Samuel Gandy - "Achieving a Living Faith" (December 5, 1965)

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	(intense ambient music)	0:04
-	It is a joy always	0:36
	to give thanks unto the Lord	0:40
	and to sing praises unto the name of the most high.	0:43
	And especially this day in this place	0:50
	with this people and it's chaplain,	0:55
	I rejoice in the opportunity and the privilege	0:59
	and the common praise of God.	1:03
	Let us pray.	1:07
	May the words now to be spoken,	1:11
	be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord our strength,	1:15
	and our (indistinct).	1:21
	Amen.	1:24
	How may I find a faith that will give meaning to life?	1:31
	And that will endow human existence with purpose	1:42
	and with significance.	1:51
	During the last 20 years, this has then particularly	1:55
	the continuing quest of intellectuals and non intellectuals.	2:01
	And today we stand deep within this search for meaning	2:09
	and the hope that we might not alone	2:16
	endow our existence with this force	2:19
	and this factor for all of living,	2:23
	but particularly that we might discover some purpose	2:28
	and significance in the midst of all of the anxiety	2:33
	and desperation and confusion.	2:39
	How may I find a faith therefore	2:44
	that will allay this knowing desperation	2:47
	that comes from a felt need for being.	2:52
	And this felt need is made starkingly real	2:59
	by all of these exigencies says which crowd in upon us,	3:05
	both in our culture and in our personal experiencing.	3:11
	How may therefor fill this vast void	3:18
	that seems to swing around me with an engulfing effect,	3:25
	filling this void so that I can make sense out of it all.	3:32
	And that life itself	3:38
	for me shall not be a hopeless thing.	3:41
	Now, this faith, which I seek	3:46
	is not one that will give answers	3:50
	to casual living or to survival living.	3:54
	I don't need this.	3:59
	The fact is this is a part of the burden of my days	4:01
	that these answers come all too often	4:05
	and too quickly and too easily for me.	4:10
	Wherever I turn in the midst of my culture,	4:15
	I discover them and in my society,	4:18
	which is largely business oriented,	4:21
	particularly in its emphasis upon the success cult,	4:26
	answers do come very easily and very quickly.	4:30
	The faith that I seek	4:35
	is at a much deeper dimension of human need.	4:37
	I seek and answer or answers	4:45
	that will afford for me now	4:50
	that which will sustain, guide	4:53
	and nurture me for the rest of my life.	4:56
	Even though, as I seek this,	5:00
	I recognize that these answers are,	5:03
	this answer may in itself yield to clearer interpretations	5:07
	of reality as they break out upon me	5:14
	in my own time and generation.	5:17
	Now that's the kind of class,	5:21
	this kind of searching, this gnawing desperation	5:23
	to fill this void and to make real the need within me,	5:27
	in the quietness of my mind	5:34
	forces it upon me really the basic inquiry.	5:37
	The thing that is really disturbing me deep down underneath	5:42
	therefore is simply the inquiry	5:45
	of what is it really to live?	5:49
	And how may I therefore carve out of all of this mess?	5:55
	That dimension that will strengthen, sustain and nurture me.	6:03
	And it's the confusion for all age levels,	6:09
	but particularly for those in the limited years	6:12
	of their experiencing sometimes feel more desperate,	6:15
	for the quest seems much more immediate	6:21
	and the anxiety, a great deal more pressing.	6:25
	And there was a sadness here	6:30
	when the mind cannot explore adequately this quest	6:32
	so that the meaning can stand out clearly	6:38
	and one can be governed by this meaning, with intelligence	6:40
	and with the kind of direction that challenges	6:46
	and fills in with courage every bit of my living.	6:50
	Some years ago, there was an antidote on this confusion,	6:55
	and it came out of the great State of Texas.	6:59
	I presume it came from Texas	7:03
	because everything that I understand is big.	7:04
	But this was a young man who had purchased at that time	7:09
	a Coupe De Ville General Motors product	7:14
	with all of the extras and all that was necessary	7:17
	to make it a truly magnificent machine.	7:21
	And he supported himself around the ranches	7:25
	and the plains of Texas.	7:28
	And he said to one of his comrades one day,	7:30
	you know, if anything ever happens to me,	7:33
	what I'd like for you to do	7:35
	is to make sure that I am buried in this car.	7:37
	It is really a dream boat, isn't it?	7:41
	And as it happens,	7:44
	according to that adult and through course of time,	7:45
	death did catch up with him.	7:48
	And two grave diggers who were on the sidelines	7:52
