Everybody is born into something.

Many of us were born into a place of marginalization.

We experience poverty and powerlessness from our youngest formative years.

Some of us, this includes me, were born into more of a situation of privilege.

As a white heterosexual male, my challenge, as I understood

it, was to compete with others like me for a secure place in the pyramid of power. But I had one

interesting dimension to my upbringing. I grew up in a family of very committed Christians.

My parents would today be called conservative evangelicals, even that they might have been called

fundamentalists, but they were very sincere and very loving people. And it was a different time

back in the 50s and early 60s when

I was growing up.

It was not our job as we understood it to grab for power.

It was our job as Christians to serve.

I saw this in my dad who was a doctor.

He wasn't the kind of arrogant, selfish doctor who was in it

for the money or whatever. My dad loved serving. He loved helping people get relief from their

sicknesses. I'll never forget walking down a street with him once in Washington, D.C.

And there was a homeless fellow walking along in front of us, literally dragging a blanket along on the sidewalk.

And my dad grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him. I was probably, I don't know, 11 or 12 at the time. And he said,

look at the back of that man's neck. That's a huge melanoma. He said, I've never seen anything

like that outside of a hospital. And my dad wanted to go up and talk to him to try to tell him to get

medical help. And then the crowd changed and we were we were separated from him and for

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