BRUNSWICK — Your June 22 front-page article “We’re talking about racism” gives well-deserved attention to the Rev. Kenneth I. Lewis Jr. and his words at Merrill Auditiorium on the evening of June 21. Your staff writer, Noel Gallagher, admirably captured the thrust and meaning of the event.

Rev. Lewis, pastor of Portland’s Green Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (sister church of Charleston’s tragedy-stricken AME church), summoned over a thousand of us to move beyond tears and analyses. He called us each to bring about change by personal action. But he did not leave the matter there.

At the end of the event, and in his leadership of Sunday worship at Green Memorial the day before, I heard Rev. Lewis say that beneath action, there needs to be the courage to take action.

And courage is matter of the heart and soul, of spirit. Those who think of themselves as spiritual but not religious – a preference I respect and understand – would likely agree, I think.

As a recently ordained Episcopal minister, I heard Dr. Martin Luther King speak, first at the March on Washington of 1963 and later in Montgomery, Alabama, at the end of the march from the bridge at Selma.

Today, at the head of my list of heroes of the spirit, is Dr. King and, for numerous reasons, Rev. Lewis as well.

On the morning of June 20, Green Memorial was filled to the brim. Rachel Talbot Ross was there, daughter of Maine’s first African-American legislator. So was a familiar Maine TV newscaster with his wife and son. Present were children as well as adults, one of whom was 90 and needed to ride the stair chair up to the sanctuary.

Present were white people as well as black. Many were at intervals in tears. People hugged each other. Rev. Lewis evoked some laughter in the church, too.

The church’s Sunday order of worship states: “There is joy on Munjoy Hill,” and there was. (The late writer David Foster Wallace once said that there is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. Even atheists worship. “The only choice we get is what to worship.”)

In what he said, Rev. Lewis was:

• Decisive in identifying our spiritual need for both wisdom and courage.

• Clear in taking the human realities of sin and evil dead seriously.

• Humble in acknowledging his own frailties.

• Definite about keeping church doors open to strangers, to those “lost along the way.”

• Serene in asserting that God’s capacity to forgive is not limited, “like ours.”

• Faithful in trusting that the Charleston victims are delivered not into oblivion but into Abraham’s bosom (Hebrew language for the divine presence).

• Sincere in noting that to be true to ourselves, we cannot deny that the Charleston tragedy brings anguish and defies understanding.

• Firm in challenging the packed congregation to pray “earnestly, fervently and continuously” until courage and power “fire” our spirits to engage in action for change. I found this challenge humbling and take it to heart.

Racism is what the Charleston tragedy is centrally about. At the same time, I find numerous interlocking concerns and trust others do as well. My own partial list of concerns:

• That we have sensible legal protections against gun violence.

• That we provide health care that is affordable, comprehensive and fair.

• That we continue to address the decline of a sense of personal moral responsibility.

• That we also encourage a companion sense of responsibility for the common good.

• That we acknowledge that reason is an essential source of truth and that ancient wisdom is equally so (e.g., Hebrew Scriptures; Greek myths; parables).

• That we correct unfairnesses in incarceration policies.

• That we recognize our ancient problem: Being curved in on ourselves, to paraphrase Martin Luther.

Rev. Lewis’ words of June 20 and June 21 reminded me of Czech President Vaclav Havel’s extraordinary 1990 speech before Congress: “The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in human meekness and human (moral) responsibility … to the order of Being.”

Green Memorial’s pastor ended his Sunday sermon with a powerful reading of Harry Emerson Fosdick’s 1930 hymn. Some excerpts:

“Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore.”

“Cure thy children’s warring madness, bend our pride to thy control.”

“Shame our wanton, selfish gladness, rich in things and poor in soul.”

“Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the living of these days.”

Yes.