Love Is The Only Answer Full Movie

[Ilona Brownson]

BMI appreciate your time today. We can start with the questions I ask for the Only Love Project web site: Please briefly tell us your background. What would you like others to know about you?

When I finished high school, I went to Washington University in St. Louis, and then during that period I experienced a calling to ministry of some kind; not very clear what kind that would be. As it turned out I have been an academic my whole life, my whole public career, but I came to Southern Seminary. My mother remarried, and my step-father was stationed in the Coast Guard here in Louisville, and we lived here for one year and then moved back to the farm in Missouri, and it was a natural choice for me to come to Southern Baptist Seminary which at that time was a very prestigious school. Today it has fallen far from what it was at that time. It was one of the leading theological institutions in the United States.

GH: Well, I was interested in one thing that touched others, especially college students. Bellarmine University has the Merton Library and the Merton Studies Center. They changed the name of it not too long ago to Center for Contemplative Living, which is really picking up basically the idea that I have had. If we get anything out of Merton, it is how to live contemplatively, to be attentive to God in all of life and everything that we are doing. That is what I was trying to say in that little book. Well, at any rate I know I am talking too long answering this question.

This is central, especially in the Cistercian tradition, which Bernard was the chief definer of when in he came to Citeaux. The Trappist order was to reassert all of that in the 17th century. If you had asked me what I had gained most from both Merton and Steere, I would say: they plugged me into the contemplative tradition, the whole contemplative tradition that Merton articulated so well. Why he and not others? There was another major writer at Gethsemani, Father Raymond. You may have seen some of his books, but you probably may not have either because he was never popular. He was a pre-Vatican II kind of Trappist.

But Merton had this gift for communicating the deep insights of the contemplative tradition, a whole tradition that goes back to the desert monks. Did you look in the guesthouse [of Gethsemani]? You know they have that panorama on the wall as you go into the guesthouse?

GH: Well, at any rate, one of the trustees went on the attack on me in 1991. I was on sabbatical leave and was teaching at the Baptist seminary at Rschlikon, Switzerland. I had been there before. I had given lectures there, and they invited me to teach. Because I was teaching there, the Foreign Mission Board, which was now controlled by Fundamentalists, defunded Rschlikon.

BM: The third question I have is: Most religious traditions speak of the value and necessity of love. The Buddhist Dhammapada says, only love dispels hate. The Christian Bible says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. The Jewish tradition teaches you shall love your neighbor as yourself. What, if anything, do those words mean to you?

GH: We can be so important, so self-righteous. Just meeting Merton put us in our place. We thought what a profound, profound person with that simple way of thinking about some of the issues we were dealing with. And he did address those things. Now, I think he addressed them from where he was. He really had one message: It was about contemplation, and how contemplation ought to change the way we look at the world, the way we would act if only we would also become contemplatives.

Highland Baptist Church and Crescent Hill Baptist Church have been kicked out of the Kentucky Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention because we accept gays, lesbians, transgender or anybody.

GH: This is what Thomas Merton saw as the way we can have interfaith relationships, the way Christians can relate to Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and Taoists and people of all faiths. This is his comment that he made on his trip to Asia, and you find it in The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton. It was a speech that he prepared actually about interfaith relations that was never given, but he talked about not avoiding issues that may be raised but may be pertinent to the monastic order like the Trappists. On the other hand, we must recognize that we have to go beyond words and thoughts.

As I read this interview, I could imagine Dr. Hinson standing in front of the class sharing these thoughts. I had the privilege of being one of his students in the early 1970s and later being a colleague when Southern Seminary was an exceptional place of learning and loving. I am so glad to reconnect with him through this article and look forward to Part II.

Can our hearts relax and be patient and be kind, even if just for one honest second? The gracefulness of life has somehow taken a back seat to pushing and yelling and the anxiety of where we are all going.

Busting at the seams with reality is no longer simply magnified in the actual world. We are giant leaping into otherwise unknown territories. Relationships are reconfiguring. Connections far and wide are dropping off the face of the earth due to overwhelm. People are expressing a need to run and hide and never look back.

I cannot stress enough how different and unique we all are and need to embrace this fact. What I do has nothing to do with what you do, yet we are connected in what we all do. Love is the only answer. That one emotion and substance of soul is what keeps us all connected in this spinning mad world.

Giving and generosity comes from deep down, past our very own hearts and bellies and hips. We help each other who display a level of vulnerability because it stirs things inside. We listen to words and crying out for attention because it makes us whole and gives us purpose.

16 April 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statementcallingmy present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of mywork andideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries wouldhave little timefor anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have notime forconstructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that yourcriticisms aresincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patientandreasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influencedby theview which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as presidentof theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southernstate, withheadquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations acrossthe South,and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we sharestaff,educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliatehere inBirmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if suchweredeemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise.So I,along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am herebecause I haveorganizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophetsof theeighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyondthe boundariesof their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carriedthe gospel ofJesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry thegospel offreedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedoniancall foraid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. Icannot sit idlyby in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere isa threatto justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in asingle garmentof destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can weafford to live withthe narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United Statescan never beconsidered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I amsorry tosay, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about thedemonstrations. I amsure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of socialanalysis that dealsmerely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate thatdemonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that thecity's whitepower structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts todeterminewhether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gonethrough allthese steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injusticeengulfs thiscommunity. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the UnitedStates. Its uglyrecord of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment inthe courts.There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than inanyother city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis ofthese conditions,Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistentlyrefused to engagein good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham'seconomiccommunity. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by themerchants--forexample, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises,the ReverendFred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rightsagreed to amoratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that wewere thevictims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deepdisappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action,wherebywe would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience ofthe local andthe national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake aprocess of selfpurification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly askedourselves: "Areyou able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal ofjail?" We decidedto schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except forChristmas, this isthe main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal programwould bethe by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bringpressure to bear onthe merchants for the needed change.

3a8082e126