Our Reverse Migration - Part 6: Austin, TX

Peace Be With You: In a city full of joy, displacement, and unlikely wisdom, we remembered what kind of people we want to be.

Lou Neff Point in Austin, TX

We didn’t expect Austin to teach us about peace, but it did.

In the middle of a city that dances with music, lakes, and play, we found ourselves sitting at the kitchen table of an 84-year-old woman named Jane who had read Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns. A white woman who traced her genealogy and named the grief of lynchings, who understood racism not as a distant issue but as part of her country’s fabric. That doesn’t happen every day. Her husband John—a former city infrastructure planner, veteran, and Yale grad—shared stories of working for the city during its years of rapid expansion. While he didn’t create the highway that now divides the city, he did inherit its impact of what it means to divide the Black side of town from the rest of the city.

They invited us to church with them—St. John’s Methodist—and we went. They were elated to have us there. As someone studying formation and what spiritual rituals, spaces, and teaching do to us over time, it was refreshing to be in a church that felt somewhat familiar: call and response prayers, collective communion, moments of silence, and a woman preacher telling the truth about our world. It reminded us so much of our time at Kaleo Phoenix Church.

Going to church with Jane & John German in Austin, TX

Austin held all of this in tension. We soaked in the joy—families playing volleyball, folks lounging under shade trees, people riding scooters and bikes, jumping off bridges into the water. Canoes and paddle boards dotted the lake, and a DJ played today’s hits from the center like a floating block party. The hills and green canopy reminded us of North Carolina, stirring excitement for Durham. But then we crossed I-35 and felt the grief in East Austin. You can sense the displacement—the invisible violence of a highway that cut through Black neighborhoods and pushed people out.

We stopped by what used to be Victory Grill—now called Victory East. From their website:

“Victory Grill is a historic music venue located at 1104 E. 11th St, Austin, Texas. The nightclub was on the Chitlin’ Circuit and hosted famous African American acts such as Bobby Bland, Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, W. C. Clark and B. B. King when Austin was legally segregated. Victory Grill was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 16, 1998.”

Though no music played that day (we got the feeling Austin takes Sundays off), chillle… the food made up for it. That fried catfish, the greens, the jollof rice, the maple-stained brussels sprouts? We had to pay our compliments to the chef.

The Black side of town: East Austin

Also—just so it’s on record—Austin had some of the best swirl soft-serve ice cream we’ve ever had. Y’all know Erin is always on the hunt for good soft-serve, and this one hit.

And still, through all that, something else stirred in us—something about peace. Not peace that avoids conflict. Not the cheap peace that glosses over injustice. But the kind of peace that removes the scapegoat, that tells the truth, that sends us into neighborhoods like a benediction: Peace be with you.

It made us reflect on how we want to be known. As people of peace. Not answers, not credentials. But the kind of peace that disarms people, like the first time Kendall and I met. I remember thinking, Who is this man with so much peace in him?

Howard Thurman talks about inner peace as the gateway to true liberation. But there’s also outer peace—peace that holds space for conflict, forgiveness, accountability, and the healing of harm. As we step further into this work in Durham, we’re wondering what it would mean for “peace be with you” to become our greeting, our posture, our witness.

So, if you’re journeying with us, here’s our invitation:

Peace be with you.

Not as a sign-off. As a way of life.