At a time when Rwandans recall the genocide of 1994 that forever changed their lives, it is important to draw attention to the miracles of post-genocide Rwanda.  The will to live and, yes, to thrive –to create a post-genocide culture that acknowledges the past and yet chooses its future is Rwanda’s  important gift to the world. It speaks to the honor and integrity of its people and its leaders—and reminds all of us that recovery and renewal are the hallmarks of a healthy and hopeful society.

I have been to Rwanda six times in the past four years and have visited the Genocide Memorial Center each time.  The fact that it records and memorializes not only its own tragedy but the tragedies of all genocides speaks volumes to the humanity and wisdom of the Rwandan people.

Genocides are unspeakable and incomprehensible—and yet they must be put before the people so that they can understand how they happened in order to ensure that they will not happen again.  Rwanda has taken charge of its own destiny and therein lays its success.  Through old and new traditions they have shaped the post genocide world, determining to restore normalcy– or more accurately– create a new normalcy—built on the infrastructure of sound judgment  with regard to guilt and innocence—delivered  in a system at once pragmatic and just. Their unique approach to truth and reconciliation, the Gacaca Courts, serve as a model to the world.

However,  dealing with the past is essential but not sufficient. It is the foundation on which the future is built.  Rwanda’s future is dependent on self-reliance, education, good governance, entrepreneurship and vision.  Vision acknowledges that the nation, as all free nations, is a work in progress—never a finished and closed system. There is always room for improvement—and that requires the energy and ingenuity of the people—and the sense that the people are the responsible parties. The people live in two worlds—the private world of family and friends and the public sphere—where they  assume responsibility  for the public good—for the future of their community and their nation. That responsibility, I believe, is the greatest privilege a person can have—and  informed and engaged citizens are the most important “insurance” a nation can have that it will not slip back into an unacceptable reality, but rather create its own reality—a reality that calls for freedom and justice for all.

Sondra Myers

April 14, 2012

IN 2008 the handbook, The New Rwanda: Prosperity and the Public Good, conceived and edited by Sondra Myers, was published to provide the text for a National Conversation on Prosperity and the Public Good. The creation of the handbook was a result of a recommendation from a roundtable discussion endorsed by Hi s Excellency President Kagame that was held in April 2008 to address the question of what institutions of higher learning could do to strengthen civil society in Rwanda.

Since then the handbook and conversation have been introduced to educational institutions, NGOs and government agencies and there has been considerable interest in it. But the project reached a new plateau last month due to the joint actions of The New Times and Radio 10. The newspaper decided to serialize the handbook each Saturday starting on November 26 and in collaboration, Radio 10 launched a Sunday talk show, Rwanda Speaks, to be aired each week on the subject of the essay published on Saturday.

Some of Rwanda’s most distinguished leaders have been appearing on the show each Sunday from 2 to 3 PM to discuss the new Rwanda as they see it in the present and their goals for the future. Very soon the handbook and the conversation will be featured on the website www.igihe.com.

Media participation makes the dream of a national conversation a reality. Our aim is to have organizations and institutions as well as families, friends and businesses take the time to discuss the new Rwanda and its future. By doing so, people will not only observe the progress that Rwanda has made in the past 17 years, but recognize that they are its citizens—and therefore responsible for charting the course for and meeting the challenges of the future.
For a free copy of the handbook, individuals can contact now thenewrwanda@gmail.com. If you need a quantity of the books, they will be on sale at A_Z and IKIREZI bookstores, and shortly at CARITAS.
Sondra Myers

Editor: On 9/11 we lost our innocence, we felt our vulnerability, and we went on. We engaged in two unwinnable wars that helped to cripple our economy and our confidence in ongoing upward mobility. Our politics has soured, descending into a relentless blame game, shamelessly cheered on and inspired by frighteningly brazen right-wing hawkers of hate. To them, civility, liberalism, taxation, regulation and the public good are terms of derision rather than core values.

Is this the American dream come true? Mistrust in government is at once American and un-American. We have had from our colonial beginnings an aversion to strong centralized power. We took care to integrate into our Constitution the separation of powers and the sharing of power by national, state and local authorities. At the same time, we have embraced a pluralistic democracy committed to “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” It’s not complicated to define what that means:  government is in the people’s hands and is for the people’s good.

Sometimes I wonder if we can save ourselves from ourselves, but then, let’s look ahead, as we must. We have seen a ray of hope in what is often considered the most troubled and troubling part of the world – the Middle East. The craving for democracy has now been articulated throughout the region by peaceful demonstrations – in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain – and most recently in Israel, which is a democracy, but one which is not answering the needs of all its citizens. We see citizens insisting on the right to be responsible for their own destinies and for the public good – a right that we enjoy -and at times forget. My hope is that we will take inspiration from the spirit of these actions and remember who we are.

