An Award We Share!

I really can't imagine a more humbling day: to be honored in this way--with the ACLU's "Hammer of Justice Award"--before a crowd of people I love and respect.  I looked out at the couple of hundred gathered, ACLU members and supporters, and saw heroes like Steve Pleich and Stacey Falls, Willow Katz and Dorah Shuey, Peter Klotz-Chamberlin and David Sweet.  These are neighbors who dedicate their every breath to the deepest kind of compassion, the boldest kind of nonviolence, and human freedom in every sense.

And for some reason, for some crazy reason I can only begin to wrap my mind around, they were honoring me!  Wow.  Life doesn't get much sweeter than that.  And I've been truly, completely humbled.  

I believe in the power and the promise of community.  I believe we do justice and seek peace together.  And this is an award I share with my church, with my friends and colleagues at Peace United Church.  It's a generous, prophetic and courageous community of souls.  It's not a perfect church, and we're not perfect people.  But together, we have built a church of courage and compassion.  Together, we have committed our lives to service and lovingkindness.  And together we continue to take risks for justice and peace, in Santa Cruz and Sacramento, in South Africa and Jerusalem.  

Because my church is determined to the core, and because they pray every week that God's will be done "on earth as in heaven," I am empowered to be a witness.  I am encouraged to be a peacemaker.  I am emboldened to cultivate my own hunger and thirst for justice.  I am a blessed man.  And tonight, a humbled one.

So, thank you, ACLU!  And thank you, Peace United!  You are my heroes.  You are my people.  And we do this work, we love this world, together!