Yesterday produced a few thoughts…

Attended a panel on civil rights hosted by the Black Law Students Association and moderated by Professor Christine Goodman yesterday during lunch. Raul Ayala of the Mexican American Bar Foundation, Rabbi Judith HaLevy of the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, and Reverend Brenda LaMothe of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church were the speakers. As would be expected, the inauguration of our nation’s first black president was a popular topic.

But my favorite part was a story Reverend Brenda told near the end of the hour. She talked about growing up black in Watts during the 1960s, her memories of the riots, along with the devastation felt throughout her community following the assassinations of Dr. King and two Kennedys. She remembered a personal feeling of despair and the advice her grandmother gave her: “Don’t expect to save the world. Go to school, do your best, and use your life to touch one person. If we all did our job, the world will be saved.”

As with most grandkids, she didn’t buy it at the time.

In a moment of transparency, she told us that she did decide something that she had never admitted publicly before yesterday: she decided she would marry a white man instead of a black man so she could have white kids who would never be called nigger. And she did it. With the exception that she went on to have two really black kids!!!

But along the way her grandmother’s advice made a lot more sense. And forty years later it makes a lot of sense.

Quit trying to save the whole world I say to myself. Use my life to touch one person.

And then last night I went to the Perrins for the grad student Bible study. Dean Perrin himself spoke. He used Paul’s “jars of clay” as his text, but near the end he offered a phrase from the very cool writings of Henri Nouwen: “downward mobility.” How making oneself less can, in fact, be progress. Jesus, for instance.

Quit trying to save the whole world I say to myself – moving up in the world, though intuitive, is misguided. Use my life to touch one person. And look downward.

I tell you the truth. The greatest among you will be the servant of all.