March 31st 2024: Taking responsibility for human rights

NEW LIFE: human beings taking responsibility for human rights

Two weeks ago, we spent some time on the history and meaning of human rights, focusing on the United Nation's creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Last Sunday, we heard Elizabeth Nyamayaro (in a TED talk) sharing the work of an organization dedicated to gender equality, based on her belief of the worth and dignity of all people, the universal human rights.  

This Sunday, we'll look at the connection between the two by linking the rights declared in the UN declaration with a companion document: The Declaration of Human Duties and Responsibilities. We'll celebrate four people who take that responsibility seriously and endeavour to make a difference where needed, and draw inspiration from their efforts to continue growing in our own life as agents of change.

First Reading

Our first reading is from the author of the groundbreaking book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” the poet, playwright, and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou.

“During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.”

Second Reading

Byan Stevenson is an American lawyer, a social justice advocate, a law professor at New York University School of Law, and the founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama. He has challenged the criminal justice system for its bias against the poor and minorities, especially children, helping achieve Supreme Court decisions prohibiting the sentencing of children under age 18 to death or life imprisonment without parole. The American Philosophical Society has named him a “Drum major for justice and mercy.”

“Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.”

Third Reading

The last statement comes from the French-Polish scientist, a pioneer in the research on radioactivity, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and to win one in two separate fields, and who developed mobile radiography units for delivery to field hospitals during the war, the physicist and chemist Marie Curie.