I noticed this piece leaves me feeling heartened to hear that there are still initiatives like this being hosted back east. I spent over four decades in interdenominational work and prayer groups like this you’re describing, Hans. Deep nourishment for the soul.

Out here where I live now in southern Oregon, the racism is profoundly ignored outside of Portland. I stood in a food line on Tuesday with a very tall, Jamaican man right behind me. He was the only person of color in the line and he knew it. And he didn’t begin to trust that I saw him as a fellow human being. I tried to make conversation but his distrust of me was palpable, so I didn’t push.

It will be 20 years this September that I’ve lived in a place where performative liberalism lives on one end of the valley and white Christian nationalism lives on the other. It’s been soul crushing.

I’m so glad you took a retreat in Richmond. Maybe I need to take one.