	waiting until this being wrapped around	7:57
	and all of the magnificence of this Coupe De Ville	8:02
	could be interred a Lord into the grave.	8:06
	And one standing nearby was heard to say as they looked on,	8:10
	as the car was being lowered, man, that's living.	8:18
	This antidote seem to be always,	8:25
	to put up something of the confusion of the moment.	8:27
	And what we do in instances like this,	8:33
	it appears to me is that we do not turn within	8:35
	as some years ago,	8:40
	there was those who were	8:42
	seeking to promote this kind of challenge,	8:43
	and particularly to students	8:46
	in American colleges and universities,	8:48
	even some of our psychologists	8:50
	who are oriented a bit towards the spiritual quest.	8:53
	And that you can never find	8:57
	meaning to life's existence outside of the self.	8:59
	And then in the language of the Chinese poet Lao Tzu	9:07
	that you can't find it by looking outside,	9:11
	or peering through a window	9:15
	and you can't find it by running outside.	9:16
	As if in all directions	9:21
	and the hope that it might be discovered,	9:23
	but if you are earnestly seeking it,	9:25
	you must be quiet at the very center of your being.	9:29
	And in the cryptic expression	9:35
	of the last line of that magnificent poem	9:38
	describing this by Lao-Tzu, he concludes,	9:42
	the way to do is to be.	9:45
	One of my mentors some years ago	9:52
	in seeking to give expression to the kind of necessity of	9:56
	not just running around and running outside to find meaning,	10:01
	but to find it inside would dramatize this in part by	10:05
	telling the story of the old musk ox	10:09
	that had an insatiable desire in season	10:13
	for the smell of the aroma of musk,	10:16
	and therefore would take out to the field	10:18
	and looking under every cup of brush, rock	10:23
	and the hope that he might find the object of the quest.	10:28
	And then finally, after having run	10:34
	until he was thoroughly exhausted,	10:36
	lying prostrate with its tiny head	10:40
	nestled between its even tinier paws	10:45
	discovered there that musk was at it's own hide.	10:51
	The meaning of life is within you.	11:00
	But what is it really to live?	11:06
	Several summers ago, it was my privilege to be in London	11:08
	and to be at an audience that listened	11:13
	to an interview of the late psychologist Carl Jung,	11:16
	who was then speaking and writing	11:21
	in terms of the art of living.	11:23
	And I thought I'd probably I'd get	11:25
	some kind of index from this,	11:27
	but in trying to probe this basic inquiry	11:29
	on what is it to live and accepting the fact that	11:34
	living is not so much an accident	11:38
	as it is an art.	11:42
	The search therefor is to find out what really is an art.	11:45
	And I'm not sure that the late Carl Jung	11:50
	answered what an art is.	11:53
	And I've come to the conclusion upon reading again,	11:56
	Erich Fromm,	12:00
	that perhaps he was closer to what it could mean for me,	12:02
	he doesn't define what art is,	12:06
	he merely gives three aspects of it,	12:08
	what he calls the mastery of the theory,	12:12
	the mastery of the practice and making theory	12:16
	and practice a matter of ultimate concern.	12:20
	But then what kind of fear,	12:26
	and may I hold as an intelligent being	12:28
	functioning at the very center of my society	12:32
	and then in the next of the kind of world in which I live.	12:35
	So then I just don't come up	12:39
	with something that is transmissive,	12:42
	something that is purely stereotyped,	12:45
	or a kind of myth that is pleasant to hear,	12:50
	but has no real power to transform me.	12:53
	This is not an easy thing to come by.	13:01
	A theory that can guide and sustain and nurture.	13:05
	And after a great deal of searching in this direction,	13:13
	I've come up with the kind of feeling	13:16
	of the theory that seems to me not alone	13:19
	because I am under some ordination	13:23
	but in an honest and very genuine effort	13:26
	to find the source of this meaning,	13:30
	that a theory that makes sense	13:35
	and amidst exigent says of things and of experiencing,	13:37
	is still that kind of theory that first and foremost	13:44
	is rested from the funded experiences of human civilization.	13:50
	And when we look upon this sharpened and focus	13:57
	for the kind of giving	14:02
	and the kind of meaning that it may afford,	14:03
	we still come up with the same old language	14:06
	that it is in the power and the goodness of God	14:11
	that this kind of theory can be the main spring for the art	14:18
	and all of my living.	14:26
	Not because it is recorded,	14:28
	not because it has been passed on through the system	14:30
