Let’s pretend that my skin is only metaphysical

And that my pigment is simply generational residual

What color would you assume I was if you heard me speak from outside of your peripheral?

Would your assumption of my articulation offer the same speculation that is now tainted from your visual?

Could you hear my heart leaking through the orifice of my soul?

Without the labels of me being black, male, or 34 years old

These things go through my mind every time I stand up to speak

Growing up the only thing I really knew about bias

Was that I was different with no explanation on race relations of this nation

I grew up in southeast texas where we were told never to get after caught after dark in vidor

Stick with my pack and to the other side never lean nor swerve

I could get drug behind a pickup truck like Sabine did to James Byrd

Something deep inside of me always felt that this was wrong

And before long I learned how to mute the diversity in my song

My neighborhood said I “acted white” because I pronounced every syllable

This is where I come from but it could not be where I stay

Within these conditions I could no longer thrive so I left the hive because I knew this hole in my soul had to be fillable

I set out on a path of discovery which has taken me many places

It took me down to mexico where I learned to habla espanol

Where I tasted the beauty of arroz con pollo, menudo, and milanesa

It took me into hindu temples where at the end of their service we feasted on rice and lentils

In our bare feet we would sit and speak and from what I could understand

From me they had no demand when in fact, I was welcomed

I spent some time up north on a reservation in the dead of winter

It was a self-governed principality where outsiders were not welcome

Yet they let me enter and offered their hospitality

In Alaska they told me never to run because bears run faster

And as they drove me out onto a frozen lake they watched the fear in my frozen face

And erupted in laughter

I met so many different cultures and it’s a been a blessing to know them

Far more than I have time to fit in a poem

But I learned that we all struggle

We all are dying to be loved and to belong to something greater than ourselves

We all want a life outside of our bubble but through foreign tongues the translation gets muddled

Somewhere deep inside in a place we can’t readily explain

We have been hurt badly and although the window pane may be different the rain looks the same

And it’s saddening

So this aggression sits at the surface

We’ve learned to live our life on the defensive and we don’t always know how to expound through rhetoric

We feel like the Israelites fleeing the Egyptian army and we are dying to get ahead of it

We are all trying to get to God

If He himself stated He is the great I AM can He not contain them all

He wrapped Himself in our human flesh

And He was persecuted with all of the same prejudice

I so think He would understand the trials and tribulations

As the church we have to open our doors to all

Your lost may not look like my lost but if we don’t come together we’ll lose it all

Our love has to grow feet and hands

This building alone is overflown with supply and we should go out and meet the demand

We are all sisters and brothers no matter our color

Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth

We are neither Gentile nor Jew

neither slave nor free

nor is there male and female

for we are all one in Christ Jesus and that is enough for me

to love for who you right now no matter where you’re from

it is time for us to leave the comfort of what we know

Lets go and be the multicultural  church like the world has never seen.