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I felt like I was being invited to a swimming party with polar bears, which wasn't my idea of fun. On the other hand, I thought that this might be my last chance to stick things out. And so we started meeting together at Spencer's house. And it was really within the context of that, of meeting together every week, studying Scripture together, and telling our life stories to each other that the race problem really became humanized in a much deeper way. I began to see that Spencer had made an incredible act of forgiveness simply by being at this church with people like me.

I also began a second conversion. I could move into a life where things would be all white and I wouldn't have to deal with race. But as I heard the stories and experiences of the African Americans in the group I realized that they didn't have that option. They had to deal with it whether they wanted to or not. As it says in Scripture, one part of the body can't say to another, "I don't need you." We can't say that to each other, so I couldn't just walk away from the table.

Now, in retrospect, did Spencer tell you later why he'd invited you to be part of that?

He said all his life he had seen race take on God and race always won. But he said after the reconciliation meetings he felt like God had won in the sense that a group of white and black people had gone through this crisis together, and had stuck it out. So he felt like we had all been cast in the fire together. As rough as things felt and looked to me, Spencer really saw the whole thing as a victory.

But that wasn't the end of the division.

One of the things you learn is that everybody has a dark side. How do we go on when conflicts arise that are very difficult to resolve? How do we go on when we see things about other people that push our worst buttons?

I began to see things in myself that I really wished the mirror had not been put up to reveal. And one of those things was that I had a lot of jealousy and envy of Spencer.

How did you deal with that?

For three or four years I tried everything I could. I prayed hard, I read books, I went on a retreat. I thought I could lick this thing, you know, by trying harder, gritting my teeth. And nothing worked. I think what I learned eventually through the help of some mentors, was that I had not yet learned how to live as a forgiven person. Grace doesn't matter unless sin matters. And the reason grace came to matter is that sin came to matter in Spencer's and my friendship. The grievances built up between us. You know, we were working together 24/7, we were living in the same house, we were traveling the nation talking about reconciliation, and we weren't reconciled at home. So we had to come to the point of saying that we couldn't solve this just by demanding more of each other. A lot of our life had been about demanding more of each other.

The breakthrough was in learning that what is so amazing about grace is that God forgives us and embraces us with open arms even though we don't deserve it. And because we're so grateful for what God did for us, we allow God to do the same for others through us. And as we looked at that challenge, I really think it was the greatest cross-cultural territory that we ever attempted to go into.

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November (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46