A culture of fear?  Last night, I watched and participated in a round table discussion about the role of faith, here defined as trust in God, in what the event organizers called, in the inner cities of America, a "culture of fear."  Why?  As the African-American pastors participating in the discussion saw it, those who live in the inner cities of our nation live with a culture of fear.  Violence is rampant, respect for life nil.  No one cares.  These pastors have buried more young men than they would rather count; one saw a young man gunned down right in front of his church.  A Latina pastor noted that many of the children in her congregation live with a daily fear of hearing a knock on the door, a knock on the door by agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement who will seize their parents and deport them to Mexico (the children were born in the U.S., their parents were not). All of the pastors recalled how the Sunday after the elections in November last year most of their flock were weeping, fearful for what the future portended, fearful for what appeared to be a newly racist atmosphere being given voice in America.
     As a white male, I cannot identify with such fear.  I cannot identify with the pain of racism, cannot identify with the struggle to be known simply as who I am.  I cannot identify with the fear of being pulled over solely because my skin color is not white.  I do not need to; for the moment, mine is the dominant ethnicity in the West.  I'm not Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man."  I'm not James Baldwin's "Negro."  I'm a child of privilege.  It's a privilege into which I was born, a privilege for which I didn't ask, a privilege that, sadly, has been used by too many who share it to suppress the hopes, ambitions, and dreams of millions of people across the world.  It's a privilege, as the pastors pointed out, is one that has agency, an agency rooted in meaning.
     Though I took many things away from the discussion, I will mention two.  One, I was struck, once more, by the continued willingness of everyone in the room to believe in the goodness of God, to believe that he loves them and will get them through the travails of the present moment.  Two, I appreciated anew the connection between agency and meaning.  Because I've been raised and conditioned to believe in my meaningfulness as a human being, I also believe that I have agency.  I can do, I can act.  I can decide, I can choose.  I can live out my role as one made in the image of God.  Too many of us cannot.
     As we move into the Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., I trust that we--all of us around the planet--will make time to appreciate that unless we all can experience freedom, freedom from tyranny and freedom from fear, we will never realize the fullness of whom we, and the human community, are created to be.