Called to Be Saints

There are good men here, just as there are bad men.  There are competent leaders and a bungler here and there.  We have activists who risk their lives to confront a people with the challenge of freedom and a nation with its conscience.  We have neutralists who cautiously seek to calm troubled waters.  We have men about the work of reconciliation who are willing to reflect upon the cost and pay it.  Perhaps at one time or another [we] are all of these.  Sometimes we take to the streets, sometimes we yawn through interminable meetings.  Sometimes we talk with white men in their homes and offices, sometimes we sit out a murderous night with an alcoholic and his family because we love them and cannot stand apart.  Sometimes we confront the posse, and sometimes we hold a child.  Sometimes we stand with men who have learned to hate, and sometimes we must stand a little apart from them.  Our life...is filled with ambiguity, and in that we share with men everywhere.  We are beginning to see as we never saw before that we are truly in the world and yet ultimately not of it.  For through the bramble bush of doubt and fear and supposed success we are groping our way to the realization that above all else, we are called to be saints!

– from “The Burning Bush,” by Jonathan Myrick Daniels,
The New Hampshire Churchman, June, 1965, vol. 7, no. 9

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