A Story for Ferguson

A few weeks ago, a new kid started coming to my Sunday School class. I teach the 16-18 year olds, and even though he was 21 and supposed to be attending the adult class, he hadn't been to church since he was a teenager, and I guess he felt more comfortable with us. Plus, I have candy every week, and I think he has a little crush on one of the girls who sometimes comes.

I start each class by asking the kids about the best thing and the worst thing that happened the past week, and a couple of weeks ago he said that he'd started a new job. "That's great, what is it?" I'd asked. Turns out he was one of the young men running behind garbage trucks emptying trash cans into the compactor in the back. "We love those guys," I'd said enthusiastically. "Joshey always runs to the window when he hears the truck coming!" He smiled and nodded, and we moved on.

Four days later, on a rainy Thursday morning, I wasn't thinking about Sunday School. I was coming back from the gym, and I was in a bit of a hurry because Cici's bus was due to arrive soon. I was driving in my blue minivan with two good little boys in the back, and I was undoubtedly preoccupied with the thick of thin things in my good little stay-at-home-mom life. Needed to start the laundry, had to find a babysitter for my eye appointment tomorrow, was Polly doing any better with her have-to's this week? As I turned onto my street, the garbage truck was making its slow way up, a little later than usual. It was driving smack dab in the middle of the road, and the two guys running behind, hoodies up against the freezing rain, were jogging slow figure 8's up the road as they grabbed and dumped and returned. I was impatient. What if the bus was already there? I nosed my way in between one of the guys and the truck, and gave an apologetic little wave as I cut him off at the curb. I may have even said something like, "Sorry guy! I know, I know, I'm a jerk!" And truly, I was. I was sitting warm and dry in a heated car, yet I couldn't wait 45 seconds for the garbage truck to pass me so this poor guy wouldn't have to abruptly stop jogging in order to avoid getting run over. I felt a little guilty, but when I rounded the corner and saw that the bus wasn't there yet, I forgot about the feeling in the resumption of my internal narration of my to-do list. Get the boys down for naps, unload the dishwasher, decide what to make for dinner...

Fast forward to yesterday, Sunday School, all of us sitting around in Sunday clothes and smiles. Antoine starts the best and the worst of the week. "Well, the worst is that I missed work on Saturday. I was just so tired. And I didn't have my boss's phone number. But I was wondering-- did I see you on Thursday?" I looked at him again, and suddenly--yes. My Sunday School student was my trash guy. He was the one jogging behind the garbage truck, the one I'd cut off. And I hadn't even recognized him. When he was in my Sunday School class, he was Antoine, the kid who had started coming back to church because he'd felt like his life wasn't going the right way, the kid who felt like getting that job was an answer to prayer, evidence that God was looking out for him. When he was on the other side of my minivan windshield, he was just another young black man, slowing down traffic when I had laundry to get home to.

I have listened to the news coverage out of Ferguson, Missouri with deep feelings and deep interest. I have a sister who lives in St. Louis with her husband and four kids, and her oldest daughter is just about the age that I was during the LA Riots following the Rodney King case. When I was in junior high, and I came home to see my mom watching some breaking news coverage with images of a man and a truck and an intersection crowded with police cars, I had zero idea what was happening (except that my mom never watched TV, so something must have been going on). When I was looking out from my junior high balcony at the distant smoke and flames from South Central off on the horizon, I had zero idea what was going on. Afterward, when my parents drove us through the fire-charred neighborhoods and past the empty store fronts graffitied with protest slogans, I had zero idea what was going on. I was kind of a clueless child, and I didn't know how to start understanding complex things.

Now I am as old as my mom was during the LA Riots. I am no longer a child, and, to misquote the Apostle Paul, I no longer "see as a child." I am the one glued to the news, wondering what's happening, wishing I could do something. I am heartsick that social conditions, race relations, structural poverty--everything that's been part of this tinderbox--have been taking the St. Louis area down the road of dejavu all over again (to misquote someone else). But I have to say that I'm glad I have the opportunity to experience this national upheaval as an adult. I don't want to be clueless again. I don't know what I can do--I don't even know what I would do if I lived in that area instead of in Baltimore. Probably just pray and agonize internally and pray some more. But I'm glad I have a chance to give a damn about it.

Of the demonstrations I've heard about, the one that touched me the most occurred at the St. Louis Symphony, on the night that they were playing...oh, what was it... Brahms Requiem? I think that was it. Anyway, just after intermission, as the conductor stood ready to give the orchestra its downbeat, someone started singing from the balcony. Soon they were joined by other voices throughout the audience. What did they sing? I can't remember. Maybe "We Shall Overcome," but maybe something else. When they finished singing, they unfurled a large banner from the balcony, there was some applause from the other audience members and even some of the orchestra, and then the protestors filed out and the concert continued. The banner read "Black Lives Matter."

Black lives matter. All lives matter. But not just in the aggregate. All lives matter because all lives are individual souls, dealing with the set of cards they've been dealt starting with birth. Yesterday after church, Antoine asked if I could give him a ride to his foster mom's house. She lives off of Harford Road, and since I almost ran over Antoine close to that very street, he knew I must live relatively close. We had 20 minutes to talk as we drove, and I found out that he lived in foster care when he was 17, and then transitioned to a series of group homes. At one point, he even lived with his bishop for a number of months, and then he followed a job to Kentucky. Now he was living with his mom and sisters and a few nieces and nephews, and he was planning to use his next paycheck to buy Christmas presents for the nieces and nephews. I found out that on Sunday, he gets up around 8 am, puts on his suit and purple tie, and takes the bus to Church. That morning, the fare machine on the bus was broken, so he got to ride for free. I found out that when he was still a teenager, he went to stake youth conference, a retreat for the 14-18 year old teens in all the congregations in our area, and the theme was "Disconnect to Reconnect." Whenever I ask a question in Sunday School--"How has prayer made a difference in your life?" "How have you seen that gratitude makes you more spiritually and temporally self-reliant?"--that's always his answer. I found out that during the week, he gets up at 4 am in order to walk the half mile to where he starts work, and he only takes the bus when he has the fare handy. "What do you think about your work?" I asked him as we were driving down Harford Road. "It's not too bad," he said. "I ask my boss if I can do commercial, so I just have to do dumpsters all day. So I try to take it easy."

There's a lot I don't know about Antoine. I don't know why he was in foster care. I don't know the story behind all the tattoos on his arm. I don't know what job was in Kentucky, and how it ended. I don't know how he came to join the church. I don't know what Thanksgiving is going to be like for him. I don't know whether he's ever going to start attending the adult Sunday School class, like he's supposed to. I don't know whether the girl in my Sunday School class with her Coach bags and new clothes will ever find out that he has a crush on her. I don't know if he'll stick with his job through the long, cold, dark 4 am winter mornings when he doesn't have bus fare. But I have learned that the young man on the other side of my rainy windshield, running behind the trash truck, is the same young man praying with me and reading holy scripture with me on Sunday. And I hope I will always recognize him for who he is.