52:39
	is just not what most folks think.	52:43
	There are fewer uglier forms of cynicism	52:47
	than that of politicians who, having demoralized	52:52
	the public mind with fear, suspicion,	52:57
	and misrepresentation, then acclaim the voted result	53:00
	as the moral judgment of the community.	53:05
	What makes a thing common good is not what everybody wants,	53:10
	when each wishes to please himself,	53:15
	or when all have been made submissive to the same pressure.	53:17
	Common good is that interest	53:22
	that can justify itself	53:26
	as public and universal,	53:29
	on terms of equity that apply to all.	53:32
	Most of us have lived our lives in a situation	53:40
	of managed credulity, where we hardly think at all.	53:43
	Hence genuine agreement on a common good	53:48
	becomes impossible.	53:52
	But on the other hand,	53:55
	community in search of a common good	53:57
	for all, which is characterized	54:00
	by processes of rational	54:04
	self-controlled inquirer and behavior,	54:06
	and common purposes, faithfully served,	54:10
	and pledges kept, and hope for goods achieved	54:14
	in action together, means that the attitudes of conscience	54:19
	and will and love and the action resulting there from,	54:24
	give you genuine community.	54:29
	And when this happens, those who speak the language	54:32
	of a common good do not deceive themselves.	54:37
	It can be served,	54:42
	and the commitment to make my love,	54:45
	will, conscience, ideals,	54:49
	good in action	54:53
	is the only guarantee of the worth of the ideal.	54:55
	To recover the myth of a genuine common good, then,	55:02
	said Murphy, long ago, and I lift it from him,	55:07
	we must work with such moral understanding as we have,	55:11
	with men who like ourselves	55:17
	are sometimes knaves or fools.	55:20
	Within a social process in which the quest for better	55:24
	understanding is always faced by obstructions	55:29
	which no amount of well-wishing or speaking can remove.	55:33
	But, wherever in this disparate,	55:39
	shared enterprise,	55:43
	wherever we do the best we can,	55:46
	in the service of the best we know,	55:50
	and know what we are doing,	55:54
	the work of a common good	55:58
	does go forward.	56:01
	And what do we Christians say to all this?	56:05
	We do have a commitment.	56:11
	Commitment in the sense of John McMurray,	56:14
	Michael Polanyi, Teilhard de Chardin, Richard Niebuhr,	56:17
	Jesus Christ.	56:22
	Our commitment rests on a realizable	56:24
	idea, ideal.	56:28
	It is the crowning idea of a good for all men.	56:32
	That's worth my life,	56:38
	because it would be full humanization	56:40
	a vast en-manning,	56:45
	a new race of man.	56:48
	A coming of a kingdom of God,	56:51
	which is a local possibility.	56:54
	Always it's a local possibility.	56:58
	If we could climb out of our corrals and barrios,	57:01
	into a truly common quest.	57:06
	Ecologically, it involves a legitimate notion of creation.	57:12
	Sociologically, it involves a legitimate awareness	57:18
	of a redemption that is in process.	57:22
	And its consummation calls for an undying	57:26
	commitment to a common good.	57:31
	It rests on the myths of conscience and will and love,	57:35
	or of love and power and justice.	57:41
	In my service to a common good,	57:44
	and apart from some such	57:48
	view of the self, and the selves,	57:51
	and society,	57:56
	we are something less than men.	57:58
	But with this inner awareness that it's okay to be me,	58:04
	committed to love and conscience and will	58:09
	in the service of a good for all,	58:12
	some of us here, present in the local barrio,	58:16
	might make it yet to a manhood	58:21
	that matters eternally.	58:25
	In a communion of men and women who matter eternally,	58:28
	for Jesus's sake.	58:34
	Let us pray.	58:37
	Grant insight and grace, lord of our lives,	58:42
	to any here who seek a way	58:46
	to serve thy common good,	58:50
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	58:53
	Amen.	58:55
	(organ music)	58:58
	(choral music)	59:33
	(organ music)	1:01:35
	(sweeping choral music)	1:02:41

Item Info

Title:

Carlyle Marney - "Our Present Higher Good" (November 5, 1972)

Description:

The realization of a truly human selfhood must come through the self's immersion in four reasonable myths: 1.) The myth that, in spite of all we know about the unconscious, I truly am a consciousness; 2.) The myth that will and passion are forces of the ego that I, as a consciousness, direct; 3.) The myth that I am under a law of love; 4.) The myth that there is a common good. When we accept these myths, then we can move to full personhood and the realization of a new humanity. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Sermon start time: (Part 1) 30:54. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 58:58.
Key quotation: “The higher self is available to us only through our immersion in a set of reasonable myths.”

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r46970c4j

Date:

November 5, 1972

Speaker:

Marney, Carlyle, 1916-1978

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0639
ref6481_nzl
uachapelsermaud
duke:321148
dcrau001798
ark:/87924/r46970c4j
7b2cca22-21b1-4165-8629-6d776dcc1c9d

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English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Carlyle Marney - "Our Present Higher Good" (November 5, 1972)

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1. Carlyle Marney - "Our Present Higher God" (November 5, 1972)

Duke University Archives

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Carlyle Marney - "Our Present Higher Good" (November 5, 1972)

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