" May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be strong, and may you stay forever young"

It has been more than thirty years since I first heard Joan Baez sing these words. I was a college student, filled with youthful enthusiasm. Protesting the war - marching for civil rights, and becoming more and more of the poverty in the streets.  I remember sitting in the student center at Fordham (eating pizza and sipping Boones Farm Apple Wine out of paper cups) and having heated debates with students and faculty alike.

We were going to change the world ! The Barregain Brothers, Phillip and Daniel were the most famous of the Fordham activists at the time. Jesuit priests whom preached "Liberation Theology" and militancy to peace. Both were arrested several times. The war raged on, their voices fell silent and soon few could remember their names. Peace was in need of growing up !

Hair was running on Broadway to packed houses (at a whopping $6.45 for an orchestra seat) people were taking off their cloths and shedding their inhibitions. Tran-actual analysis was all the rage. It had become alright to hate your mother, whether there was a reason for it or not. People were "finding themselves"  some were "turning on" others "dropping out" everyone was seeking "peace and love" The Age Of Aquarius had come into full swing - thanks to the voices of the 5Th Dimension.  Everyone was seeking to be "far out"  for many that meant out of touch with reality. In touch with self. The personal mantra for many was "Don't Burn Me Out"  Peace and love at all costs - ever at the cost of a false perception.

In spite of all the active cries for freedom and equality, color and gender were still issues for debate.  More and more people of color "Blacks as was correct in those days, were rightly taking their places in the workplace, places of power - but far two few and at a far lower wage then their white counterparts. A number of vocal women were beginning to peek out from behind the starched curtains of their kitchens. The times they were a changein, but way to slow.  I remember only to well the heated debates at our Catholic University during the trials of Roe vs Wade.  I remember being one of the very few voices who believed that a women's right to choice was a God give right and in and of itself a right to life. Thirty some odd years later and the debate rages still.

It was a warm night in New York City - Greenwich Village was crowed with people many of whom had come to the city after attending Judy Garland's funeral. As I walked down the street black and white police cars rushed by me. The police stopped outside of the Stonewall Tavern, a small bar on Christopher Street. The police wanted to remove the DRAG QUEENS who where there. Many of them, the drag queens, dressed like and morning their fallen hero. (The Friends Of Dorothy are a very loyal bunch) One of the Drag Queens, refusing to remain victim to prejudicial behavior any longer, refused to leave the bar or her bar stool. And in that simple act of liberation a three day standoff between the New York City police and a few passionate members of the gay community became national news. When it was over, Gay Liberation was born. A national consciousness had been raised.  Now some thirty years later the Stonewall tavern holds a place on the New York Registry of Historic Sights. Human Rights, was beginning to Grow Up.

Rosa Parks, on an Alabama bus, took a stand for her human rights by sitting down. By sitting down in the front of the bus, the section of the bus reserved for "WHITES ONLY" For well over a year after Ms Parks took that historic seat on the bus, Blacks in Montgomery AL. Boycotted the bus system in protest. It was during this boycott that I first became aware of a powerful voice. I remember crying as I listened to Dr. King's speech,  I remember believing in the dream. Knowing deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome. I remember too, friends and family members laughing at me, an Italian white boy from a middle class family weeping at the thought of civil rights. I could not yet convince them that I was weeping at the thought of human rights for all, Freedom for all, even middle class white men oppressed by their own class distinction.  While in thirty years great strides have been made, I still weep when I see and hear of the KKK, and Skin Heads. The cries of our growth pains are still loud and painful. They still need our prayers and our actions. Growing Up is an ever evolving process.