SONDRA MYERS
SCRANTON

It is humbling enough for a Jewish woman of a somewhat secular civic disposition to come to preach to an Episcopal congregation on any Sunday of any year.   But on this Sunday, the tenth anniversary of what I sometimes call “the day that we Americans lost our innocence,” it is indeed a daunting challenge and, at the same time, an especially great privilege. I am grateful to your rector, Peter D’Angio, for bestowing this honor upon me, and hope that I can even begin to do justice to it.
It is important for us to recall the day– 9/11—it has become a short hand—an iconic term– for terror—that sends chills up and down the spines of people around the world.  I wouldn’t be surprised if many if not all of us here have vivid memories of that day—what we were doing when we heard the news, and what we did after we heard the news.   I lived in Washington at the time.  I had just gotten off the telephone with an artist friend who was visiting from Israel.  She was rejoicing at her arrival the night before to what she felt was a carefree and welcoming environment. I went into my bedroom where the television was on and saw the first and then the second World Trade Center tower go down—this juxtaposed to the enthusiasm of a visitor from abroad. It seemed at first to be a commercial for one of those violent sci-fi movies. It took a while to realize that this was real—a very new and shocking reality.  I walked to my office a few blocks away—on the way actually seeing and smelling the smoke from the fire that was raging at the Pentagon.  The rest of the day is a blur—of sitting before the television in the conference room with colleagues, not talking very much, not exactly connecting to what was being said or to what had happened—but not wanting to be alone. That was the day.
Ten days later my husband and I were at the wedding of a dear friend in New York. It seemed a welcome respite from the outpouring of grim reports of the tragedy, and at the same time the tragedy loomed darkly over the occasion; there were whispered stories of lost friends and family, and on a lighter note, guests who could not get into their downtown apartments and had to borrow clothes. There was the scorched odor that reached into the sunny gentility of the Upper East Side, a wedding sermon delivered by the bride’s father, a Presbyterian minister, that of course had an unusual degree of solemnity, and yet called our attention to the great joy and renewal that the wedding offered us all.
Whatever your particular recollection is, I believe there are commonalities; we felt shock, disbelief and a sense of profound vulnerability.  Vulnerability was formally and rudely introduced into our lives as Americans.  That said, it’s important for us to acknowledge that terrorism didn’t begin or end on 9/11.  We need to reflect on the many acts of terrorism that had been perpetrated long before 9/11 in other places and of course we can very well remember those that have occurred since 9/11, most recently in Oslo, home of the Nobel Peace Prize.   Terrorism was not invented on9/11; but for us Americans, it was relatively remote until then.
On that note, I propose that greater empathy be part of the legacy of 9/11: that in addition to mourning the victims of that dread day, we remember those who were victimized before and after by terrorist crimes. It does not lessen the significance of the 9/11 crimes, but it calls on us to put them in a larger context and commit ourselves to a more sane and humane future for all the world’s people.   We would like to  say “Never Again!” but we know all too well  that terrorism begets terrorism, as we have witnessed all too many acts of terror in the past ten years—before Oslo there were Tucson, Mumbai, Madrid, London and Glasgow, to name a few.
We cannot eliminate the acts or the passions that lay behind the acts. But what we can and must do is dedicate ourselves to understanding an increasingly interdependent world and choosing a future that is based on the realities of interdependence and the ethical and moral implications of those realities.  Our world has changed—I would say in particular for us Americans, who for most of our history were comforted by our main allies and protectors, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  The wonders of the technological revolutions ensure that those vast bodies of water will not serve in those capacities in the future.  They are easily crossed in a few hours by jet airplanes and even more significantly in seconds by the information and communications technologies that define our era.  They remind us every day that we are in this life together.
It is, in the words of a poet friend, a “new now;”   we do not know all of its implications, but we know they are both positive and negative and they are inescapable.   I propose that we use this watershed event to understand the world better, acknowledge our interdependence and promise to create that “new now,” a post-9/11 culture.  That is our job. Though “never again” is the ideal, we must act as though “never again” is a reality—and work every day to diminish the likelihood of terrorist acts in the future.

Our nation was stunned and distraught and offended by 9/11.  After all, this was not war by the rules—nation against nation.  It was several young men armed with the zeal of martyrdom, with an obsessive love-hate relationship with Western culture—particularly the American brand, with effective training, both psychological and logistical—boarding commercial jets—ours—armed with box cutters. These are not the weapons of mass destruction that the Americans feared.  This was not a regiment of trained men to be felled by our superior armed forces and fighter planes and missiles. This is warfare in the new now.

The US organized an all-out war against terror and instituted a homeland security organization that was probably necessary, but nonetheless created a culture of fear in our nation.  While we were looking for nuclear weapons it turns out that terror itself was and is the weapon of mass destruction. It has bred a generalized xenophobia and a very widespread Islamophobia.  That Islamophobia is contagious and borders on being a global epidemic. It is misguided and dangerous.

