Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.
You know the passage where Scarlett voices her happiness that her mother is dead so that she can't see what a bad girl Scarlett has become? Well that's me.
Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you and were tender with you and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you and disputed passage with you?
The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.
You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage as I like to put it and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.
I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament not by Jesus but by Paul that say women should not adorn themselves they should always wear hats or color their hair in church - things like that - I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.
Freedom Summer the massive voter education project in Mississippi was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.
As a young man you don't notice at all that you were after all badly affected. For years afterwards at least ten years I kept getting these dreams in which I had to crawl through ruined houses along passages I could hardly get through.
We have to be able to grow up. Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be.
I keep sailing on in this middle passage. I am sailing into the wind and the dark. But I am doing my best to keep my boat steady and my sails full.