	in a tremendous heritage,	14:34
	but because in amidst of all of the perishing,	14:36
	it make sense.	14:41
	But even so that's power and the goodness of God	14:46
	must be demonstrated again and a gain	14:49
	and it must find a way of laying whole	14:53
	of my full consciousness and my devotion,	14:56
	which is another way of saying that I cannot snatch it from	15:01
	the funded experiences of the past alone,	15:05
	I must translate this into the experiencing	15:08
	of this moment in history for me.	15:12
	Which is still another way of saying that in this advent,	15:19
	it is the same old quest	15:24
	and the genuine accounting in history	15:27
	of one who was wrapped in swaddling clothes,	15:31
	and laid in a manger.	15:37
	If the power and the goodness of God as theory	15:41
	that can give guidance to me can mean anything, at all,	15:47
	it therefore assumes that in the nature of this power,	15:51
	it functions in history now,	15:55
	and that at the very center of it is goodness.	16:01
	And therefore this felt kneeing need	16:09
	agonized by the desperation of my quest finds an anchor	16:13
	through which it may continue its explorations,	16:20
	even for a clearer manifestation	16:24
	of the quest for all of my living.	16:27
	Now, this it seems to me is	16:32
	in part the kind of thing that really happened,	16:33
	the event that we will celebrate again this afternoon	16:37
	and leading up to its triumphant declaration	16:41
	later this month,	16:45
	that's what Jesus experienced in his will,	16:48
	assuming and accepting a theory of the power	16:53
	and the goodness of God was that this was the kind of theory	16:57
	that answers the deepest dimension of the human quest,	17:02
	which has never been,	17:07
	and probably can never be the acquisition of any thing,	17:08
	any one thing, any object or series of objects.	17:13
	What the human spirit is apparently,	17:20
	and every generation seeks desperately	17:22
	is to be at ease with itself.	17:26
	I almost said at peace,	17:31
	but peace has become	17:32
	(chuckles)	17:35
	quite a term lately,
	but to be at ease with itself, not comfortable,	17:37
	but the kind of easement that permits one to continue	17:41
	the exploration and the great quest.	17:47
	And what it does therefore,	17:51
	what it operates as it did for Jesus,	17:53
	was to satisfy this deep need, which is to overcome fear.	17:56
	And those of us who eat well and sleep well	18:02
	and have our being well in things,	18:05
	and may not recognize how really scared we are.	18:08
	But those of us who try to deal	18:14
	in the human experience by careful analysis,	18:18
	to recognize over and over again,	18:24
	that this is really the substance of the issue fear.	18:25
	Not the kind of fear that we gently	18:33
	talk about hither and yon, but the real fear of being.	18:38
	It is my opinion that a great deal of emphasis	18:45
	on the part of those now who are much younger than I,	18:48
	that's running out after what they call identity	18:53
	to find out who I really am.	18:57
	One of my nephews who was a senior at Havard	19:00
	has just invested his last	19:04
	social security earnings from his father's death,	19:05
	killed in World War Two,	19:08
	he's bought himself a car, he's got an apartment	19:09
	and and I said to him, Chuck, why don't you study?	19:12
	But he says, I got to find out who I am.	19:15
	I mean, that's, I don't know who I am.	19:17
	And so the lingo is a identity.	19:19
	You got to run around and do a lot of things	19:22
	to find out who you really are.	19:25
	Now that's a kind of finding out	19:29
	whether it's in terms of deepness	19:31
	or whether it's in terms of nothingness,	19:34
	shallowness, or nihilism or no way out or no exit,	19:37
	all of these manifestations of this quest,	19:41
	basically it is that I am afraid,	19:44
	but I cannot acknowledge this fear.	19:46
	So when Jesus began to issue for us	19:50
	with the word in his world,	19:54
	Kirby Page describes it very beautifully	19:57
	when he said that	20:00
	if you had been able to mingle imaginatively	20:01
	with the crowds about Jesus, you would have discovered	20:06
	that they were really pursuing the love of God,	20:09
	but they didn't know	20:14
	that they must first overcome their fear.	20:16
	Those men and women he says weren't victims,	20:20
	victims of foreign subjugation and domestic exploitation.	20:22
	Victims of poverty and of riches,	20:28
	victims of customs and of institutions, victims of hatred,	20:32
	and of lust, victims of frustration and of despair,	20:37
	victims of fear, of deeper fear,	20:42
	almost every person he said was afraid,	20:46
	afraid of somebody or of something.	20:52
	And the answer of Jesus to this condition of man	20:58