What we need to work on is creating  a new now—a now that accepts the realities of our time, that is not a dreamer’s dream of peace in the world, but a citizens’ strategy for living a good life in an imperfect but mercifully  interdependent world.  There is some comfort in knowing that we are interdependent—that we do not stand alone in the quest for freedom and justice—and peace.  And, in the spirit of interdependence, there is enormous responsibility. We must assume responsibility for people we don’t know and might never know—they are part of the human family.  And we must assume responsibility for the environment—we must nurture and preserve it so that it will reap harvests for our children and grandchildren. We are more than ever before, our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We must arm ourselves with the will and the skills to do our job well.   I promise you that you will never have a more rewarding experience than exerting your powers on behalf of others.

The new now is a time of uncertainty and search. It reminds me of the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt’s description of the period between the two world wars, “Between the no longer and the not yet.”
What we need in this strange and uncomfortable period, to rest our minds and ease our heartache, is a new global ethic—based on respect for people of different faiths and cultures, different gods and symbols, now clearly living together—inescapably– in an interdependent world. New technologies have done a great deal to shape the new now, but it is we human beings who have to craft an ethic and a world view that is suitable for this inescapably interdependent world.   When Peter first asked me to give this sermon, the biblical story of the flood and Noah’s Ark came to mind. Why?   Are we not living the 21st century version of that tale in Genesis—infinitely larger and more complex than the imagery of a flood and a small boat that accommodates pairs of all living creatures—but still, let’s think. Instead of a flood we’ve got an array of manmade and natural disasters—not, by the way, mutually exclusive categories, including floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, oil spills, nuclear meltdowns, wars, ethnic conflicts, hunger and disease. So what can save us from ourselves and from nature? I don’t believe that there is a divine power out to destroy us—or even out to destroy evil.  Indeed, I am not an expert on divine power.  But I know that citizens have power—the power of imagination and ingenuity and an inherent desire to improve the prospects for a peaceful world, healthier human beings and a better tomorrow. Our salvation will be joining forces to save the world. Just as Noah’s ark accommodated the couples that would repopulate the world, our social networks are our way to salvation.  So let’s build our own virtual Ark—so that the extraordinary creativity of human kind is preserved—and reborn every day; this new Ark can accommodate all of us.  It can save lives, save the environment and save civilization.
The culture of interdependence is our modern Ark—its structure is this: a global civic ethic  -which comprises our will, combined with the technologically-advanced communications and information networks that link us together inescapably, providing us with the skills—the power, if you will, to change the world.   This modern ark won’t lead us to paradise, but it can prevent us from going in the other direction—if we choose to use it constructively. Robert Bellah and his coauthors had this to say in The Good Society, published in 1991:  “Accepting the tragedies of the 20th century and the toll they took on all the world’s people is the beginning of wisdom.  Paradise on this earth, we have learned, is beyond our capacity.  But we can, if we are modest and hopeful, possibly establish a reasonably livable purgatory and escape the inferno. “   You can tell that I’m not wearing rose colored glasses—but I do believe that with a combination of our will to make this world a better place and our skills, we can board this 21st century ARK, the SS interdependence, and escape the inferno.  Tomorrow is Interdependence Day. I hope you’ll come aboard.  There are numerous allusions to interdependence among the best and the brightest of our political and religious heroes—Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. to name several;  let their commitment to working together, expecting and respecting difference, be our guide.  Difference and diversity in the natural world are the defining conditions—the optimal conditions—essential for survival. So think of that diversity as the gold standard for human life and let us move beyond xenophobia, beyond fear and contempt for others, and welcome all into our moral and ethical universe.

I am here to promote—as a 21st century project—declaring war against hatred and ushering in the culture of interdependence. It must be interfaith, intergenerational, intercultural and international.  Why?  Because we are in this life together.

Our best bet is to cling to each other.  I don’t think that because you and I hold different beliefs that we aren’t in almost every other way, genetically and culturally alike.  We cannot afford intolerance—on religious or racial or economic or social or cultural grounds, in a world in which we are more interdependent—more accessible to and more inescapable from others than ever before.

We in the US have as much freedom and power as just about anyone in the world—we can’t pretend to be helpless; we can’t afford to be disenchanted. It’s too costly for us and too costly for the world.   We must be informed and engaged citizens—artisans of the “new now,” builders of tomorrow, and at the same time, go about this daunting task with modesty and hope.  Let’s get on the Ark, the SS Interdependence– and save the world—and in Bellah’s terms, avoid the inferno.

Dear Rotary Members,

It is a special pleasure and privilege to speak to you today as I for one am in favor of preaching to the converted. At times we forget that even the most dedicated among us need to be reminded of our values and principles. It is far too easy to be caught up in the daily routine of one’s life and in the sometimes screeching voices of the media to remember who we are. Religious institutions don’t forget to remind and neither do schools. And certainly service clubs recognize that memories are short and good things are worth repeating and reinforcing—otherwise why have weekly meetings? It’s a brilliant idea!

