Dear Friends,

It is impossible today to stay quiet in the face of all the tragedies and turmoil that our country and so many of our fellow Brothers and Sisters are experiencing. I like so many condemn the senseless killing last week of George Floyd and the ongoing racism that continues to plague our great nation. I hope all people who commit such atrocities will be held accountable so that justice may prevail. I pray for all those who peacefully protest, especially all our young people, and hope that they might know that many of us stand in solidarity with their voices and cries for justice, peace and an end to so much violence. I pray that others, who are making this horrible situation worse by their vandalism, looting and disrespect for life might cease from such wasteful behaviors. I ask God to grace and protect the thousands of amazing law enforcement officers, who tirelessly work for the greater good and our protection every day. So many of these great men and woman are too often condemned because of the shameless and inhumane acts of the few corrupt officers, who bring nothing but dishonor and disgrace to this most noble and needed profession of service.

As I write these lines, I think about the speech that Bobby Kennedy made on the night that MLK Jr. was assassinated and sadly realize how little our country has grown in wisdom over the last fifty years and beyond.

The words of that great speech are:

“I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible–you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization–black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

I pray today that we as a nation and each of us individually will somehow begin to “tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”