The sermon “Guide My Feet”, by Rev. Rod Debs is an interdiscplinary investigation into spirituality. Rev. Debs begins with Audre Lorde:
"Diane Bogus wrote this to her mother: “I learned your walk, talk, gestures and nurturing laughter. At that time, Mama, had you swung from bars, I would, to this day, be hopelessly, imitatively, hung up.” The poet Audre Lorde wrote: “I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers.” I know this is true of me. I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry and of her hidden angers.
This morning I invite you to reflect on what and who guides your feet. The spiritual #348 in our hymnal sings: “Guide my feet while I run this race. Hold my hand while I run this race. Stand by me while I run this race. . . . For I don’t want to run this race in vain.”
“Guide My Feet” is also the title taken for this little Beacon Press book by Marion Wright Edelman, grandmother, lawyer, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund. She addresses “the huge moral and guidance vacuum,” the absence of “a sense of the sacred or internal moral moorings,” our children’s lack of “a sense of core values like honesty, discipline, work, responsibility, perseverance, community, and service” (Guide My Feet, 2000, p.xxv,xxvii). She had intended to write a book of policies for a nation that might actually nurture its children, but her work became instead a book of prayers, opening with the song “Guide My Feet.”