But meeting regularly is not just important for remembering what we know but also for learning what we don’t know—for updating our information and renewing our commitments at an ever higher level. As we know, the world is not static-it is a dynamic, ever changing mega-organism. We like to think of it as a perpetual work in progress—but in fact it is an ever more complex and perplexing place-so at best progress is slow and erratic. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus recognized that change is central to the universe—that you don’t step into the same river twice. In fact the very meaning of the term “our world,” has changed many times in our lifetime– just as we human beings change, physically, psychologically, socially and culturally– all through life. Our world is our family and our household; our world is our work place and our profession or career; our world is our inner consciousness—our hopes and fears and dreams; our world is our friendships; our world is our local community; our world is our nation, and increasingly, our world is the world—our planet and even our galaxy.

The revolution in information and communication technologies has reshaped our world—as we know about events in every corner of it simultaneous with their happening, and indeed through social networking devices we can not only observe the changes as they occur—we can make the changes occur. In that regard I refer particularly to the serial uprisings that occurred this year in North Africa—referred to often as The Arab Spring. It was set off in Tunisia as a response to the suicide of a frustrated Tunisian merchant when he lost his license to set up shop—and then exploded into an unprecedented series of revolts—people overthrowing dictators and demanding freedom! This in places that never knew or dreamed of democracy—of government of the people, by the people and for the people. They are dreaming of it now and they are demanding it. They are empowered by learning of others who have gone to the streets to seek freedom, and by and large they have done it peacefully, though they certainly have been met in many cases with violent resistance. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there is a new world order—but that the old world order is gone—and we are in that strange place that philosopher Hannah Arendt referred to as “between the no longer and the not yet.”

In that place then, what are we to do? How can we do our part in fostering democracy and the culture of interdependence? Ten years after 9/11, what are we doing and what can we do better to make terrorism less likely to occur—in our own nation and around the world—in Mumbai, in Tucson and in Oslo—home of the Nobel Peace Prize? Rotary has some answers to that—and I know that it will continue and increase its efforts.

In 2003 a colleague and I co founded Interdependence Day, designated deliberately to be on September 12—a day to reflect on “What next?” What might we do around the world to reduce the likelihood of terrorism in the future? We created a Declaration of Interdependence and set to discussing the moral and civic implications of an interdependent world.

We are inescapably bound to each other—and we need to create a new global notion of community and responsibility. The Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all admonish us to treat others as we would have them treat us. Ancient Greece had the Golden Rule. Our own nation has a kind of civic religion that requires us to be responsible for the public good. We must carry those religious and civic tenets to a new level in the 21st century—just because we are inescapably connected to each other—wherever we are on the planet.

I believe that those of us who have access to liberty and justice need to redefine our role in society—because the privileges that we possess give us, on the one hand, more power and more comfort, and on the other, more responsibility. We must address new challenges with some of the tools that new technologies have given us to create what a poet friend refers to as “a new now.” It is really time for a new now—and there is no organization I know that is more capable of making that new now a better now than Rotary.

The values of Rotary speak volumes in regard to international understanding and cooperation—you are the choir; you are the converted; you are the leaders. It might be time to rethink what the Scranton Rotary can do in today’s world in the spirit of interdependence that may be different from what might have been done a hundred years ago or even ten years ago. What does it mean to be a citizen in 2011? What can Rotary do to promote a spirit that goes beyond tolerance and beyond charity, but rather knits together the world of haves and have nots in a strategic progressive future-oriented program.

Environmentalists recognized the interconnectedness of things and systems long before many of us did. They knew that our behavior—let’s say with regard to the excessive use of natural resources, left too little for others; they knew that an oil spill in the gulf of Mexico could and would destroy not only natural life there, but economic and social structures in a much broader area; they knew that an earthquake and tsunami in Japan might very well affect the Pacific shores of California. They understand the civic and ethical dimensions of environmental affairs. Some 40 year ago they created Earth Day and in so doing, marked the birth of the environmental movement. In the spirit of that act, a positive response to a worldwide problem, we created Interdependence Day on September 12, 2003—to launch the interdependence Movement.

In thinking about what to say to you today, I looked at your guiding principles. It is the fourth that sang out to me: The advancement of international understanding, goodwill and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service. For our purposes today, may I edit that to say that understanding, goodwill and peace through a world fellowship of all peoples—not just business and professional people—and not only united in the ideal of service but rather united in acting upon the realities of interdependence. We need to create a spirit and culture of interdependence in civic, cultural, educational and religious institutions all over the world.

At this remarkable stage in our history, when we have unprecedented challenges and promise, what can Rotary do to advance its cause and help to create the new now? I urge you to show the rest of us the way to become a global civil society, working with other organizations and institutions poised to improve life for all of us on this earth, and possessed of the skills and the will to take leadership in so doing.

