swan_tower | Solidarity as medicine (Reply)

Today I went to the “Hour of Prayer and Solidarity” at a local mosque, which they organized in the wake of receiving a piece of hate mail. I estimate that around 300 people showed up, which is bloody good turnout for a cold Sunday afternoon and a place that’s basically inaccessible without a car. They had leaders from a bunch of other faith communities (Methodist, Catholic, Sikh, Jain, Jewish — those are the ones I recall), some local legislators, and the mayor. There were some speeches and a lot of clapping.

In addition to the good it does for the people targeted by hate mail to see us all standing out there in the parking lot to support them, it did me good to go. Because in the end, Tweets don’t carry as much impact as much as the physical presence of people around me, going to effort greater than clicking “retweet” to stand against that kind of prejudice. It is, in a way, a kind of medicine, strengthening my heart against the poison that’s seeping out of the cracks right now.

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about religion lately. I was raised in the Methodist church, largely for reasons of convenience rather than tradition (neither of my parents was raised Methodist); I went through confirmation, but none of it ever meant very much to me on a personal level. But lately — especially as I listen to Christmas music for the season — I find myself thinking a lot about myself as a Christian. I feel this odd desire to claim that label for myself right now, not because I’ve experienced a sudden upwelling of doctrine-specific faith, but because I want to stand in contrast to all the Christians who have let themselves forget the importance of love, tolerance, charity, and forgiveness. I want to be in solidarity with the Christians who haven’t forgotten those things, to help keep them from being drowned out by the others. I want to stand in a cold parking lot for an hour and say wa-alaikum-salaam back at the guy who just wished peace upon me as a member of not just a geographical community, but a religious one — at least in the social/cultural sense of “religious.”

I’m not sure where this impulse will go. I doubt I’m going to start attending church again — though you never know. I just know that that feeling of community is important right now, that feeling of solidarity. I need those reminders that the hateful are not the only ones out there, and the rest of us have voices, too.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.