I knew a woman who imbibed Christ. She was one of those saints of God who walk, as our Ephesians lesson has it, not drunk with the world, but filled with the Spirit of God. Miss O was my high school Latin teacher and choir director. She was one of those wonderful teachers who noticed the kid who was different, who did not play sports, who had issues no one was talking about. She took me under her wing. She inspired me to live a life of true freedom.

I began to hear stories of what Miss O did in the summer. She volunteered her time in a small Black church of our denomination in Central Harlem. Each fall she brought back stories of a world very different from mine in West Michigan, and inspired me to think about race relations, civil rights, and a broader world.

After I was in college, I kept up with Miss O. One year she took a leave from teaching to serve full-time in that Harlem church. She invited me to visit her there, took me to my first opera at the Met, and exposed me to a world that shaped where I decided to aim my ministry.

In that year, 1964-65, Miss O and others from that church answered Dr. King's call to come down and join in the march from Selma to Montgomery. The stories of their adventures told me again about a world very different from my own. I especially remember this one: Their carload from New York included a couple of the Black teenage girls with whom Miss O was working. When they stopped once to get gas and use the restrooms, they confronted 3 restroom doors - Men, Women, and Colored. Miss O got the women's restroom key and took the Black teenagers with her into that door. The service station owner stared angrily but did not stop them.

Thirty years later I came here to St. Thomas and I began to hear already in my first summer about Jonathan Daniels. Please read the insert in today's bulletin prepared by our Junior Warden Barbara Hays. Jonathan Daniels has been named a modern day saint in the Episcopal Church.

Jon devoted many of his Sundays in Selma to bringing small groups of Negroes, mostly high school students, to church with him in an effort to integrate the local Episcopal church. They were seated but scowled at. Many parishioners openly resented their presence, and put their pastor squarely in the middle. (He was integrationist enough to risk his job by accommodating Jon's group as far as he did, but not integrationist enough to satisfy Jon.)