May 3, 2015 John 15:1-8 Ferguson felt far away. So did Cleveland and Staten Island and Sanford. But not Baltimore. Freddie Gray’s death, and all that has come afterward, feels much closer to home. I was born in Baltimore. For my first months of life I slept on the dining room table of my parents little one-bedroom apartment downtown. Then we moved to Columbia, about 20 minutes away, but Baltimore was always the city we claimed, like DC is now for my family. We went to the Science Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art and Little Italy and walked around the Inner Harbor. My dad taught at the University of Baltimore. I even jump-roped in a half-time show or two at Orioles games. My senior prom was at one of the fancy hotels by the water. But I never experienced Freddie Gray’s Baltimore. Unlike Freddie Gray, who was poisoned by the lead paint in his rundown home and raised by a drug-addicted mother, I lived in safe homes with loving and gentle parents.