A wretch like me.

As violence unfolded last week, one of the first things I did was text Spicy and check in with her.

For all her "Spicy-ness" she's a tender soul and I knew that whatever emotions I was having, she was having more of them. She's a black girl raising a black girl. It was hard enough for me to verbalize my feelings, much less verbalize them and give them context and meaning and understanding from parent to child. 

And really, how do you explain racism to a little girl?I can't even explain it to myself. 

In the midst of our text conversation, Spice invited me to join her and her daughter at church on Sunday. 

My first thought? As a Catholic, we don't call it an obligation for nothin...and I like my Sunday morning sleep. But as soon as I was thinking about logical ways to politely decline, I thought, "here I am, trying to understand, to do better and be better...and someone is presenting me with an opportunity to do that."

...and I realized so amount of Sunday morning sleep was more worthwhile than Sunday morning in Church with Spicy. 

I think I could end up converting. 

Culturally, Black people talk an awful lot more about being blessed. My black friends are a lot quicker to give glory to God and talk about praise. 

I realize that not every Black American attends the same church, or worships in the same way. I understand that they are as diverse as Caucasians and worship as diversely. 

However, in my experience, I think I'd talk a lot more about #blessed, if I spent a lot more time in a pew with Spicy. It's freaking joyful. Black Americans were under fire this week, literally and figuratively, yet I sat in a building with 300 or so people, on the south side of Chicago and felt not only their pain, but their genuine joy. 

Full disclosure, it's pretty hard to not feel joyful while you are clapping your hands and singing along with the full band, the 50 or so choir members and a choir director that I could best describe as "Jesus's Hype Man". 

And to think that we Catholics tend to feel progressive with an acoustic guitar at a Saturday night Mass!

However, for all these blessings and all this praise, I was certainly the palest face in the audience. Of that I was hyper aware of. This is not to say that in my almost decade of friendship with Spicy, I haven't found myself as the representative Caucasian in any number of situations. 

However, this was a new feeling. Bringing someone to worship with you is a very personal experience. I realized at one point that it took more faith for Spicy to bring me to her church than for me to go. That's a humbling thought in to have in the midst of 300 people who have watched their culture and their race be torn apart on the Nightly News as recently as the day before. 

However, for as hyper aware of it I was, I doubt that half the people in the room noticed the shiny white face, blonde hair and blue eyes that sat among them. These people have serious things to pray for and not among them is "I hope this White person feels welcome." They made me feel welcome by making me feel ordinary. 

Having spent most of my adult life as a Catholic, I'm used to a very regimented service and using the bulletin to know what Catholic business are in the area. 

The Pastor chucking the script because his people needed individually prayed over, is somewhat out of my religious reality. Watching him move around the room, praying over his congregation personally, often by name, was humbling. I thought back to my early 20s when my Mass buddy and I would make bets on how long communion would take. Loser had to buy dinner. 

In the honest message that he delivered without a script and from the heart that followed, the pain and confusion of the world was evident. He addressed his people truthfully, with humility and admitted that he might not have all the answers. He stood before his congregation and admitted he was only human. That he felt anger and rage at situations. That he had felt devalued and vulnerable out in the world. That sometimes he lacked understanding. 

He acknowledged the anger his community had and validated it, but asked them to look for a broader perspective. He agreed with them that it's so easy to be furious and that they had a right to be, but pleaded for a greater understand and for the Black community to propagate it. 

In other words, he lead.

I felt the palpable pain of a room full of people, but felt their hope as well. In the midst of sadness, they prayed for love.

Without intention, they prayed for a wretch like me. 

We are no so different. We are not so the same, but we are not so different. 

Manners my mother didn't teach me...

Religion and politics are best kept out of polite company...or so we are told from the time we are old enough to have polite company. 

Keep controversy out of it. 

...and we do...for the most part...because as Ron White so famously stated in a comedy routine, "You can't fix stupid."

Which often means that we let stupid go on rants in living rooms and backyards around the country, while educated and thoughtful people sit quietly, realizing that they cannot, conceptually, change a moron. 

We've all done it. Let the person with the worst ideas and the loudest voice rant until someone pipes up at a downbeat in conversation, "So, do you think the Cubs will win the pennant this year?" (Or if you are the granddaughter of Eleanor, "Do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?")

We change the topic. We move on and hope that the person doing the speaking will get the hint.

The trouble is, silence is often confused with agreement. We change the topic and move as quickly as possible to a banal and meaningless topic. 

Sports, the weather, a movie, puppies, kittens...unicorns. 

ANYTHING which will get us past the uncomfortable conversation. 

This week, seven different times, someone took their last breath because, as a whole, we are a nation of people avoiding uncomfortable conversations. 

We've muzzled ourselves in the name of manners and in the meantime let intolerant and dangerous viewpoints to take centerstage. 

I'm still in the process of assessing my feelings about this week and working through the notions of my own privilege v. the notion that I'm muzzling my own voice on matters I care deeply about. I'll get back to that in another time. 

This week, as the bodies of 7 people grew cold, I thought about the muzzle I have put on myself and realized that if there is to be change, it's not going to be one huge sweeping change. We are not building an arc in preparation of 40 days and 40 nights of rain. 

Change will be minute, possibly unnoticed differences that average nobodies, like me, make. Change will be found in the small things we do differently and how those small differences add up. A penny's worth of change will eventually add up to a dollar...and from there...

So tonight, for the first time, I challenged polite company. At a gathering in which I knew no one but my friend who had invited me, the conversation went political and in the midst of a conversation over immigration, this weeks violence came up. 

I, who have sat quietly so many times and waiting for the conversation to change, stood up...quietly, as I did not want to make a scene, I stated, "I'm sorry, we can debate safe borders forever, but I cannot let you continue discussing this weekend violence without speaking up."

I did not raise my voice, I did not "fight fire with fire" and it was hard. Difficult because I wanted to take him down and expose him for the uninformed racist he appears to be, difficult because I was afraid that I was causing controversy in an unknown situation. 

But yet, confident in the knowledge that this small change was important to me. 

With an even tone I corrected his information. Politely, I let him know that the information he was referencing had been disproved. Respectfully, I told him that, I, indeed feel strongly that Black Lives Matter, but not because I feel that other lives do not matter. Indeed, because all lives matter, Black Lives have to matter as well...and right now, the universe is showing us in brilliant definition, that we have failed to reinforce that Black Lives Matter. 

We must do better. Skin color is NOT a weapon. A black mother should not be required to teach her child to be polite, respectful and stay alive. No mother should have to teach their child to keep their hands visible at all times, in the event of a brush with enforcement. 

Today, I made a small change and challenged the loudest voice in the room. Today, I utilized the privilege that I have been born into and challenged tacit agreement. Today, I did not change the conversation by discussing the weather, but rather by raising my voice in peaceful defiance. 

Today, I made a minute change and quietly hoped for a better tomorrow.