My mom's family is from eastern, coal country, Kentucky. One summer she and I road the Greyhound bus to Kentucky and during one stretch she sat with an African American lady to talk and I sat with the lady's young daughter. I do not remember the girl's name; but, I do remember tight braids with little white beads. I remember chatting with her and goofing around with her while we looked out the window.

In 3rd or 4th grade my mother read to me the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. She talked with me about a very specific word that Mark Twain's characters used in his books and that while that word had been used at the time it was written it was not a good word; rather, it was a word that was used to hurt Black people. I filed that information away in my head, my young heart not fully comprehending.

One day at school I heard that specific word used. It was not directed at any particular individual; rather it was sung as part of a rhyme girls said as they slapped hands. I was completely unaware that this was one of my first encounters with culturally-embedded racism.

When I was eleven years old we moved from Longmont, Colorado to the small town of Mexico, Missouri. With the move I instantly traded an eighth of my classmates that were Latino for an eighth of my classmates that were Black. Along with this change in racial context also came an intensification in the contrast between ethnicities. The town had clear geographic lines inside which many of the black citizens of the town lived. Mexico, Missouri had vestiges of the old south still in-tact. The marching band I was a member of in high school was named 'The Dixie Grey' for crying out loud.

Indulge me a brief history lesson. Missouri was one of the slave states prior to the Civil War; however Missouri itself did not secede from the union. There were however many pockets of southern sympathy and many a Missouri man journeyed south to fight for the confederate cause. Just south of Mexico, Missouri there is a county called Callaway and briefly during the Civil war it established itself as its own sovereign The Kingdom of Callaway and maintained a militia of farmers in alliance with the confederacy. As the union troops strengthened their control of Missouri the militia was held in a stand-off with the union army and had to negotiate a truce.

The word I had learned back in Colorado, the one said to hurt Black people, the one sung by girls innocuously on the playground took on a whole new meaning in Mexico. In Mexico, it was used by my Black classmates, it was used by my white classmates, it was used by adults in my community, and most specifically it was used by adults in my church. That word was part and parcel of the culture of the place and its meaning was clear. Black people are not very valuable. Black people are not very smart. Black people should know their place. Black lives do not really matter.

Well, except for one context. Sports; however that will be saved for another post on another day...

I am not writing about all of this to bag on the home of my teenage years specifically because the culture I experienced in Mexico Missouri was not marginally different from almost any other mid-western town that thrived on white family connections, white family history, and a very clear implicit understanding of who was in charge, white people. And it is this shared culture that negatively shaped my unconscious biases against people of color, and black people specifically. It is that culture of implicit white dominance that created patterns of understanding in me about how the world works for which I have had to repent, to ask forgiveness of others for, to educate myself out of, and due to which I now have to scrutinize my implicit assumptions for racist patterns.

So, where is the through line to my story? Despite all best efforts, and despite being raised to understand racism as wrong and evil, I was still taught racism implicitly. Despite my parent's best effort; racist beliefs, racist presumptions, and racist practices were imparted to me simply by living in a broader culture in which racism was and is continually present. Combating racism, and being non-racist are not and cannot be passive activities. If we want to not be racist, to no longer unconsciously perpetuate racist patterns, and to raise children who are conscious of racist patterns and fight against them it requires action and effort on our part to be consciously anti-racist.

The statement Black Lives Matter is a simple step in actively confronting implicit racism. It is a simple and elegant statement that confronts the implicit racism in our culture and reminds us that among all the other things that matter in this world Black lives matter too.

Not all of them are drunk or high all the time nor is any one person falling over drunk or high every week. There are seasons to their abuse; but that is no different than the rest of us. They are not there for a handout; but they do take a shower so that they can feel human and drink the same coffee and eat the same donuts the rest of us do. Some of them do not take a shower, ever, and they still drink the same coffee and eat the same donuts as the rest of us.

Some of them live criminally. That is not a metaphor. They can be dangerous. One who worshipped with us is now facing up to 30 years in prison; another significant jail time. Yet they are part of Christ's body (judge not, lest you be judged our Lord once said). They are the prisoner, the alien, the widow, and the orphan in our midst. They are broken and hurting members; but members none-the-less. Some of them are very racist and can't help lying every other breath. Some of them love and forgive unconditionally. Are they that different than anyone else?

Some of them need a warm place to be. Some of them really love Jesus, even though they can't walk a straight line. Some like to talk about football, or baseball. Some of them work. They have families they love. They have pets they love. Quite a few of them are military veterans who served their country. They like fried chicken and barbecue. They make bad decisions. They are victims of physical and sexual abuse. Some of them are going to die soon because they've made poor health choices. How different are we?

Some of them know the Bible better than the average Christian. Turns out being homeless gives you quite a bit of free time to read. Sometimes they interrupt our services because they are trying to give out hugs to everyone in the front row and dance while too drunk to stand. Sometimes they start shouting at the preacher while trying to shoot out some Jedi force-lighting from their finger tips because the human mind is a fragile thing and they aren't coping well that day.

Many would give you whatever, or everything they had, if you asked and needed it. A lot of weeks they minister to me.

I am not a better Christian, and our church is not a better church because they are with us and we seek to see them as human. We are simply a church seeking to love who we have been asked to love and serve those we have been asked to serve. We don't do it perfectly and in fact a lot of weeks we probably suck at it. Still, I'd rather not be anywhere else right now, shoulder to shoulder with my drunken homeless friends, because in them I see the light of Christ at work in the world.