I remember very clearly the day I learned what prejudice was. I may not have learned the word but the concept became clear in a way that left me confused and shaken and unable to grasp the reality. It happened the summer I was nine or ten--a significant time because for the first time I was allowed to go to the playground in the next block by myself. I definitely felt very self important! But being very shy, I started my day by heading to a row of empty swings by myself. Eventually I saw a young African American girl about my age come out of a house across the street. I didn't know her name because the family was new to the area. I watched as she crossed the street and stood outside the chain-link fence looking in. She waved to me and, filled with my new status of "being grown up," I lost my innate shyness and wandered over to the fence. We talked for a few minutes and I learned that her name was Stella.

"You want to come and swing with me," I asked.

"I'm not allowed," she answered calmly.

"Go ask your mother," I urged. After all, in my experience my mother was the one who could either give or withhold permissions.

"My mother can't let me," Stella said. And just as calmly she explained and I finally grasped that she couldn't come into the playground because she was black.

At some point we both sat down in the grass--on our "assigned" sides of the chain-link fence. Had a photographer with any sense of the innate power of photography been on hand, he or she could have made a fortune. Stella and I talked for a while--although I don't remember any of the conversation other than the line "My mother can't let me."

When Stella returned to her house, I had lost my enthusiasm for playing on the swings. I wandered home and headed immediately to tell my mother about Stella and to find out just why she couldn't come into the playground. My mother confirmed the fact that even Stella's mother couldn't give her this permission because it was the law. I kept repeating "But that doesn't seem right. She should be able to come in." My mom finally tried to console me with the idea that some laws had already been changed and may soon that one would change also.

My mother was right--by the next summer the law had changed and Stella and her brothers and sisters could come into the park. But the experience had touched something in me as I learned that there are systems in our world that are unjust. And as years went one I didn't lose that awareness. But the years also taught me that, as citizens of our world, we have a right and an obligation to continue to work to change unjust laws and to work against systems that deprive individuals of their God-given rights.

This song speaks to me of both those rights and those obligations. God has given us our world but God has also placed in us the responsibility to make that world a place where all are welcomed, all are cared for, and all are treated justly and with respect.