Little pink houses part two...

We have a new family next to us and they're African American. So what?

After all, by our own choice we live in a racially mixed neighborhood, I've had black friends, even a date or two, but I was raised in the whitest of white worlds as a child in a small Wisconsin town and as a teen in the suburbs. From those safe distances it was easy to pretend that there wasn't a prejudiced bone in my body. But somehow, some odd way, next door is another thing altogether.

I'm feeling exposed. It's not about hate or that dreary and unintelligent KKK kind of stuff but I am being stretched by the new, the unexpected, the challenge of putting theory into practice, ideals into action. I'm embarrassed by a part of me that, despite all the facts, despite all my education, despite my daily interactions with people very different from myself, despite it all, is struggling, at times, with the arrival of the new neighbors next door, a nice couple with three kids and a dog.

Now if I was smart I would just shut up about all of this and pretend it wasn't there. But I want this out in the air and sunshine because I want it gone. To be who I was meant to be means that I have to find a way, like Christ does, to see the humanity in every person regardless of how they present themselves and love that person as myself. It appears the new neighbors have reminded me I have a ways to go on this, more things to sort out, and new ways to grow.

Thank you, Lord, for new neighbors.