Last night I was a dreamer (August 1942).

Martinez, Elizabeth "Betita" Sutherland

Last night I was a dreamer.

Many and wondrous were the fantasies I imagined as I wished upon the first star of evening. I have wished on the same star before, for separate things, but last night I asked for them all--not at once, but only for a lifetime--that is not too long to wait. I asked--I prayed, perhaps--for things for myself--selfish, every one. But they are no more selfish, I hope, than the average wishes. I did not beg for fame or wealth--only for music--that is the fount which quenches my soul, laughter and tears--that must seem strange, but by it I mean life, excitement--all the experiences that a human may know--an ability to write--that is so that I may always have a job to do and most of all so that I may tell people what I wish to tell them-health--I ask for this only because I love the open sky and the sunlight so much--and last of all, love. Not love that means one man--but love that means everyone. I cannot live without it and I must give it.

I did not ask for happiness, because I think that it will come in the course of time. And I did not ask for travel, although that is my second dearest ambition. It must come too. And what is my dearest ambition? I hope I do not know for sure. But there is something growing within me, like a child that will someday be greater than I if I let it. And that will be my offspring, for it is my ambition. It is very young yet and cannot quite be said in words, but it is something in me that wants to make people all over the world love each other and know each other and laugh with each other. It is something that wants to destroy hatred and prejudice. It is something that cries for the voice of God to whisper gently unto our world--"pity the evil doer and condemn him not for he is only as you yourself." It is something that wants to tell the world--there is a little love in the heart of every man. Look for it, though it may take you a thousand years, and do not spare the love in your heart, for the more you give away, the more you shall have. That is a strange and wonderful truth as indestructible as the God who created it. And it would cry unto the masses, "Each is a man--each Negro, Jew, Indian or Chinese--each is a man, each has a heart and a mind--seek them and you will find beauty always, though it may not seem so."

This is all so small and foolish--these hopes. They are from the brain of no genius--no chronicler of eternity. But they are from the heart--one heart among a million better hearts--but always a heart.

Oh, God, I am so little! So futile! So imperfect! Like the billions and billions of others like me--only little people, trying so hard. And yet there is something imperishable in us, humble as we are. I think it is the tiny bit of God in each of us. It is more in some, and in a few, a very few, there is a great deal. It is only with this that we may struggle our tiny struggles, which seem so great, ever hopeful.

I want to do so much, God--so much that I can never do. But I can always try--it is my sacred duty and divine privilege.

Often I have thought, if we could only have some divine sort of dictator, a human Christ who should gather together the peoples of the world as completely as have the dictators of evil, but all without the bloodshed of war, with the spreading of good.

Yet that is not the way, although it might be a swifter means. People must find God's way for themselves--not suddenly start attending church, but they must find themselves, slow though it will be, that if they look for love and good, they may at first find only the ugly, overgrown weeds of every conceivable sin, but if they look beyond the tangle of dishonor and hatred and selfishness, they will find somewhere in the stretching field, a small white flower rising from the ground, clean and pure, with its face toward the sun. The flower will withstand the choking weeds for a long time, and perhaps it will die someday as the undergrowth chokes out its breath. But the wind will carry its seeds to another place, and again it will grow up, and again and again, until perhaps a thousand centuries later it will fill the field. And as the last weed dies, the flower that was once only one will nod its head and laugh with the passing breeze. And the sun will look down to laugh with them. And there will be warmth and joy.

* Unpublished journal entry, written when Betita was sixteen years old.