When I visited Abraham Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln's summer home, I learned that Robert, as president of the Pullman Company, exploited the people whom his father freed. Yet black Pullman porters rose up to extend civil rights and social justice. Pullman porter E.D. Nixon paid Rosa Parks' bail in Montgomery, Alabama, and asked a young Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead a bus boycott there. And Pullman porter A. Philip Randolph called for the 1963 March on Washington which culminated in King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Our crisis raises deeper questions: How do you cultivate spiritual courage in the face of oppression? How do you summon compassion across cultural canyons? How do you encourage a sense of oneness in a fragmented society?”

While watching the debacle that was the sixth out of 15 attempts by Republicans to elect a Speaker for the United States House of Representatives, I heard Scott Perry of Pennsylvania try to remind the racially and ethnically diverse Democratic members of the House that Frederick Douglass was a Republican. His intention must have been to suggest that were he alive today, Frederick Douglass would identify with Scott Perry and the members of the Republican Caucus in Congress. What Scott Perry needed then and now is a history lesson on Mr. Douglass.

If we follow Jesus’ radical example and teachings about love, it will ooze from our pores. We won’t need parlor tricks or a $100 million ad campaign. Our love for others will shine so brightly that it will be impossible to miss.