And as a symbol of your commitment, may I ask that you take a few moments at your meeting on Monday, September 12, Interdependence Day, to recite The Declaration of interdependence?

I thank you for listening and would be happy to try to answer any questions that you might have.

Nero fiddled; Rome burned. Are we following his playbook? Our Congress fiddled—at enormous cost to our nation. To date we’ve lost face, we’ve lost status and we’ve lost faith. Hope has been our long suit; we have to search to recover it—but recover it we must. This episode of our history shall pass but it will take much longer than it might have if we did what so many economists encouraged us to do: increase the stimulus –invest in our brain power and our crumbling infrastructure, provide much needed education and training and desperately needed jobs—and insist that the wealthiest among us take part in our recovery. There is arguably nothing more dangerous to our society than a growing number of disaffected, unemployed people coupled with a depressed economy. It is a recipe for disaster—there is the rioting and looting that we are seeing now in the UK —and as bad if not worse, the potential attraction of the angry crowds to a charismatic despot.

While pundits psychoanalyze our president, the stock market sinks and we stand by. We’ve got to do what citizens do. We are not bystanders; our country needs us more than ever—not just to respond to polls but to tell our leaders that we demand enlightened, effective action.

Tea Party members and others signed a pledge to refuse to raise taxes. They treat that pledge as sacred—even though its rationale is invalid and its consequences immoral. The Republican Party declares resolutely not to support the president and not to consider any revenue solution to the problem. What kind of society do they want? Are they speaking for their constituents? Do they believe that paying taxes is a socialist plot? Can we get over the fiddling?

As a good friend and enthusiastic supporter of Liz Randol, I was, of course, disappointed that she was not chosen as one of the Democratic candidates for the county commissioner’s position. But at the same time, as a citizen of this region, I was elated by the strong support—well deserved—that she received. My hope is that Liz will take it as a sign that she can be elected in the future. We need elected officials like her who are willing to use their intelligence and integrity to serve the people. We need her to move us forward into a more promising future.

We tend to demean the public sector—seeing it as more corrupt and less effective than other sectors, but—trust me—libertarians who proudly proclaim their contempt for government take for granted the wide range of freedoms they have, ignoring the fact that we are about as free as one gets in this world; and that government—of the people, by the people and for the people—is what got us into this enviable position. Millions, at this very moment, are risking their lives, crying out for the kind of liberties we enjoy in this democratic state. Those who eschew the luxuries of privacy, leisure and wealth to run for office deserve our praise and support.

Liz has the qualities that we need in our leaders—she is informed about the issues, passionate about justice and equity, and undaunted by the rigors and challenges of public jobs. And though she had considerably less name recognition and money than her competition, she got her message across. I applaud Liz for her courage in taking on a difficult battle and I applaud the citizens of this county who were inspired by her spirit and her voice. I am confident that, in whatever public role she chooses and is chosen to play in the future, she will, in the words of Spike Lee, “do the right thing” for us. Onward, Liz!

It is a privilege and a daunting privilege at that, to speak in this Lenten series. I try not to be a preacher, but I don’t always succeed. Today, perhaps, I’ll try to be a preacher. That might not succeed either. But what I will attempt to do is begin a conversation that we can engage in together–on the designated topic, “Witnessing Faith, Hope and Charity in Troubled Times”–from my personal perspective and from a global perspective.

My message will be more civic than religious, because that civic ground—that public space in which we all reside—whatever our respective faiths– is my principal realm; call it the public square. In this increasingly interdependent world, that public square is not only our local community—but the nation and the world. It is a gross understatement to describe our time as troubled; within just a few short years, we have witnessed the devastating impact of the New Orleans hurricane, the Indonesian tsunami, the Haitian earthquake, the New Zealand flood, and now the almost indescribably destructive Japanese debacle, which includes an earthquake and a tsunami along with a nuclear accident. Is this the story of Job rewritten for the age of globalization? Perhaps.

And then, and here I would say for better and worse, we have the serial revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, which in a sense, end the post-Cold World era. For better of course, is the toppling of dictators who have reigned for much too long—affording their subjects much too little power over their own destinies. For worse is the loss of life, the particular tragedy in Libya—and the unknown ultimate outcome of many of these coups. We like to think that there is a new world order—but I think we must resign ourselves to being, in the words of philosopher Hannah Arendt, as she described the period between the two world wars, “Between the no longer and the not yet.”

It would be more than presumptuous for me to interpret our 21st century world according to the Catholic gospel or, for that matter, according to the Torah. My place—my area of interest is that common ground that we share as human beings and as citizens. In that area I believe that we have equal rights to our opinions and it is fair game to defend and debate what we believe to be right and/or wrong.

