Write. For those of you who have local, state, and national representatives, let them know your convictions about the meaning and urgency that events in Ferguson and beyond trigger for you and your friends. Don't feel the need to pretend you are a legislator, just express the concerns most on your heart and the questions and issues you want them to engage, or the listening you believe they need to do.
Build relationships. Seek out people in your workplace and neighborhood and church who are likely to have a different cultural experience than yours and get to know them and their stories. Listen for deeply harbored wounds of racism untold, and be willing to let forgiveness and reconciliation do their miraculous work through you.
Act. Then join together with your new relationships in concrete local action to improve interracial relationships between churches, and with your neighborhood and in your places of work. Find ways you can contribute to changing systemic patterns—call out racism when you hear or see it. Accept opportunities—or make them—to actively educate about and address racism when you become aware of it. [The PICO National Network may be a helpful resource. Its "Lifelines to Healing" efforts in response to gun violence and mass incarceration are doing great work.] Read. March. Speak. Listen. Sign. Vote. Repent. Apologize. Forgive. Change. Love acts.
Yours in the one who has broken down the dividing walls of hostility, Jesus Christ,
Mark Labberton
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