Biography
Woodie W. White is the United Methodist Bishop for the Illinois Area. He grew up in the heart of Harlem and by his own admission was a troubled kid. His journey from there to his position as a bishop is an inspiration to all of us. He's a wonderful writer and columnist, with two volumes of essays, titled Confessions of a Prairie Pilgrim and his most recent book, Conversations of the Heart. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]
 
"Our Common Ground" 
The late Howard Thurman -- theologian, preacher, professor -- wrote about an experience he had as a five-year-old. One day he was going to visit a colleague. As he was about to go into the house, there was a rap on the window. Howard Thurman said he looked and saw his playmate's father beckoning him to come to the front door rather than the back.

He did so. He entered the house and there stood the family -- mother, father, his little playmate. There they stood in the middle of the living room looking out at the back yard where he was about to walk. There on the ground was his playmate's two-year-old sister. In her lap was a rattle snake.

Howard Thurman wrote that the snake curled itself around the child's body and neck. She stroked it ever so gently. It continued to curl itself up around her body. She stroked it and pulled it down.
Years later, Howard Thurman wrote it was obvious that these two were playing with each other. His insight out of that experience, recorded in one of his books, was that here were two realities thought to be enemies with one another. They somehow had stepped back and transcended their difference and found a common ground. No longer enemies, no longer at war with each other, they somehow had found a common ground. Soon the child tired of playing with the snake and she crawled back towards the house. The snake crawled towards the woods.

In a day such as ours where we come to celebrate our diversity, it is important for us every now and then to step back from the particularities, in order that we might find our common ground. St. Paul writes about diversity and suggests that the diversity was really to make the whole greater, the whole stronger, the whole more meaningful. While diversity of itself has life and meaning, its main objective is to bring together into a common ground. Our diversity of race, faith, ethnicity, gender ought not be barriers, but ought to help us celebrate our commonalities, our common ground. Every now and then we need to step back as a nation, as a people, and find our common ground.

I remember that cloudy day in which I traveled to Syracuse, New York. As the plane was about to land, the flight attendant exclaimed, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God, not again." We were not sure what had happened. Then she announced those words that millions of us remember. She said, "I regret to announce that President Reagan has just been shot."

I immediately moved to a motel and, like millions of others, sat before a television set praying that our president would find rest, hope and wholeness and that we would not lose him. It is said that as he was being wheeled into surgery, he was still conscious. He looked at the attending physicians and with that quick wit of his said, "I sure hope you are a Republican." The physician responded, "Mr. President, today we are all Republicans."

There comes that time when we must find our common ground, where our differences do not separate, but where our differences come together and make us one, greater as it were.

In our home, Monday was the day in which my mother prepared vegetable soup. She had the practice of cooking that soup all day. At night we would each come and get our bowl of vegetable soup. It was interesting as we sat and watched how she cooked and how that soup was eventually served. Our vegetable soup always contained black-eyed peas, white potatoes and red tomatoes and, unfortunately, okra. Those vegetables would cook all day. Each vegetable -- the potato, the tomato and the black-eyed peas -- doing something to each other. The potato brought something to the tomato and the tomato brought something to the black-eyed peas. They all tried to bring something to okra.

As we sat at the end of the day to eat the soup, although they had cooked all day, the tomato was still a tomato, the potato was still a potato, the black-eyed pea was still a black-eyed pea. Unfortunately, the okra was still okra. They did not lose their identity. However, each of them brought something to the whole that made the soup richer and better because of what each brought to it.

We need to bring our diversity, our pluralism, our differences, so that our nation might be a greater nation because we come from such pluralistic backgrounds. As people of faith, we come from different faith stances, but yet we bring some unique character to it. We find our common ground and so our faith is stronger because of the diversity in which we celebrate it.

Our common ground. How we need it in a world that somehow seems to be so divided, where race seems to divide us -- class, gender -- always dividing rather than seeing these gifts of God as opportunities to find our common ground, so that the whole might be greater. Let's find our common ground.

We are the family of God created by a good and gracious God who made us different in race, gender, language, so that the nation, the world, might be a better place. We have our common ground. Our common ground is found as the family of God.

Those of us who are members of the Christian tradition say that our common ground is in Christ, for He is able to bring us to a realization of who we are. Yet, we transcend that difference. Isn't it interesting that, as we pray our prayer that we call the Lord's Prayer, we begin it with these two words, "Our Father." Have you ever thought about that? Here we are diverse in color and language, and yet we claim a common parentage -- God as parent -- which means we are related one to the other, brothers and sisters; our common ground as Americans, our common ground as citizens of this great state, our common ground of those who called Christ Savior. Our common ground.

If we could only see that common ground as that which will enable us to be a people of strength, of hope, of wholeness, stepping back from the particularities so that the common ground might be stronger. Edward Mote, the hymn writer, said it far more eloquently than I when he wrote:

My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus' blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid Rock I stand; All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.

Our common ground -- nation, God, Savior. Our common ground. Let us step back sometimes from our particularity and find wholeness and meaning in our common ground.

Let us pray.

Thank you, God, for the privilege of being in the family of God and knowing what it is to have a family. Help us to remember that out of our diversity, our common ground. Amen.

Interview with Woodie White
Interviewed by David Hardin

David Hardin: Bishop, this talk of yours is so appropriate about celebrating diversity, about our common ground, looking at the things we have in common, rather than the ways that we are different. It seems to me that there is still a lot of attention, especially in the political scene, on people being separate from each other and people making something of it. I think David Duke is a good example of someone who is appealing to a special group against other groups. Why is that so successful?

Woodie White: It is successful because it feeds the fear that many people have of difference rather than recognizing that the true value of difference is to make the whole more interesting and to make the whole greater and stronger and not so much to divide. Our pluralism should make us a stronger nation, not a weaker nation.

Hardin: I think of it in terms of tribe. Everybody seems to have a tribe that they identify with. They care more about those people than others. This is true whether we are talking about the Middle East or maybe Northern Ireland or certainly our own country with the racial and all the other differences that people land on. How do we change that? How do we convince people that there is a better path that is more fun and more interesting?

White: There is indeed a better path. I think we are stronger individually as we share in the differences of each other, each other's culture, each other's opinion. That is to help make us stronger so that I am greater as an individual because of what I have gained from others who are different from myself. That is really the true sentiment and hope of our nation.

Hardin: I think you identified fear as a big issue and I agree with that. People are afraid of losing their jobs. They have had, maybe, a favored position. They don't want to lose that favored position. It is very hard to convince people when it comes to their job or the place where they live, etc., to get around that. I wonder if the media doesn't sometimes encourage the problem.

White: I think the tragedy is that people manipulate and use our fear rather than helping us understand the fear and overcoming it.

Hardin: We have these special interest groups who want their groups to get something from everybody else. There seems to be nobody whose special interest is all the people.

White: That is where we need to be. I can only be as strong as the weakest among us is strong.

Hardin: You are a black leader in an almost all white diocese. That has got to be a model for all of us.

White: Once you understand that at the core of it all we are human beings, that there are so many human qualities that transcend differences of race, culture, we really meet them as human beings and recognize that our needs are the same.

Hardin: We need to celebrate that. Thanks for being with us.

White: Thank you.