Surely my remarks will be more catholic, lower case, than Catholic, upper case. But in fact, to give you a clue about where I come from, geographically and demographically as well as philosophically, I lived almost exclusively among Catholics, upper case, for the first ten years of my life—on the Main Street of Old Forge. My father came to the United States from Hungary when he was eight years old, and the family moved to Old Forge where there was a small enclave of Hungarian Jews who came from the same part of Hungary as they did. My father spoke no English when he started school there and his teacher had the wisdom and kindness to take him to the upper grades to show the students how good he was at arithmetic, lest they make fun of his halting English. He went to Old Forge High School, played football until his mother found out, became the chairman of Old Forge’s Republican Party, which fortunately, I found out only much later, went to St. Thomas College which was most welcoming of students, no matter how poor or of what faith, and then to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he learned the law, fell in love with my mother, brought her back to Old Forge, to the dismay of her family, and by and large, lived happily ever after.

In Old Forge I was always the only Jewish student in my class, which never struck me as being anything but normal. Demographically speaking, it was normal. Socially it was normal. I never thought much about it and it was never brought to my attention.

But I would be remiss if I neglected entirely the realities of anti-Semitism. While my immediate family has been extremely fortunate in that regard, many members of our extended family who remained in Europe were victims of the Holocaust, and many Jewish American family and friends experienced blatant anti-Semitic rejection by well established and esteemed religious and educational institutions and professions—not to mention hotels and social clubs. But that is a subject for another time.

From the sidewalks of Old Forge, my world grew like Topsy. Although I live only about six miles today from my first home, I have traveled to many parts of the world—dozens of times to Europe, about eight times to Africa, at least as many to Israel, and a few forays into Asia and South America. I feel and think like a global citizen. But thanks to the revolutions in information, communications and transportation technologies, I suggest that we all need to think like citizens of the world, with all the rights and responsibilities that that citizenship affords us. I have become increasingly aware of the interdependence that has been created, again, for better and for worse, by the above mentioned revolutions, and it has caused me to rethink the whole idea of citizenship from the perspective of civic and moral responsibility.

I have faith that we are capable of assuming the larger responsibility implicit in our 21st century reality. Our human capacities for empathy and compassion are ample, but they need to be cultivated, whatever their origin—whatever their inspiration. Faith in humankind has many sources—it can come from religious belief, it can come from something called civil religion, which sanctifies civic responsibility for the common good, or, not to be cavalier or pretentious, what the French call je ne sais quoi—I don’t know what. I am not so concerned here about which road we take and in which vehicle we arrive; I am concerned, in brief, with what we do in our relationships with other human beings while here on this earth. And speaking of the significance of those relationships, I spoke at a dinner for the Salvation Army last year and learned that its founder, William Booth, living in England in the early 20thcentury, sent to his worldwide colleagues a Christmas message by cable. To save money, the message just had one word—OTHERS. I was quite dazzled by his choice of words. If I had to make a choice for such a message today, I would go with his, “Others.” If we are to be judged by the posterity, or a divine power, I believe it will be about how we have treated others—beyond our family, beyond our neighborhood, beyond our social or economic or cultural cohorts. That, in my view, is the ultimate test of morality.

With regard to hope, faith and charity—here is how I see them. Hope is a necessity if we are not to be paralyzed by the troubles that the world knows. I call myself a deliberate, somewhat disingenuous optimist—because I feel that I have to believe in hope if I want to try to fix the world. We can all hope for hope—whether it’s genuine or contrived—as it is the engine that drives us to do good—to alleviate the suffering that we see in every part of the world and to create new realities—new tomorrows—as a poet friend wrote in her holiday poem—“new nows.”

Moving around the world, both physically and vicariously, is an essential part of education for life in the 21st century. We need to know how the world turns, how other people live—and how they die; not so much what they believe but what the world has dealt them—and how they handle it by overcoming it or taking advantage of it. Take hunger; while we Americans obsess about food in so many ways—from anorexia to obesity, from vegan to gourmet—from all- American to foreign, from home grown to imported—there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who have no choices, who may never have a clean glass of water in their lives, and may indeed die of starvation. It’s important for us to understand that and do something about it—that they might have the same opportunity to have hope—and water—that we have.

In January of 2010, I arrived in Rwanda where I have been doing some work for the last three years. My work is about strengthening democracy by helping people to understand the central role that citizens play in making democracy work. It was my fourth trip there. When I arrived in my hotel room in Kigali, the capital, on the night of January 12th and turned the television on to CNN, I learned of the earthquake in Haiti. Because I was alone and kept the TV on during the night throughout my week-long stay, I saw much more of that debacle than I would have if I had been at home. I had time for a lot of thinking, too. Rwanda, as many of you know, had a genocide—a civil war kind of genocide, with Rwandans killing Rwandans, about a million of them, in 1994. As I witnessed the destruction of Haiti every night, I had two thoughts: The first was that I had experienced two earthquakes of similar strength in Los Angeles, in which nobody died. That speaks volumes about the differences between a highly developed country and a woefully underdeveloped one. What a startling reminder of our respective fates! The second thought that I took away with me was that the earthquake in Haiti had many characteristics of a genocide—within a week a quarter of a million people were dead and countless others were limbless, homeless, orphaned or childless, and but for their dauntless faith, you would have to say they were in a near hopeless situation .

