Different Tears

Young John Lewis, on Bloody Sunday, March 1965

[Upon watching John Lewis's body crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.]

I'm sitting here on my sofa in Greenville, South Carolina with tears on my face. Why? I wasn't there on that horrible day in Selma - I wouldn't be born for another six years. I was born in Atlanta, but I didn't live there during the time that Mr. Lewis represented a district in the metro area. 

I am just a white girl, born and raised in the "Deep South" of America. I am of the generation raised on those sweltering streets just after the Civil Rights movement shook the foundations of my country. And as I watched that flag-draped casket cross that bridge in Alabama, that bridge named for someone that believed some are more worthy than others - that some are more human than others - the tears came.

Tears for the man whose body is in the casket. Tears of gratitude. Tears of humility in the face of courage. Tears for a country that did not deserve him, yet he loved with all that he was for the whole of his life. Tears of shame, that people who looked like me met him on the other side of that bridge and beat him. Tears that we have lost yet another voice reminding us that it is all worth it and that we are all worthy. 

Tears over the sheer tragic beauty of that image - the caisson pausing at the apex of the bridge, its driver standing with his hat over his heart, on a hazy July Sunday in Alabama, as rose petals flutter to remind us of the blood spilled there in March of 1965. 

Pausing, as though to hear the congressman urge us one last time to good and necessary trouble. Will we take up the call?

Notes from Exile: Week Ten

I am departing from my normal format here at the Lettuce today to tell you that people I love are hurting and this is the only way I know how to help. Please start with the link below and see how you can help. Be light in the darkness, speak truth to power, and if you are a white person like me, sit down and be quiet and listen. Don't ask what's wrong - we know what's wrong. Don't ask why - we know why.

The Guide to Allyship

If you feel compelled to say something about all lives mattering, here's my response. Maybe it will help. As I posted this week on FB, there is a story in Luke, chapter 15, about how a shepherd left his flock of 99 sheep to look for the one that had gone missing. That action in no way diminishes the lives of those 99 sheep that are where they are supposed to be and safe - because it is the one that is missing that is in danger.