That pesky First Principle

Once in a while a UU says they have trouble with the first UU Principle: “The inherent worth and dignity of every person. I heard that more than once this past Sunday. A scene from the 1980s film “Ironweed which somehow got burned into my memory seems to illustrate that principle. A homeless, very drunken woman has frozen to death on the sidewalk in front of a shelter where she had been turned away. Other homeless people find her. Standing in the bitter cold, they bestow a sort of impromptu memorial on this almost-stranger: “Who was she? “I dunno. “A whore. “She wasn’t always a whore. What was she before that? “A child, I guess. “A little kid. That moment, for me, makes sense of the first principle: every person was born innocent. That doesn’t mean it’s instinctive, though. I can’t in my heart feel the essential dignity and worth of people who get rich and famous by spreading hate and paranoia, or of the careless driver who almost hits me, or even someone sending me a hateful email or blog post, or anyone who is unkind to one of the people I’m closest to. Believing a principle is easy. Living it, internalizing it -- no.