	was so simple that they who heard it	21:03
	probably failed to take note of it.	21:07
	He merely said, fear not,	21:12
	fear not those who can destroy the body,	21:17
	but after that, there is nothing more that they can do,	21:21
	but you fear God, which	21:25
	when translated for our modern listening would be	21:29
	fear whatever it is	21:33
	that will spiritually displace your stability	21:35
	so that you can no longer affirm from yourself	21:41
	at your very center.	21:45
	This is the fear.	21:47
	And he therefore went about seeking to cast out this fear	21:49
	and to fill up the void of desperation	21:57
	with an authentic hope grounded upon a theory	22:02
	that at bottom, life is good	22:09
	because God is all powerful.	22:15
	Now the mastery of this theory, which is its practice is	22:22
	a very difficult thing by which to come,	22:26
	but we must come to it.	22:30
	And here in is both the tragedy and the hope of our times.	22:36
	Decade ago, I was in the deep south	22:43
	in the hardcore area of New Orleans	22:47
	when the state of affairs and my thinking	22:50
	was more than I would like to describe here.	22:55
	When the whole essence of our	23:00
	democratic structure had been crumbled by	23:02
	the invasion of the sickness of the society at that point,	23:06
	but those of us who are Southerners, I am then,	23:10
	I knew that we had to work this through,	23:15
	dealt with it as best we could.	23:17
	But I never will forget one occasion	23:20
	when the American of Puerto Rican extraction	23:23
	number one of the Catholic churches	23:28
	in the Parish of Orleans,	23:30
	who decided that there was nothing in moral error here	23:32
	and broke across the taboos	23:38
	and insisted that her child	23:41
	should attend the nearest school.	23:43
	And when her neighbors and friends and colleagues	23:48
	hounded and haunted her	23:51
	and smeared her body and her house with tar,	23:54
	her only humble reply	23:59
	before her Archbishop Romell was simply,	24:02
	I don't understand this kind of hate.	24:06
	Few weeks later in the Fifth Circuit Court,	24:12
	the hearing by the US Commission on civil rights	24:17
	as to whether or not citizens of the United States	24:20
	were being denied the privilege of registering to vote,	24:23
	a long lean on tutored sharecropper from Northern Louisiana	24:28
	came down to the crescent city	24:34
	and sat in the court of the fierce Fifth Circuit.	24:36
	And it was evident that anything he said	24:41
	would not only be used against him,	24:45
	but what they virtually his death note in those days.	24:47
	But here he was by all of the standards ignorant,	24:53
	but something of this wisdom of which I speak	24:58
	that is not dependent upon the formal knowledge,	25:02
	but only upon the nurturing of the human spirit	25:05
	in the basic assumption that life at bottom is good	25:08
	and God is in history that has God is powerful.	25:12
	In determining among the (indistinct)	25:16
	when the chairman of that condition	25:20
	leaned across the huge mahogany desk	25:23
	and asked this obviously insecure and untutored	25:27
	citizen from the Backwoods of northern Louisiana,	25:32
	do you intend to go back even after they have shot at you	25:37
	and bruised you and beaten you and tried to register.	25:42
	And in his broken English, he said, yes, sir,	25:48
	I intends to do that, with no hatred, no bitterness,	25:51
	but a full certainty that as a man,	25:58
	this he must do for his dignity	26:03
	was based not upon the laws of the state,	26:07
	but the goodness of God.	26:11
	And he knew it.	26:12
	And he had to practice it.	26:15
	A few years ago, several decades,	26:18
	when I was up at Petersburg in Virginia,	26:21
	it was my first opportunity to meet a Zulu chieftain	26:24
	and all, but (indistinct) was a guest,	26:28
	not only at one of our major denominations in this country,	26:31
	but of the US State Department in the very early 50s.	26:35
	And here was this man educated	26:40
	at one of England's better universities, that other one,	26:42
	who was in every since a man of culture	26:49
	who knew how to hold his teacup and did hold it well,	26:52
	and who spoke and expressed himself with all brilliance,	26:57
	but in his own beloved South America,	27:03
	he was totally and fully displaced.	27:06
	And even today finds himself exiled.	27:10
	But here was a Christian man,	27:14
	a man who really believed this and practiced it	27:16
	because he won the Nobel Peace Prize,	27:21
	but I do not think these	27:23
	things too significant at the moment,	27:25
	except that in the presence of this man, you could feel it.	27:26
	And this is what I'm trying to say this morning,	27:29
