Beautiful

Holy God, today has been a day of intercessory prayer. I have lifted up to you sons and mothers, children and friends. Tonight, I lift up people in a different way, honoring them and asking for your blessing on their resistance.

I saw this group of people outside Mitch McConnell's office in Louisville, KY, but I know that similar groups--actually, members of the same group!--met in towns and cities across the U.S. They gathered to protest the Occupant's move to rescind DACA. ...And they were beautiful.

They were an awkward and clumsy lot. The few with poise and elegance were not enough to elevate the whole. Most of us arrived with a friend and then got shuffled into an amorphous mass as we tried to let people through. The 20-something hipster in skinny jeans stood next to the 40-something man wearing a fanny pack unironically. The guy with full sleeve tattoos handed the microphone to a gentleman in his 80s bringing a message from "the older generation." I don't know what the message was, exactly, since no one held the mic close enough to their mouths and we only heard every third word. A lady with lovely white hair had to leave early, so she offered her handmade "I support DACA" sign to a young black man when she left. He later passed it on to a man who I'm guessing is originally from Central America, and who could make a living as a supermodel. I tried not to stare.

A young woman who is a DACA recipient spoke of her anxiety. When she finished speaking, six or seven Latina women joined arms with her, shoulder to shoulder.

A great guy I know from church played a drum, which was almost enough to keep us chanting in rhythm. An Indian mother had her child in a stroller. Like many of the other children present, the kiddo seemed completely accustomed to demonstrations.

Some signs were newly made for the occasion, but many had clearly seen heavy use already. The people holding them had turned out to protest the Muslim ban, police brutality, and 14 other manifestations of white supremacy in the past few years.

One man looked so much like my family back home that I asked him if he was originally from West Virginia. He said no, but I'm sure we're kin.

Among the English chants with poor meter and the Spanish chants I couldn't understand, there was this statement, shouted fiercely by the crowd, that seemed a North star of truth: "If you come for one of us, you come for all of us."

May it be so. Amen.