monkey chases the weasel

We are all racists and bigots. There... I said it. All of us, regardless of race, color, ethnic identification, socio-economic background, religious affiliation, geographic location, educational level live with an instinctive them versus us track playing in our head. Religious liberals think fundamentalists live in the Stone Age and religious fundamentalists think liberals are on the slippery slope to damnation (all faith systems are equal opportunity offenders here). Old people think young people are going to the dogs and young people think old people know nothing of value. Poor people think rich people have it made and rich people think poor people have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Southerners think Yankees talk too fast and Yankees think Southerners talk too slow. All French women are stylish and all farm women are dowdy. The Amish can’t understand the Englisher and the Englisher can’t fathom living without electricity.
Some racist language is no longer socially acceptable in polite society. Dirty Indians, shiftless black folks, dumb women, Kike, faggot, slant eyes, Polack are a few of the terms we don’t hear much anymore. Thank God for that small mercy. But the larger issue, the melting of the ice walls that divide our hearts and souls remains. How can we find our way to not just accepting our differences but affirming them? How can we find the place where the crazy quilt of human experience can be held together with the feather stitch of loving respect without requiring us all to be the same?
Church watching is one way to observe the comedy of the human condition. In the sixties we were convinced that the only thing that stood in the way of a truly integrated church were our segregated policies. So with much effort and suffering on the part of our prophetic leadership at that time, our churches became open and affirming of racial equality in our faith communities. Forty five years later, we are still mostly segregated on Sunday mornings with one exception. Churches that are "pentecostal, evangelical and spirit filled" often have a broad spectrum of races. Now they may not have many openly gay or lesbian members but something in that style of worship provides a place where racially mixed congregations are happy with each other. None of us have a corner on the market when it comes to the gospel.
To really be the gospel good news, we have to know the hearts, lives and songs of the ones we are living and singing with. I can’t truly appreciate what it means to be a Cherokee until I hear the stories, feel the pain of a history I do not share, sing the songs, learn what it felt like to be dirt poor and now have Harrah’s money, break bread together... bread of the heart and soul. I can’t know the pain of being cast out from my family because of my sexual orientation until I hear the stories of those I love who have suffered this great loss. Those who have ditched their religious past because of their struggles with exclusive language can hear the need for the language of their youth that gives comfort to those of us who are in a different place. Because we know each others’ stories, we can love and respect our differences and know we are more alike than we want to admit. Somewhere, somehow, sometime the monkey has to stop chasing the weasel, sit down and listen to the weasel or else we will all go "pop".
Paul said it in Ephesians 2 (pardon my French, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible).
"For Christ is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances...and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end....So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." I am going to memorize that passage, write it on my heart and see if I can live it daily as I move into the lives of all those souls who surround me.