	that we don't have to take anybody's word for it.	27:32
	And at this point I'm speaking primarily	27:36
	to my fellow students that never have we had it so good.	27:39
	We are overflowing with the abundance of opportunity	27:46
	and what the startling joy of privilege,	27:50
	both in formal learning and in the experiencing of this,	27:54
	if ever a generation could believe in the power	27:58
	and the goodness of God, instead of being beat,	28:01
	it ought to be rejoicing	28:03
	because everything seems to be favorable.	28:04
	For establishing the most authentic declaration of good.	28:08
	And since in this new period of history,	28:14
	we must do this largely	28:18
	and almost exclusively as an intellectual enterprise,	28:20
	only because to live today is to live by intelligence,	28:23
	you cannot live any other way.	28:26
	You can't get by anymore as you well know, no one can.	28:28
	That the students can provide the farm	28:32
	whereby both the theory and the practice	28:36
	can be made the alternate concern.	28:40
	And the alternate concern is not a futuristic concept.	28:44
	Alternate in this sense means now,	28:49
	(speaks foreign language).	28:52
	It is the here and now of this thing.	28:54
	And ultimately therefore is possible	28:59
	because the crises of the moment are for us,	29:03
	the laboratories by which we may go out.	29:08
	I fled finally from Dillard University in 1961	29:11
	into the so-called slums of south side of Chicago,	29:16
	really a blighted section of Kenwood,	29:21
	which was located on the east Berlin side of 47th Street.	29:24
	Because if you were on the west Berlin side of 47th Street,	29:30
	there was great deal of influence,	29:33
	but on the east side,	29:35
	just a block away from all of this influence,	29:36
	there was abject poverty and misery.	29:38
	I wanted to find out whether what I'd heard was true,	29:42
	whether it's true, that the so-called poor people	29:45
	really want to be poor and make it good so to speak,	29:49
	this is the lingo.	29:53
	And the people who feel that there are those on welfare	29:54
	who rejoice to be on welfare, they want to be on welfare.	29:57
	This is their way of moonlighting on their society.	30:01
	Only to discover that when you sat long enough	30:06
	in a filthy dingy, multiple room use, kitchen bed room,	30:10
	with five or six,	30:17
	some more children hugging around a mother	30:19
	with no father present,	30:21
	but she didn't want to be on welfare,	30:22
	that there's something about the human spirit	30:24
	that resists this.	30:26
	But often she was victimized	30:29
	snd there are students themselves who are not yet prepared	30:31
	to analyze their society sufficient.	30:34
	This is why I'm trying to say,	30:36
	ultimate concern means that as a student,	30:38
	I'm in a position to analyze my society,	30:40
	therefore I deal with my fears	30:44
	by the rendition of truth in every situation	30:47
	so that at least I articulate that which can give meaning	30:51
	because I have discovered it not only in my mind,	30:59
	but if I am a true believer,	31:05
	it has become the substance of my heart.	31:08
	How therefore may I find a faith	31:15
	that will give meaning to life	31:20
	and will endow it with purpose and significance?	31:24
	Let it be sad that an answer is present,	31:33
	and they who see move out knowing the risk,	31:38
	but they take the risk	31:46
	because their bosoms are filled	31:48
	with the essence of courage.	31:52
	Amen.	31:58
	Amen.	32:00
	Our father,	32:09
	fill us, we beseech thee with a hope everlasting	32:13
	that may send us forth now to do thy will in our time.	32:21
	Amen.	32:32
	And now unto him,	32:33
	who is able to lead you into creative living	32:36
	beyond all goals that you'll now see are even dream,	32:42
	unto God the author of life,	32:49
	and unto every single child of his	32:52
	be their dignity of person, nobility of spirit	32:55
	and conscientiousness of goal this day	33:01
	and then all of the days to come through Jesus Christ,	33:05
	our Lord.	33:12
	(congregating sings)	33:17

Item Info

Title:

Samuel Gandy - "Achieving a Living Faith" (December 5, 1965)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4tq5wg2n

Date:

December 5, 1965

Speaker:

Gandy, Samuel

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0318
ref5841_pvp
uachapelsermaud
duke:628587
dcrau002315
ark:/87924/r4tq5wg2n
aa90de63-4b61-4c48-8660-61137dd9b64a

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

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

Rights:

No Re-Use

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Samuel Gandy - "Achieving a Living Faith" (December 5, 1965)

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