We humans are a hopeful breed but we live in very different environments. We cannot even imagine the poverty, hunger and disease that many people experience for their entire but almost always abbreviated lives. Such lives are not so susceptible to hope, but hope rises up with disaster, almost like a chemical reaction—or perhaps it is a chemical reaction, when it’s needed most. For those of us who are privileged to have too much of everything, it is almost immoral to be hopeless. Hope comes cheap to us.

Regarding faith, I will stay in the realm that I understand—the civic realm. I hope that all of us, wherever else we reside, religiously, ethnically and culturally, reside in that realm. We are multidimensional and have multiple capacities. Above all, and relevant to our topic tonight, we are both particular and universal. In that place that I call the civic realm—the community–I believe that our responsibilities cross all borders and boundaries; they go way beyond family or tribe, though they may begin there. And those responsibilities have religious as well as civic roots. Kofi Annan, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, had this to say:

In every great faith and tradition one can find the values of tolerance and mutual understanding. The Qur’An…tells us that “We created you from a single pair of male and female and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other….In the Jewish tradition, the injunction to “love thy neighbor as thyself” is considered to be the very essence of the Torah. The thought is reflected in the Christian gospel, which also teaches us to love our enemies and pray for those who wish to persecute us.”

What we know—because of the human inventions that have hastened exponentially communication and the transfer of information—gives us a new responsibility for the world. I wouldn’t at this stage in history, call it charity. Perhaps the difference is a semantic one, but I think there is a moral tilt to it as well. What we know through religion and philosophy, psychology and sociology is that we have the responsibility to build capacity among others in the world whose societies have not given them that opportunity until now. Building capacity in those who do not have it is not just altruistic—though it is the most noble and useful form of giving– it is also pragmatic. The growing gap between rich and poor—between those who have too much and those who have too little– is tragic in and for itself—and it is also dangerous. It’s an untenable situation in an increasingly interdependent world. We who have too much cannot afford to leave those who have too little behind.

Because we know about the gap and the disproportion, are we not obliged to eliminate them? I think so. And yet, even in our own country, the oldest ongoing democracy in the world, which is also, at this point in history, the richest, we have unconscionable inequities—we have poverty and hunger, and we have intolerance along ethnic, religious, racial, cultural, gender and sexual preference lines and more.

In the name of faith, hope and charity—and in the name of genetics and ecology—as science as well as philosophy and theology have illuminated the interdependence of everything in this world and perhaps in this galaxy—we must move to a new ethic of interdependence—so that the gaps are closed between rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, educated and illiterate, overfed and hungry—and more.

Before closing my portion of the program and inviting your questions and comments, let me add another dimension to the mix of traits and instincts that we possess. That is ingenuity. I have faith in human ingenuity—resilience, responsiveness to danger or despair, innovative ideas about how to fix things that are broken. Again, I can’t speak of the origin. Call it nature or nurture; call it God or goodness; but whatever its origin, we know it when we see it—and we see it everywhere—in every nation, in every culture, in every period of history.

The job for us in a democracy is not only based on hope, and faith and charity. We citizens of democracies have the power and the obligation and the skills to do more than we do to bridge the unconscionable gaps that I’ve referred to. We can sigh and say “there but for the grace of God go I.” But then, we must and we often do do more than sigh. Let’s say “yes we can; yes we must” choose and create a future here on earth in which all of us can be a bigger part of the solution than we have been in the past. In our capacities and in our will, in our ingenuity and in our goodness, I have faith.

I feel privileged to speak to you today on civic engagement. I am particularly pleased that this critically important topic is the focus of your capstone course in communications. In my view, if there is one thing that should be at the front of your mind and at the top of your agenda as you leave here in May it is that you have an enviable job to do in this world that is as important or arguably more important than the work you have been educated to do during your years at the University of Scranton. That job is enviable because so few people in the world have it—it is the precious right to be responsible for the public good; in other words, to be a citizen. The late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said that “the most important office in our democracy is that of private citizen.”

Let me tell you why I agree with him. I’ll confess shamelessly that I am neither a super patriot nor a sentimental American exceptionalist—it’s just that through my work in strengthening democracy at home and abroad, I have come to agree with Winston Churchill on the one hand that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest,” and that is because it is messy—as we notice every day, and that nothing is ever fully resolved; but on the other hand, democracy is a sacred legacy because in a democracy we are citizens, not subjects, enjoying the rights and assuming the responsibilities that citizenship carries with it.

