I nominate the action of a Tennessee country boy in 1928 in Knoxville for: The Most Heroic Act In American History. His name is Myles Horton and I will let him tell the story in his own words.

“I was trying to break the pattern of segregation and decided to organize a statewide (YMCA) convention where everyone could meet and eat together. I knew it was illegal, and I knew that if I let the students and schools know beforehand, they’d be against the convention. I decided to convene it anyway.”

“The conference was to begin with a banquet at a whites-only hotel in downtown Knoxville. I made reservations for the banquet but didn’t tell anyone that we were an integrated group.”

“I arranged for us all to come in the street door that led directly into the banquet room. That way, we avoided going through the lobby and creating a stir before we even sat down to eat.”

“When we entered the dining room the black kids started looking around and the white kids started looking around. They were all the same age, they were all Y members. They did what they were used to doing in a dining room — they sat down to eat. They did the familiar in an unfamiliar situation.”

“Then the waiters came in. They were all black. And they said: ‘We can’t serve you because we can’t serve black and withe people together.’”

“I told them, ‘We’re paying you to serve us. If we get up and leave, you’ll go home without any pay, and if we don’t get any food we’ll get up and leave.’ Now there were about 120 of us, and I asked the waiters what they were going to do with all that food for 120 that was already cooked. They fed us.”

“That was in 1928, long before any civil rights movement activity in Knoxville. I took a gamble: we could have been arrested; we could have been thrown out; the kids could have walked out; the waiters could have walked out. I took the gamble of doing something about a moral problem instead of simply talking about it and over 120 people learned that they could change things if they wanted to.”

I stopped by my wife’s work to say hello a week ago about noon. Suddenly a lady who works in the building came rushing in hysterically sobbing and saying; “A man just shot somebody and ran away!” Several people jumped into action comforting the lady, calling 911, and checking outside the front door to make sure the gunman wasn’t coming our way.

A couple of people went out the side door to check on the victim. He was a young man and had been shot three times in his right thigh. The lady who saw it said that a man came up to him and demanded money and then pulled out a gun and shot him.

The ambulance and police got there in about ten minutes. All the chaos, alarm, and confusion shook me up. The senseless violence in our society is not just statistics or news reports or a crime drama for our viewing pleasure. The violence in our society is a terrible reality! It creates terrorism, distress, and anxiety for millions of Americans.

Later the same day, a man who is court ordered to the rehab where I work, came by my office and asked if he could read something to me. He opened a Bible to Isaiah and began to read out loud: “He was wounded for our transgression.” His voice started to crack and he began to cry as he continued to read: “He was bruised for iniquities.”

We looked at each other as we both felt a sense of holy awe. Then he said: “I was reading this a few minutes ago and it did something inside of me.” He hugged me and said, “I love you, Steve,” and left my office.

Cold, hard-hearted violence or compassionate, tender-hearted love — which do you choose?

Here is a very important question that has been long ignored in American history: Can people who forcibly held other people in cruel, life-long forced labor be legitimately honored as freedom loving?

A tiny new cabin at Mount Vernon raises a huge inconsistency in American history. It is a reconstructed slave cabin, similar to the ones that housed the forced laborers who were daily brutalized into working George Washington’s fields.

A recent news story about that slave cabin quoted a letter written in 1798 by a Polish visitor to Mount Vernon as saying that: “the huts of the Blacks, for one cannot call them by the name of houses” are “wretched” and “more miserable than the most miserable of the cottages of our peasants.”

Let me rephrase the question: If a person sincerely loves freedom from deep in his heart, can he or she take away another man’s freedom and make him live like an animal in his back yard?

Hurt hinders humanity. I have noticed six ways that humans handle the hindrance of hurt. #1-3 are not effective; #4-6 will heal your pain. Which ways do you use?

1) Stuff it — They pretend their pain doesn’t exists. Many people refuse to acknowledge the hurt that they are in. Instead they try to shake in off through entertainment, work, alcohol or drugs, eating, exercise, and many other random activities.

2) Put up walls — They attempt to protect themselves from more hurt by avoiding potentially hurtful situations or people.

3) Act out – They hurt other people out of their hurt in an attempt to erase the pain by evening the score. The is often something that the person who hurts other people is not even aware of himself. It is a subconscious reaction to her or his pain.

4) Talk it out – They find a caring individual and verbally and emotionally share their pain with him or her.

5) Let it go – They release it, give it up, refuse to think negative thoughts about the person who hurt them, and move on to better things. Sometimes this takes time.

6) Have compassion for the one who hurts you. The next time that somebody does or says something that hurts you, remember that hurting people hurt other people. Very few people hurt others when they are feeling great. If you think about your hurt this way you will have a little compassion for the one who hurts you and you won’t take his or her actions personally.

It’s fun to think outside the bun. Try it.

Human thinking is often held tightly captive within the buns of habit, tradition, custom, fear, and cultural ideas. Sometimes these social, mental, and emotional buns hold, confine, and control our thoughts like buns of steel — and we often are not even aware of their influence.

Sometimes those buns of steel can tightly squeeze our mind and make us so narrow minded that we can see through a keyhole with both eyes at the same time. Buns of steel can hold us in a mental rut — a way of thinking that is so fixed in routine as to be dreary — same ole same ole.

But life is much more fun when you think outside the bun! Why not take a look at your life and your circumstances in a totally different way today? Go ahead and get creative. Try on another perspective.

How? Read a book by someone who disagrees with you or a book about a subject that you know nothing about. Start a friendly conversation with a person you normally wouldn’t talk to. Talk a casual walk in a neighborhood that you normally wouldn’t walk through. Visit a meeting of a civic group, club, or church that you have never been too before. Eat at an ethnic restaurant you’ve never tried before. Go ahead and break out of those buns of steel today. It’s really fun!