White privilege?  Fraught with controversy (at least to white people!), these words came up as the Justice Conference drew to a close last weekend.  It seems that in response to one of the speakers asking for suggestions as to how we should handle a particular issue, one person, a white male, voiced a suggestion.  Although I unfortunately did not hear what this person said, I certainly heard the response.  Coming from another member of the panel then on stage, it boiled down to this:  you are white, you are privileged, and therefore you are prone to interrupt, dominate, and be insistent on having your way.  However, the responder added, your time is over; "our" time has come.
     All in all, it was a rather ugly exchange, particularly at a conference convened to discuss biblical defintions of and ideas about justice and loving one's neighbor.
     As I said the other day, I readily recognize that I am a creature of white privilege.  I will never fathom what it is like to grow up and live as a member of a minority population.  I will never experience racial discrimination, overt or implied, in a way that my minority brethren will.
     But I cannot undo my past or ethnicity.  I can only try to move forward.  I can only try to seek love ad healing among all peoples, to promote fair and equitable social, political, economic, and cultural exchange.  And I readily realize that I will be doing so from my position as a white person of privilege, and that this will shape my perception of how effective I will be.  Nonetheless, I need to try.
     In the closing words of the thirteenth chapter of his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul observes that the greatest thing is, simply, love.  Granted, love can be complicated, and love can be messy.  But this is our challenge.  For the good of all of us, for the welfare of the entire human community, we must work to understand how to love, to work to see how we can love, genuinely and deeply, everyone--all our neighbors across the planet--in the way that God intends for us to love them.
     What can be more important?