Taking down the walls that separate

February is "Black Liberation Month" according to Glide Memorial Church minister Donald Guest. And that means that you have to do something during the month to repent for your own participation in oppression.

For those who are white, he suggested recognizing white privilege. For the people of color, he suggested giving up the mindset and ethnicity that keeps one behind the “ghetto wall” of oppression. He further commanded every black person to go home and tell his or her mother, father, aunt and uncle that they had to give up their hate for homosexual people.

And to the dismay and the delight of the day’s congregation, he suggested that we are all responsible for the Iraqi War because of our insistence and allegiance to our material goods that keep us comfortable. "George Bush is not the problem," he said, "we are the problem." He said we had to be willing to cross the lines that keep our lives safe and unmoving. We had to destroy the system and save the people.

Going to Glide is always a unique and wonderful experience. There are layers of meaning and connection going on, filtered spiritually through word, music and slide shows that flash pictures of the human condition, both positive and negative, on the front church wall. A song about going home, amazingly sung by a woman of multi-cultural origin, backed by a multi-racial, multi-gendered 40-voice ensemble and six-piece band, had the audience on its feet in joyful tears, and delivered its own mini sermon that we all have the ability to redeem ourselves and are deserving of love.

When the service was interrupted with an announcement that a Black Land Rover and a white BMW needed to be moved because they would be towed, the whole audience seemed to laugh at itself when an ordinary black man got up. I think we all expected that the expensive cars belonged to one of the well-to-do white folks in the congregation.

Such is the ability and atmosphere of Glide. Together, people get to explore and inhabit expectations and limited perspectives in an atmosphere of unconditional love combined with the fervent desire for connection and common ground.

Everywhere I go there is intense talk about the need to break down the walls that separate us. I hope that this trembling shakes and weakens those foundations.