Okay so, I should be writing an article The Vital Voice right now, or reading a play that a friend of mine sent me over a month ago for notes, or finishing the book that we’re discussing in my prayer group, but instead, I’m blogging cause I’m behind for December.
How often do you get to tell someone that they’re you’re hero? Well, I got the chance tonight. At my suggestion, Rudy Nickens, the executive director of the St. Louis Black Repertory Theatre came to speak to my prayer group. I’d read an article about him in the Riverfront Times when I was 19 or 20 years old and I was just blown away by who this guy was an all the things he had done as a speaker and facilitator to combat violence, racism, sexism and homophobia.
Tonight he told stories about speaking at the World Conference on Racism in South Africa and about doing workshops with survivors of the Rwandan genocide. Damn. How deep is that?
Rudy is one of a handful of St. Louisans that I’m really in awe of, along with Joan Lipkin of That Uppity Theatre Company, Agnes Wilcox of The Prison Arts Project, Father Maurice Nut of St. Alphonsus: The Rock Church, and civil rights attorney Eric Vickers. These people just amaze me. They have found a way to spend they’re lives making a difference in the live of others and actually doing something about the problems most of us only complain about.
Of all of them, I think I’ve tried to emulate Rudy Nickens the most, so it was really awesome to hear him speak tonight and get to tell him in person what an impact he’s had on me.
Okay, enough being nice and complementary, time for me to go back to being the asshole we all know and loathe.