I maintain that the most precious right that we have is one that is not explicitly referred to in the Bill of Rights, but implicitly it is the very essence of our American democracy. It is the right to be responsible for the public good. It is the power to be in charge not only of our own personal destinies but of the fate of our society. Very few people in the world have that power.

In the past thirty years we have been drifting away from the importance of the public good in our nation, lapsed into a kind of “me-ism”–and it has resulted in some of the very crises we’re facing today. Greed has trumped the public good—we see it in the economic crisis, in the aversion to regulation and the absolutely allergic reaction that so many Americans—and rich Americans at that—have to paying taxes. I urge you to leave this university in May cured of any notions along those lines that you may have. I’ll be happy to discuss that further if you wish—not just as a partisan—I am an unrepentant Democrat—but as an American citizen.

In glaring contrast to this syndrome that I call me-ism, let’s look at the historic events that took place in North Africa, particularly in Egypt, earlier this year. In less than three weeks, Egyptians, hundreds of thousands of them, took to the streets of Cairo and other major cities to demand the freedoms that you and I enjoy every day. Peacefully but with fierce determination, they insisted that their president of more than 30 years, Hosni Mubarak, leave office.

They stayed on message, “Mubarak must go.” And Mubarak, indeed, had to go. Like many elected officials in developing countries, Mubarak ruled as a dictator, ignoring laws or changing them to ensure his absolute power, ignoring or dissolving parliament when he found its decisions, shall we say, inconvenient, and arrogantly and ruthlessly continuing to rule with an iron hand. If not for social networking as well as television, the peaceful revolution could not have occurred—and so I bring this message to you particularly as communications majors. By your skills and understanding of both the public and private value of social networking, you have a great deal to contribute to the continuing democratization of our own society and of the world.

Your society needs you and you need your society. There are those who have the false notion that we go it alone; that we can do without government and politics and just climb our own personal ladders to success. But life doesn’t work that way. We are part of a family, a community, a nation, a globalized, highly interconnected world, and a highly interconnected planetary system. There are some worries, at the personal level, that as interconnected and as interdependent as we are, we are sometimes “alone together.” We are connected by cell phones with others as we walk up and down the common with colleagues and friends. We sit alone and connect with Facebook friends, in some instances thousands of them, while often ignoring the people with whom we live. I urge you to beware of being so connected on the Internet that you neglect face to face everyday relationships.

With regard to interdependence, the environmental movement was the first in recent times to recognize that in the physical world, that, for example our actions in Scranton, Pennsylvania affect the climate in the rainforests of Brazil. It sounded rather exotic when we first learned of such things, but now most of us accept the fact readily and many of us accept the obligations that that knowledge bestows upon us—that we must reduce the excesses of our use of limited resources; that we consider as our responsibility people in remote lands who are deprived by our excesses, and those who will be deprived in the generations that follow ours—including our own children and grandchildren.

It turns out that environmental issues are actually political and economic issues—civic issues. They are issues based on laws and public policies that we citizens will make, accept, reject or change. In short, whatever else we do in our careers, we are citizens—responsible for ourselves and our society.

The environmental movement didn’t coin the term sustainability but it made it a household word. I propose that we expand its use to include socio-political—civic– sustainability. Just as the excesses in our use of limited resources make the physical environment unstable and its ecology unsustainable, so policies that do not remedy the widening gap between rich and poor—between haves and have nots— make our democracy unstable and unsustainable.

And so enlightened environmental, social and economic policies are all critically important to the sustainability of our very privileged way of life—a way of life that permits us to make choices—literally to choose our future.

Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is important to know the central role that citizens play in making democracy work. Autocratic and dictatorial governments do not need or want an active and engaged citizenry. It only gets in the way of their absolute power. Our democracy can only remain robust and, yes, sustainable, by our deeds—by our words and actions that promote and ensure the wellbeing of all members of our society.

Let’s look at all the above from the perspective of communications. Do you know how critically important communication is in our world? I’m sure that you chose this field of study because you do know that. I just would urge you to use the skills that you have acquired over the past three years to serve the public good—at least some of the time.

You may plan to use your skills for marketing, for promotion of commercial products and projects; of course, that is fine. But you have that other job to do as citizens—and that is to use your powers of articulation and persuasion for the public good: to advocate for those public goods that are closest to your hearts and minds—for education, for narrowing the gap between rich and poor, promoting research for particular diseases, for civil rights or women’s rights or men’s rights, or gay and lesbian rights, and for the big American project of offering the promise of “liberty and justice for all.” All of those involve building and strengthening the capacities of all members of society. Whatever your particular passion is in the bigger picture—I urge you to use your innate talents, your values and ideals, and the excellent education that you are receiving– for the public good.

Come see Sondra present on April 3rd for Regional Catholic Parishes

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