“Hope, Faith, and Persistence”

I believe that we do change the world when our lives exhibit our faith and hope. We might not see it, it might not be immediately evident, but we can change the world. To do that, we need not only faith and hope but also persistence. We have to persist because there will always be bad things to combat and good things to build. We can lose faith. We can lose hope. But we have to persist.

Michael S. Franch is an Ethical Culture Leader and an active member of the National Leaders Council of the American Ethical Union. He served as Leader of the Baltimore Ethical Society from 1975-1984 and is currently an affiliate minister at the First Unitarian Church, Baltimore. A historian by training he spent most of his career, and until his 2007 retirement, working in health policy at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He enjoys playing the concertina, storytelling, English country dance, and bicycling around Baltimore (he has only been hit once). He lives in the Baltimore neighborhood of Waverly. He is president of the Baltimore City Historical Society and a board member of the newly-formed Green Burial Association of Maryland, which he’d be happy to tell you all about.