I remember 1967. I was in seventh grade at San Jacinto Junior High School. Phones were still attached to the wall and only answered by people who were home when they rang.\u00a0 Computers were huge and owned by big businesses. Schools were segregated. Protests felt like things that happened worlds away or on TV.<\/p>\n
While I was captivated by the task of putting together a chicken skeleton for my biology experiment, Dr. Martin Luther King preached at Riverside Church, saying,<\/p>\n
\u201cI am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin … the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr<\/a>.1<\/sup><\/p>\n These words are particularly chilling to me.\u00a0 If King thought we were a \u201cthing-oriented society\u201d in 1967, what would he think today?\u00a0 The enormity of the task of undergoing a \u201cradical revolution of values\u201d seems hopeless.<\/p>\n I carried my heavy heart into church last Sunday where I was reminded that Lent starts this week, beginning with Ash Wednesday.\u00a0 Since my first trip to Haiti in 1996, the Ash Wednesday liturgy has had a special place in my heart.\u00a0 It is the only time when the Episcopal community asks for forgiveness of our cultural sins\u2014sins such as values honoring \u201cmachines and computers, profit motives and property rights\u201d more than people.<\/p>\n \u201cWe confess to you, Lord …our self-indulgent appetites and ways \u2026 our exploitation of other people … [and] our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts. …<\/p>\n Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty … prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us, for our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us. …\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n Breaking the silence about the ashes of our failures as a society, gives me the first stirring of hope that something new is possible.\u00a0 Even now.<\/p>\n