[Dialogue] World Wide - History long

[Len Hockley]

Dear Colleagues,

Phyllis and I went to a Peace Alliance Conference in WDC last week which 
was all about lobbying for the campaign to create a US Department of 
Peace.  I became excited and hopeful.  There were 14 of us from Oregon in 
the 750 that attended and we met with staff of all seven of our Oregon 
congregational delegation to encourage them to support the bill to create a 
US Department of Peace, HR-808.  They were all polite, and two of them even 
became co-sponsors.     However, I had to remember that this is something 
like the fiftieth time such an effort has been tried in Congress and even 
with the extra push of new leadership chances of success are very slim. I 
became discouraged.

As Phyllis was creating the liturgy for this weeks Circle Service at our 
Episcopal Church, she mentioned that it is the 200th anniversary of the 
passage of a bill in the English Parliament to outlaw the slave trade in 
the British Empire.  This reminded me that William Wilberforce is one of my 
heroes.  He first entered the bill to outlaw the slave trade fifteen years 
before it passed.  This was when he was first elected to Parliament and as 
the youngest member he was warned against doing anything as unpopular as 
that.  Not only did he do it (where it went down to defeat with only a 
smattering of support), he introduced it every time he could for fifteen 
years until it finally was made law.

Dennis Kucinich is the William Wilberforce of today and this again gives me 
hope that "good" will prevail.  I'm not sure he knows of Reinhold Niebuhr's 
quote but it is the truth about life and Dennis lives it.  It's about time 
I do too.

                   Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;
                              therefore we must be saved by hope.
                   Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete
                         sense in any immediate context of history;
                              therefore we must be saved by faith.
                 Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
                                therefore we are saved by love.
               No virtuous act is as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend
                             or foe as it is from our standpoint;
                    therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love
                                      which is forgiveness.
                                                                                   REINHOLD 
NIEBUHR

I'm Len Hockley and have been in the Order Ecumenical since interning with 
my family in 1966.  I have been privileged to serve in Detroit, Chicago, 
Scotland, Indonesia, S. Korea, New York, and now am with the Diaspora in 
Eugene Oregon.

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