From the Rector…
I grew up a middle-class white kid in Selma, Alabama. I never lacked food, clothing, or most of the toys I wanted. I had a comfortable bed, a safe neighborhood, a bicycle to ride, plenty of books to read, and opportunities to explore every interest that caught my attention. I played sports, had two loving parents, a dog, and attended one of the best public schools in town. My parents could afford field trips, cheerleading uniforms, and summer vacations. I got a car when I turned sixteen and went off to college without financial hardship. In short, I grew up surrounded by opportunity—and I took almost all of it for granted.
As naïve as it sounds now, I was not very aware of race when I was young. My best friend from fifth through eighth grade was a boy named Timothy Stewart. We were opposites in almost every visible way: I was white, he was black; I was tall and lanky, he was short and sturdy; I had plenty, he did not. Yet somehow we became friends in the school library. A shared love of books and an absence of judgment formed the foundation of our friendship.
I never went to Timothy’s house, and he never came to mine. I did not know his parents, and he did not know mine. At the time, none of that seemed unusual. At school we were inseparable, and during the summers we simply accepted that we would not see one another until classes resumed in the fall.
It was not until junior high that I began to notice the divisions around us. My elementary school had been tucked into a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood. Most of the minority students there were bused in from other parts of town. Middle school was different. It sat in a lower-income area surrounded largely by black neighborhoods. I never felt unsafe there, but I became increasingly aware that people lived different experiences depending on their race, neighborhood, and family circumstances.
Timothy and I remained friends for a while, but our friendship occasionally became the subject of ridicule. Slowly, we drifted apart. By high school, the separation between black and white students had become so normalized that few people even questioned it.
Most of our classrooms had open seating, yet students almost always divided themselves by race. One side of the room filled with white students, the other with black students. We talked with one another and joked around, but we remained socially separated. Looking back, I could offer many explanations for why that happened, but underneath them all lies a painful truth: racism often persists not only through hatred, but through distance, silence, assumptions, and the quiet acceptance of division.
None of us would have called ourselves racist. Yet we rarely crossed the invisible lines that separated us. We did not make much effort to know one another deeply, to understand one another’s struggles, or to appreciate one another’s experiences. What felt “natural” to us was actually something learned and reinforced by the culture around us.
I sometimes wonder how much those quiet divisions continue to shape our society today. We seem less trusting of one another than we once were. Fear is amplified by politics, media, and systems that often deepen suspicion rather than encourage understanding. Instead of confronting violence, poverty, and inequality as shared social wounds requiring healing, we retreat into camps of blame and self-protection. We neglect public education while seeking private solutions. We blame the poor for their circumstances while ignoring the systems that keep many people trapped in cycles of hardship. Most dangerously, we begin to convince ourselves that the suffering of others is not our responsibility.
But the Gospel will not allow us that escape. When Jesus said, “You always have the poor with you,” he was not giving permission for indifference. He was reminding his followers that caring for the vulnerable would always be part of the Church’s calling. The presence of poverty is a summons to compassion, justice, mercy, and action. The Body of Christ cannot remain divided by fear, class, race, or comfort but most live as the reconciled people we claim to be within the Church.
It is easy to lament the divisions of our nation. It is harder to examine the divisions within our own hearts, neighborhoods, friendships, and assumptions. Yet that is where Christian discipleship begins—not merely in identifying the sins of society, but in allowing Christ to transform us personally. The Kingdom of God is built whenever we choose relationship over suspicion, mercy over judgment, generosity over self-interest, and love over fear. Those choices may seem small, but they are holy work. And perhaps healing in our communities begins when followers of Jesus decide that the lines dividing us no longer deserve the final word.
Light and Life,
Candice+