I am hopeful...

When I was in high school wearing a letterman's jacket was a big deal. It signaled your status. That you were either dating someone cool enough to have earned one or you earned one yourself. I fell into the later category. I earned my varsity letter in golf at the end of my freshman year. And so I wore that expensive, heavy, oh so heavy and warm, leather jacket everywhere. Including on a school field trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts.

I will never forget stepping off of that school bus in Detroit and immediately wishing I could get back on. Wanting to throw away my jacket and never see it again. See, emblazoned on the it was the name of my hometown: Howell. A town synonymous with the Klu Klux Klan. I had no sooner stepped off that bus than I began to hear from other high school kids that I needed to go back to where I'd come from, that I wasn't welcome in their city. I said nothing. I moved with my class into the museum. I hung my head in shame and I never forgot that feeling. Ever. But I didn't say anything. I didn't speak up and say that's not me, that's not my family and friends in Howell.

A few years later I was sitting in the auditorium at Olivet College listening to the required Wednesday Lecture and Symposium series speaker. Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, was speaking. It was a big deal. It was an important get for a college which had seen it's share of racial issues earlier in the decade. At one point during his lecture he mentioned Howell, my hometown, and it's connection with the KKK. This time I chose to speak up.

After the lecture I stood in line down at the front of the auditorium and waited to talk to Mr. Dees. When I got my chance I told him that I was from Howell. And I told him that the former grand wizard of the KKK did not actually live in Howell at the time of his death as he'd mentioned. He lived in a town just north of Howell. And that it wasn't fair to paint Howell as he had in his lecture. I don't remember his response. I'm sure it was polite and professional. His response didn't actually matter to me. What mattered was that I had stood up and said something this time. I had said that people from Howell are not all racists. I had defended myself and my family if nothing else. I tried to raise his awareness and challenge his perception.

These two memories came rushing back to me Saturday as I followed the events in Charlottesville. All my life I have been aware of the KKK. They have been in my backyard, both literally and figuratively. They've been a few miles away in Cohoctah Township where that former leader of the Klan lived. They burned crosses on front lawns when I was in school. They passed out flyers on the bus promoting their sick and hateful rhetoric.

So by Sunday Angela and I were completely heartsick. We were disgusted and dismayed. We followed the news. We watched the Twitter feeds of activists who were in Virginia. We wondered what we could do. We felt powerless. Completely and utterly at a loss.

And so we went to church. To our United Methodist Church in Hollywood, California. The scheduled sermon topic was a discussion of Ava DuVernay's documentary 13TH (#awomandirectedthat) about racial inequality in the United States particularly around the criminal justice and prison systems. It's a powerful, heartbreaking, infuriating film that every American should be required to watch. And I had been excited that our pastor was going to preach on this film as part of the summer's Crossflix sermon series. But that excitement about raising awareness was tempered a bit by the time Sunday morning rolled around.

Nevertheless, we settled into worship. Our church has the most diverse congregation I've ever been a part of, in so many ways. And I love that about our church. So many voices coming together each Sunday morning. We sang and we watched clips from the documentary and we prayed for the world and our pastor spoke about Charlottesville and she admonished the white supremacists and the racists and the terrorists and the President of the United States. And I was proud to be a member of that congregation Sunday morning. And I also knew that across the country, other churches in our denomination would not dare to breathe anything about what had transpired in Charlottesville and not dare to pray for our country. And I was right. Which added to the heartsickness.

And then our pastor mentioned a prayer vigil that would take place Sunday evening. At another church just a few minutes south of Abbey Place. And so Angela and I, feeling oh so helpless and disheartened still, made our way down to Holman UMC Sunday night.

And we finally felt something we'd been looking for -- hope.

The vigil was actually part rally, part church service, part call to action, part vigil and all hope. All faith. Here were hundreds of people gathered: Christians, Jews, people of every color and every sexual orientation and even a group of humanists who don't believe in God. And we were preached to by rabbis and ministers and councilmen and even the mayor of Los Angeles. For almost three hours. We prayed. We clapped. We listened. We affirmed. We laughed. We cried. And we got ready.

But by the end the sanctuary had emptied out. Which was a shame because some of the best messages came toward the end. And in fact, our call to action came at the end. A pastor stood up and said now is the time to get to work. Now is the time to pray. Now is the time to believe that God can change hearts and minds and use us.

I pray that is true. I pray for our country. For our people. I am still heartsick. I am still disgusted and dismayed. I am still spending too much time on Twitter and checking the news feeds. I am still too much in my head. But I am also hopeful.

I am reading all I can. I am learning more history than I ever learned in school. I am thinking critically and looking for primary sources and not just listening to the party line. I am searching out voices that are different from my own or from voices I am normally surrounded by. And? I'm hopeful. I'm trying to be hopeful. I'm praying to be hopeful. I'm working to be hopeful. Because? I am. I am hopeful.

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.