About 10 years ago I started a PhD program and the door opened to work on the campus, in the same department, where I would be studying. That’s how I became the administrator of a network of peer-mentoring groups for Christian clergy who wanted to integrate themes of justice into the worship and preaching practices of their faith communities. These were called Micah Groups—named after the ancient prophet who admonished his people to ”do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God”.

It felt obvious to me that I had better participate in a group if I were to be responsible for many aspects of what happened in the rest of the Micah Group network. So I partnered with a friend, pastor Dwight, to form and lead a group together in the Los Angeles area where we both lived. We ended up with about a dozen participants from various churches, just over half of whom were African-American.

We covenanted to gather 12 times over the course of two years for structured conversations around worship, preaching, and justice. While our mutual readings were valuable, the news headlines those two years provided much of the catalytic material for our discussions. Over and over when we gathered we found ourselves grieving and listening to one another as yet another black man had been murdered by law enforcement.

I’d had several Black friends over the years, but I had never had relationships deep enough to spend hours honestly and vulnerably engaging across the black-white divide about issues of police brutality, mass incarceration, and systemic racism. I got it wrong sometimes, as did some others in the group. We said things that were ill-informed, ignorant, and betrayed the racist biases we didn’t realize lived within us. But I discovered something much deeper than simply “increased awareness“ about racism or ways that I could be more sensitive and politically correct in how I speak. I discovered grace.

Specifically, as I discovered I was part of an oppressive tribe I learned even more that those who were wounded by my tribe could still love me. It continues to be a startling realization to me. It is precisely in the place where I am most aware that I do not deserve reconciliation that I find it most powerfully. Pastor Dwight and others allowed me to become not simply an acquaintance, or a student, but family. He calls me ”brother” whenever we talk, and it’s because he really means it. It took me a while, but I call him ”brother” now too. It’s simple, but it’s a profound reality that I continually aspire to live by—we are all brothers and sisters learning how to recognize the family ties that bind us all together. This is among the most important factors that shapes my understanding of reconcilaition.