Reports & Articles
What We Do Here MATTERS!
Robert Barker, Stewardship Committee
When the Stewardship Committee defined essential activities of the Society that we support when we
pledge, the very first on the list was:
Provide a welcoming place for all, regardless of age, race, ethnic background, personal abilities, gender or
sexual identity.
I believe in the essential importance of this commitment, this promise. I have studied some of the
decision making processes during the Holocaust, in particular how ordinary and often quite religious
people can make terrible decisions, decisions that lead to the torture and death of others just because
they were different. So many times, if they are not repeatedly educated regarding tolerance and
acceptance, people cannot recognize just how hideous their decisions really are. We have heard our
President comment on his experiences as a young black man, of hearing the locks click on cars as he
walked by, or watching women clutch their purses closer as he passed them on the sidewalk. These
may not be deadly decisions or attitudes, but they carry a strong sense of hurt and devaluation. I
suspect many of us can remember making decisions or comments that turned out to be more hurtful or
intolerant than we immediately recognized.
Some years ago I visited The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. When you begin the tour of this
museum, you are seated in a small amphitheater in front of two doors into the main exhibits. The
speaker tells you, “You have a choice of which door to use to enter the exhibit area, the one on the left
which bears the legend ‘With Prejudice’ or the one to the right which bears the legend ‘Without
Prejudice’”. Like most people, I suspect, I wondered for the briefest of moments what was expected of
me in this setting. Then quite quickly, to spare any of us any embarrassment, the speaker went on, “But
I should warn you, the door with the legend ‘Without Prejudice’ does not open, for none of us are
without prejudice.”
I suspect you may know the wonderful story of a small Huguenot village in France called Le
Chambon. During the worst of the German occupation of France, this little, impoverished village with
a population of about three thousand saved the lives of approximately five thousand Jews, most of
them children. The punishment for saving even one Jewish child, let alone five thousand, was death.
No one in that town ever betrayed a single child. These are not the actions of a single, moral individual
we are talking about. This is a village of poor and hungry people who all chose to live on a moral plane
that few of us ever achieve. They had strong leaders, and they were educated repeatedly by their
leaders, by their church, by each other about their moral duties and responsibilities. When asked why
they risked their own lives to save the children, they were puzzled. “It was the right thing to do,” was
their only response.
The Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence reminds us over and over again of the importance
of spreading tolerance in an intolerant world, of accepting people for who they really are, and of
understanding the power of diversity in building a better world for all of us. This society, its leaders and
everyone in the congregation, you are my teachers. I depend on you to remind me to always strive for
the moral life, the life of tolerance and acceptance. With your help, I think I’m getting closer. Together
we can help build a better, more tolerant and accepting world for everyone.
What we do here MATTERS!
The Pioneer 6