The Ground for Racial Reconciliation

Henry & Andy, originally uploaded by papalars.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together, is famous for the following quote: “he who cannot be alone should fear community and he who is not in community should fear being alone.” I'd like to reflect on this quote, along with my recent experience in the Journey to Mosaics . I also want to integrate some insights I had during a week long silent retreat I did with a Jesuit priest by the name of Juan Valdez in Mexico over 10 years ago. Lastly, I want to draw out some implications for our current ministry with our focus friends. I trust all this reflection will yield some wisdom for your experience in our increasingly multi-ethnic world. Too much to bring together in one post? Perhaps. Maybe this will be a theme for a week or so.

The experience of being silent for a week was intense. Add the layer of being silent in community only increased the intensity for me. Though I don't always need to talk, I'm known for being able to chat with just about anyone. I'm relationally curious and like to get to know other people. I'm probably like most other people and like to be known as well. In Mexico, many conversations were framed around this type of interchange mostly because it was obvious that we were not from there. We were white people in a context where the majority were brown skinned. We spoke English as our first language and no matter how fluent our Spanish became, folks could tell we were not native. Lastly we were Evangelicals in a land where Catholic identity was almost synonymous with Mexican birthright. At the retreat, I knew all these pieces where in the minds of my fellow retreatants in the silent community. I wanted to explain myself to others, eliminate caricatures they might have of me and be known. And I wanted to get to know them. But we had to be silent.

I found over the week that a bond formed in our community that was profound. The big learning for me–it was not based on externals or the ability to chat. Recently I ventured the hypothesis that if we had all come together in a room outside of the retreat experience we probably would have ended up in different corners. This is mostly what happens in society at large. We live in a world where race, economics, religion and birthright determine where we stand in a room in relation to other people and the things that define us. Unless of course we dig deeper and find a spiritual ground of being. Colossians 1:17 comes to mind, "And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." I have usually applied this to the cosmos but doesn't it refer to human beings as well. All is the operative word.

At the retreat in Mexico as with Henry, my journey partner a few weeks ago, we can connect "in Christ" at a deep level that supersedes our external, hyphenated identities. Being one in Christ is not contrived or forced. It comes as we are first reconciled to Christ which then becomes the ground for reconciliation with others in the other corner of the room or other side of the globe. It is what the world desperately needs today.

At our silent retreat in Mexico, our priest invited us to one last meal at the end where we could finally talk with each other. The joy and sense of community, the bond of intimacy we shared was something I will never forget. It is like we were long lost buddies who had just found each other after years of searching. Luke anticipates this Kingdom vision in his Gospel, "People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.: Luke 13:29.