Innocence

From the patio of our rented condo on the beach of Lake Maxinkuckee in Northern Indiana, I watched a girl about the age of 5 or 6 playing in the sand about 40 feet away. Suddenly, the door of an adjoining condo opened and closed and another young girl shyly walked out towards the beach. The face of the first girl simply glowed when she spotted the second girl walking out towards the beach and, without a thought about who was watching or what the ramifications might be, she jumped up and went running toward the second girl, nearly hollering at her in her eagerness, "Would you come play with me?" The face of the second girl became like a beam of light from a lighthouse in the recognition that anyone would want her company and, nodding her head, her laughter fairly danced across the waves of the lake as she took the hand of her new found playmate and they raced toward the toys at the edge of the water.

Seem like an idyllic scene out of some sort of play? It was real life this morning as I drank my coffee in the cool, slightly foggy morning skies of Culver, Indiana, and what made the moment all the more poignant was the fact that, quite apparently, while both of the girls were strangers to each other, there on the beach with no-one to tell them differently, they were both wayfarers sharing a common journey. That one was Caucasian and one African-American mattered nothing to either, for there on the beach they were both just two little girls seeking companionship on the beach with toys to share and stories to build. There on the beach, there was no history, no political correctness, no barriers to overcome, no prejudices to deal with, no economic differences to overcome, and no-one around to tell them 'yes' or 'no'. There on the beach, if even for only one moment in time, there was only two little girls who saw in each other a companion with which to celebrate time on the beach in the middle of the world's busy-ness and preoccupation with success. There on the beach I watched the world painted with a different hue and texture and, in the lives and wonder of two little girls, was allowed the sacred privilege of observing with God's eyes the way humanity was designed to be from the very beginning: As one.

I do believe in my deepest heart of hearts that prejudice is a learned behavior, that hatred towards others who happen in some way to be different from ourselves is a deeply held loathing of something in ourselves, and that the capacity to see 'color' in others is the inability to see God in anyone. I have grown up in a world deeply divided over issues of color and have observed the pain felt by those against whom discrimination's work is propagated. I have listened to vile racial epithets rolling off the lips of people of all colors against others whose lives they do not know and whose journey they have never shared. I have watched as, with impunity, one brother stepped up the ladder of cultural achievement over another brother, never offering a hand of assistance or showing any remorse at having stepped on the other's hands to get there, all because 'color', in whatever circumstance, allowed for some sort entitlement and 'race' was the trump card of permission. I have stepped into those inequities calling for justice and bear still the scars of those battles, while at the same time gaining friends whose names and lives I can call upon, not because I am owed anything, but because in the shared journey we have drank deeply of our oneness and are moving beyond the teachers of differentiation.

There on the beach of Lake Maxinkuckee in the early morning light of this day, I have been given a gift from a very loving God, for I have been allowed the holy mercy of hope in the vision of what God intends in our birthright from the beginning of time. If only this new lesson can be taught by two little girls who are the most unlikely of teachers, and if only that lesson might be learned by a world overly certain there is nothing new to learn. Only God knows and only God can tell, but maybe, just maybe, a new day's dawning has much more to do with children's innocence in play than it has to do with adult arrogance at work.

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Don