We have mourned the death of a dream as we buried John and Bobby Kennedy whatever the personal realities of either men, they helped our nation to grow up and us along with it.  We have been at war and engaged in police actions. We have defended world powers at the expense of countless human lives. We have passed through the DISCO age of the seventies with Saturday Night Fever.  The homeless and the hungry still inhabit our streets in ever growing numbers.  The eighties was called the "ME" decade, YUPPIES ruled the world and the almighty dollar became the thing to covet. Stocks went up and down - and designer drugs were available to anyone who could afford them without so much as a harsh word in polite society.  We watched in horror as terrorists attacked our homeland, we sat in front of TV's and watched the horror of the World Trade Center And 9/11. There was a heartfelt loss throughout the world community. Yet only a few dare ask HOW DID THIS HAPPEN, should we have not know ? We need to keep asking these questions.   For almost of of the past thirty years I have watched friends die. Their lives cut short to illness such as AIDS and Cancer. Has our world grown up with blinders  to the need for a cure. Blinders to the need for affordable medical care and a quality of treatment. Have we become blind to the need for a higher standard for the quality of human life. With one breath a part of our society calls for the right to life when talking about a woman's right to choose and in the same voice will cry out for the death penalty. Is it truly a right to life, when we feel we can pick and choose whose life, or when a life holds that right. We are still a confused and growing society, and in such, still requires a powerful voice of activism.

I spent some time on my last birthday alone, by choice. I reflected on low these many years since I was a young idealistic student. I ate pizza for lunch (passed on the apple wine, with age comes some wisdom) I listened to Joan Baez and wondered where all the flowers had gone.  I looked back with great pride that i had lived actively through such turbulent times. That I held even some small part of that history as my own. I felt good !  Then as I walked passed the Orlando Library I saw people, men and women, sleeping under the arches and in the hidden corners of the building. I walked around Like Eola and heard a man, all dressed in black, telling a group of teenagers to call him "Big Daddy", he would show them the ancient ways. He gave them a pentagram with the point down. I saw him replace one young girls cross with the pentagram, spit on her cross and throw it into the lake.  As I walked back to my car, I saw to young men walking to their car and they were holding hands as they walked and my heart smiled at their freedom. Just then a beer bottle was thrown from a moving car at them with cries of "DIE FAGGOTS". I got to my car - and sat there and cried. I cried for those two young men, the teenagers at the lake and the men and women sleeping in the streets, I cried for us all. As I turned on my car to leave the lake, my CD player came to life and once again Joan Baez sang out the challenge to grow up righteous, and to grow up strong, and to stay forever young. 

Ok, so why am I writing this ?  BECAUSE I CAN, the freedom of the press says I can. But more important, I write it to remind myself and you - all of you young and old alike, that the process of growing up is an ever evolving one. A process that calls us to mature in righteousness. The righteousness of our convections and of the ethic of our lives.  To continue to grow up strong. The fight verbal and non-verbal is one that never ends. Always there will be a "Cause" (great 60's word) that needs to be raised high before our society, so that the vision of it can enter into the human consciousness and transformation may than take place.  I write this also with the hope that we will all stay forever young in our enthusiasm and zeal, traits with which missions are accomplished and dreams are made into realities.  Philip and Daniel Barragain, John & Bobby Kennedy, Rosa Parks, Dr. King, Roe v Wade, The Drag Queens of the Stonewall, the men, women and children fell victim to HIV/AIDS, the nameless faces of the streets and the teenagers in darkness all continue to call us into an active voice. The voice of the Consciousness of Unconditional Love.

Music has changed over the past thirty years as well and while Joan Baez still plays on my CD player there are others. I was moved while in New York a few years ago at the play called RAGTIME, a powerful musical look at the ragtime era of the turn of the last century. In the second act of this powerful story I was moved to tears, to the strength and righteousness of my youth, when a black activist tells his young followers to "MAKE THEM HEAR YOU, in your classrooms, from your pulpits, make them hear you, and when they hear you, I will be near you."  I write this them with the knowledge that when I do indeed MAKE THEM HEAR ME, it is with the activism, the prayers and the strength of the men and women who taught me, by example, to be righteous, and strong and yes to  remain, FOREVER YOUNG !.