BROOKFIELD UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH
Sermon: "Finding Kindness in Small Places"
By Alyssa Lee
November 19, 2023
The great Rev. Howard Thurman recounts in his memoir a story that when he was growing up in segregated Daytona, FL, in the early 1900’s, Black children were not typically educated by the public schools past the 7th grade. There were only three public high schools for Black children in the state, but no opportunities to attend 8th grade. His elementary school principal fortunately saw promise in him and tutored him so that he was allowed to pass the eight grade examination and be accepted into one of the high schools. The nearest one was in Jacksonville, FL, and a cousin allowed him to live there for his schooling.
When the time came for Thurman to leave for Jacksonville, he had borrowed an old trunk with no lock and no handles, he only had a rope to secure it. He said his goodbyes to his family, but after he bought his ticket, the agent refused to check his trunk because the check must be attached to the handle and not a rope. The ticket agent said he would have to send the trunk via express and Thurman did not have money to do that.
He sat down on the steps of the railway station and cried his heart out. But, he said at one point he opened his eyes and before him he saw a large pair of work shoes. Standing in front of him was a Black man dressed in overalls and a denim cap who said, “Boy, what in hell are you crying about?” Thurman told him and then the man said, “If you’re trying to get out of this damn town to get an education, the least I can do is help you. Come with me.” The man took him to the ticket agent and asked how much it would be to send it express, then took out his rawhide money bag and counted the money out. Thurman says, the man then turned and disappeared down the railroad track and he never saw him again.
Howard Thurman made it to Jacksonville, went to high school, and then college, and then became a minister and later the Director of Religious Life at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, then the first dean of the Andrew Rankin Chapel at Howard University, and then the Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, a place where he taught the likes of James Baldwin, Arthur Ashe, and a young doctoral student named Martin Luther King, Jr. Thurman is often credited with bringing the concept of nonviolence to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Imagine if that man had not stepped up and young Howard Thurman had no other choice but to pack up his trunk and head home. Perhaps he would never have achieved the education he dreamed of, hopefully he would have, but it is possible he would not. This one man’s simple kindness, his act of love for this young stranger, is laudable, but what is also remarkable is this man’s understanding that his actions were in service of something larger than himself – helping a young black man get out of the town where he had no educational future and pursue a life that might ensure a better future for himself and others.
It is hard to say if any of our actions have had quite such an impact on this country and the world, but perhaps they have? At the very least, I can say the small kindness, when someone has stepped into my life or the life of those I love, have found ways to reshape my life.
Up until very recently, I always drove the kind of cars that one might kindly call “beaters.” My Dad and many of the men in my family are car guys who don’t believe in spending a lot of money on cars and who love nothing more than to hang out together on the driveway fixing said cars. Because of this, I have spent a lot of time alone with my thoughts broken down on the side of the road and waiting for someone to come get me.
I cannot tell you how many people have pulled over to help me. One time I was alone on a dark stretch of road and a man waited for me until one of my brothers could pick me up because he would have hoped someone would do the same for his daughter. Another time, an elderly couple drove my sister, brother, and baby nephew and me all the way to our grandmother’s house in Tulsa because we had broken down on the side of the turnpike on the way to visit her.
The memories of these people, whose names I often never learned, have stayed with me for twenty plus years because they taught me that helping someone out, even if it was an inconvenience, or possibly even a risk, was also worth the effort. And their actions did have reverberations, at least in my life and hopefully as a result in what I was able to pay forward to others because I was inspired by their actions.
As we enter this holiday season, especially this week as many of us are focused on being grateful, I hope we can spend some time thinking about all the small ways someone has impacted our lives. Maybe someone gave you an extra penny at the cash register or perhaps handed you a Kleenex when you needed one? I remember in the middle of a final in college, I dropped my pen and it flew off into nothingness and someone next to me, very quietly and without any comment handed me a new pen.
Those small gestures of kindness and compassion can often feel like little love letters from the Universe but also from our own sense of humanity and selves. It says to us, I see you, I care about you, and I want you to be okay. When the world gets to be too much, I hope we can hold onto those moments and remember them with gratitude in the days, months, and years that follow.
Amen and May it be so.
When the time came for Thurman to leave for Jacksonville, he had borrowed an old trunk with no lock and no handles, he only had a rope to secure it. He said his goodbyes to his family, but after he bought his ticket, the agent refused to check his trunk because the check must be attached to the handle and not a rope. The ticket agent said he would have to send the trunk via express and Thurman did not have money to do that.
He sat down on the steps of the railway station and cried his heart out. But, he said at one point he opened his eyes and before him he saw a large pair of work shoes. Standing in front of him was a Black man dressed in overalls and a denim cap who said, “Boy, what in hell are you crying about?” Thurman told him and then the man said, “If you’re trying to get out of this damn town to get an education, the least I can do is help you. Come with me.” The man took him to the ticket agent and asked how much it would be to send it express, then took out his rawhide money bag and counted the money out. Thurman says, the man then turned and disappeared down the railroad track and he never saw him again.
Howard Thurman made it to Jacksonville, went to high school, and then college, and then became a minister and later the Director of Religious Life at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, then the first dean of the Andrew Rankin Chapel at Howard University, and then the Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, a place where he taught the likes of James Baldwin, Arthur Ashe, and a young doctoral student named Martin Luther King, Jr. Thurman is often credited with bringing the concept of nonviolence to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Imagine if that man had not stepped up and young Howard Thurman had no other choice but to pack up his trunk and head home. Perhaps he would never have achieved the education he dreamed of, hopefully he would have, but it is possible he would not. This one man’s simple kindness, his act of love for this young stranger, is laudable, but what is also remarkable is this man’s understanding that his actions were in service of something larger than himself – helping a young black man get out of the town where he had no educational future and pursue a life that might ensure a better future for himself and others.
It is hard to say if any of our actions have had quite such an impact on this country and the world, but perhaps they have? At the very least, I can say the small kindness, when someone has stepped into my life or the life of those I love, have found ways to reshape my life.
Up until very recently, I always drove the kind of cars that one might kindly call “beaters.” My Dad and many of the men in my family are car guys who don’t believe in spending a lot of money on cars and who love nothing more than to hang out together on the driveway fixing said cars. Because of this, I have spent a lot of time alone with my thoughts broken down on the side of the road and waiting for someone to come get me.
I cannot tell you how many people have pulled over to help me. One time I was alone on a dark stretch of road and a man waited for me until one of my brothers could pick me up because he would have hoped someone would do the same for his daughter. Another time, an elderly couple drove my sister, brother, and baby nephew and me all the way to our grandmother’s house in Tulsa because we had broken down on the side of the turnpike on the way to visit her.
The memories of these people, whose names I often never learned, have stayed with me for twenty plus years because they taught me that helping someone out, even if it was an inconvenience, or possibly even a risk, was also worth the effort. And their actions did have reverberations, at least in my life and hopefully as a result in what I was able to pay forward to others because I was inspired by their actions.
As we enter this holiday season, especially this week as many of us are focused on being grateful, I hope we can spend some time thinking about all the small ways someone has impacted our lives. Maybe someone gave you an extra penny at the cash register or perhaps handed you a Kleenex when you needed one? I remember in the middle of a final in college, I dropped my pen and it flew off into nothingness and someone next to me, very quietly and without any comment handed me a new pen.
Those small gestures of kindness and compassion can often feel like little love letters from the Universe but also from our own sense of humanity and selves. It says to us, I see you, I care about you, and I want you to be okay. When the world gets to be too much, I hope we can hold onto those moments and remember them with gratitude in the days, months, and years that follow.
Amen and May it be so.
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