A crisp cold night, causing all my covers to feel good beneath and cold on top. I rush into my clothing. But the pastor's house is a skip and a cripple-hop over a hill, and he has left the back door open, so that I've taken my first extended, full-shot shower in weeks. The heat of the spray improved my spirits.

So this morning we stopped at the 27th radio station carrying Lutheran Vespers on this tour: this one sleek, modern, busy people bustling about, a radio manager mostly business. But upon other days we've found radio stations to broadcast out of a private home, electronics in the laundry room; radio stations inhabiting very old YMCA buildings; local radio stations in smaller stand-alone buildings many very willing to do interviews with me, others (of greater expense and lesser attention to local regions, "piping" in their sources) never giving thought to an interview. But if you've been watching the pictures on this web site, you already have seen the variety we have ourselves experienced.

This noon I will speak to the Senior group at Zion in Peoria, and then sit for an interview with Mike Miller of the Peoria Journal Star.

Tonight, the rally.

The church where this rally will take place is in a rougher neighborhood of the city. The pastor says, "There are people who hesitate to come here during the day; there are people who will not come at night.

Well, then I'm glad that the clergy of the area have chosen to hold the rally exactly there.

My congregation in Evansville, Grace Lutheran, likewise suffered such decisions of middle class Lutherans. In fact, the neighborhoods simply are not as dangerous as rumor likes to have it--as rumor may justify middle class avoidance.

More grievously, when Christians (and Lutherans) of some financial stability choose not to walk (or else to drive, or even to worship) in our city region of the city, their absence has a real effect upon us; their absence causes our economic strains to grow closer and closer to the snapping point.

Once, speaking to a congregation in the suburb of a large city, I took the opportunity to explain the effects of the dominant culture upon the poor. I described how often my adopted son is stopped by the police for no other reason than that he is Black and young and in a big car. I asked people to imagine how harassed a lad can feel, over and over again asked to get out of his car, being frisked, having the car searched. I told them how demeaning it is when, as he walks through a parking lot to a store, he hears the power locks on cars click before he passes by. I offer the statistics that white teachers, having asked a question of a school student, wait longest for that child to formulate an answer if the child is a white female; they wait less long (before moving to another student) when speaking to a white boy and a black girl (in middle schools these time-lengths are about equal). But the wait for a black male to answer a question is measured in seconds and the fractions of seconds. The teachers are generally unaware of their behavior, nor are they malicious. Nevertheless, the effect of their lesser expectation of black boys soon teaches black boys to roll their eyes up in thought, or to frown over an answer they know they will never have to give, for so they have learned. They are trained young to live a passive life in school.

And then I spoke about the prejudice that wounds the most, for it comes from folks (1) who are completely ignorant of their misinformed attitudes, and folks (2) who wield some authority in life, which grants their attitudes power in society.

"Those," I say, "who don't know that they don't know: they will never know." Which is the same as saying, "Those who are convinced that they know will never truly examine their deeper pre-judgments against fact, will never admit to themselves their own true potential for sin, and therefore will not repent and be forgiven."

After that speech a white woman came forward to me, in her upper fifties, lower sixties.

"Of course," she said to me, "you say the same thing to blacks when you speak to them, don't you?"

"No," I said. "They are not generally the people with the power in these situations."

I'm afraid that she was shocked. She refused to describe this situation any differently than that the evil of white and black were at least equal. So she declared. But when the longer I refused to agree, the angrier she got, until in tears she said the following, wherein evil is scarcely equal: evil lies almost solely with the blacks--but she did not know that that was her deeper conviction. Unaware to the true circumstances; unaware of herself.

She said, "I let them [black people, males in particular] walk in my neighborhood. I go inside. I shut the door. I leave them alone. They can walk in my neighborhood. But if I went walking in their neighborhoods, someone would steal my purse! Someone would rape me!"

Kindly, several friends of hers saw the strength of her feelings and the extremities to which her conversation had taken her. They came, spoke softly, and led her away.

But she is not unique. At various levels of expression--some people infinitely more politic about their opinions, some grimly silent when speaking to pastors like me--Thanne and I have encountered these attitudes for the greater parts of our lives, since adopting African American children, since serving long in a Black congregation.

When, therefore, I hear the decision to locate our rally in that neighborhood where Jesus would walk, but certain Christians might hesitate to walk, I rejoice. The church that remembers Jesus in the form of the oppressed, the hungry, the sick and the imprisoned, that Church is Christ's indeed.

Walt