Men and Women with Antennae

            Many years ago in my college days as a speech major I was required to memorize a speech that someone else had given and give it as if it were my own.  The speech I chose was entitled “Men and Women with Antennae.”  It was given by Kenneth I. Brown, executive director of the Danforth Foundation at LeMoyne College in Memphis, Tennessee.  That speech so impressed me that I have kept a copy of it all these years.  I recently found it as I was going through my files and wanted to share part of it with you.  The thought is as apropos now as it was when it was first given decades ago.

            I am indebted to a friend for the phrase that I have used for the theme of this commencement address.  We happened to be together some months ago in a college situation far away from the continental limits of the USA.  Both of us had concern for the man who had recently come to the presidency of the college where we were visiting.

            As a new administrator, he was embarking bravely upon an ever difficult job.  We were there long enough to know that his efforts were praiseworthy, and that his direction was progressively sound.  As far as we could see, the future augured well: and yet the new man seemed to be stumbling.  There were comments spoken in an undertone, which were not complimentary.  Even when words praised, the speaker’s eyes did not underscore the praise.

            My friend and I learned that the new administrator was thoughtless, or said to be so, of those who had labored in the situation long years before his coming. Some faculty leaders whose counsel might have been useful he seemed purposely to ignore, and there were bruised feet, many bruised feet, where he had trodden without care.  One day in speaking together of the situation we were trying to analyze, my friend said these words:  “Good man, but a man without any antennae.”  The phrase has lingered in my mind,

            No man is an island.  He needs that sensitiveness to the incipient emotions and heart-longings of others if he is to live as a responsible member of the human race.  He needs a special competence in those media of communication which are more difficult than the spoken language—the troubled eye, the quivering mouth, the withheld presence.  Love is not alone the giving of self, even though that giving be generous and abundant.  Love is the giving of self to another’s need, and that need of the other can be learned, not from generalizations about mankind nor from textbooks on psychology, but through the sensitive outreach of a human spirit touching gently another human spirit.

            The man without any antennae is the man who never quite comes into contact with his fellow human beings.  He never sizes up the whole situation.

            There is something essentially tragic about the man who is unaware of the music in the air which he is not hearing, of the pictures in the air which he is not seeing.  There is something essentially tragic about the man whose armor of personality prevents the subtle delicate shafts of human understanding that come from another, from penetrating into his own mind and heart.

Perhaps education is a process of building within us, according to the latest models, antennae which allow us to move into direct contact with the spirit and the heat and the mind of another.  I suppose that comes through the multiple and varied experiences of learning and living and loving.  I am sure that it comes in part through the human outreach that through understanding and compassion touches those around us.

            There are lonely men and women in American life today—of all ages, and of skins of all hues.  And whether they be young or old, they are reaching out in their loneliness to those with antennae who can catch their distress signals of loneliness and will come to their relief.

            There is a need abroad today—stark, desperate, yawning, colossal need—some of it the physical need for bread, and some of it the mental need for intellectual understanding, and some of it the spiritual need for human friendship and divine forgiveness, a need for man, and for God.  And it will be men and women with this capacity for human outreach and deep compassion who will first be aware of the existence of such need, and recognizing it will take their part in satisfying such need.

            I can find no more important word to bring to you than the word:  Be men and women with antennae.

            Do you sense when someone is hurting, when someone is angry, when someone needs an ear, a hug, a word of encouragement? It appears to me that each of us as Christians should be described as someone with antennae.

            Colossians 3:12 says, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”

            Be a woman with antennae!

                                                                        ~~Faith Himes Lamb