Fulghum

"This response to crisis-with strangers or friends or family-is part of our nature. Every day, every week, every year since time began. Whatever the size or nature of the crisis, this has been true of the human community. A fact that must be laid alongside all we know of the horror of man's inhumanity to man. Few of us do not have a story to tell-of what we gave or what was given to us in response to "Help me, help me." We are capable of being agents of one another's revival. None of us can go all the way alone.
Even in the midst of the unbearable agonies of prisons and concentration camps, there are those who choose to help-to give to others: bread, shoes, comfort, whatever. These acts of compassion are the shining, diamond-tough confirmations of human dignity. This is keeping our affairs in order at the highest level. This is communion in its highest form. The ritual of the keeping of the living flame. Held daily in the unfinished cathedral of the human spirit."


June 7, 1995