One of my all-time favorite songs is Love and Happiness by Al Green. Beyond the instrumentals, I love that the lyrics recognize the power that love has on how we behave and show up in this world. Good, bad—love and what we love can make us go against what might be best for ourselves and betray what is best for our greater belief in others. I really feel in this world, we are much like the song: a society, a humanity reconciling with what it means to share this earth as humans together and as in life and love, it is never a straightforward path.

I come from a family that for nothing more than the color of our skin were segregated. I have recordings of my grandmother and her brother sharing stories they heard at the feet of their grandfather, a man with scars down his back from a life filled with terror and servitude. I’ve grown up listening to the stories of his bitterness from a life bridled by the pain and suffering of laws that deemed him property. Valued not as a human, but like cattle and stock, a price for a life. This is what the laws allowed.

Last month we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and for many Americans, this must seem like a waste of a holiday. I cannot understand how you could celebrate the nonviolent protests that provided for my family to exist—and see the protests happening today as acts of domestic terrorism. I cannot imagine living my life as an interracial couple in a segregated America and it is important that my son understand the gift his life is as a reflection of the work of MLK and all of those who stood against segregation and the laws that allowed so many in my family’s history to live in shame, terror, and fear.

I want to ensure my son grows up fully understanding the gift of his birth and for that reason, we visited two locations to commemorate MLK’s legacy. The first was a local cultural center that brings to light the story of Benjamin Banneker—born free in 1731, outside of the laws that held my ancestors captive. He proved in his life far before Martin Luther King Jr. that if given the opportunity, black people were as capable of learning and success as any other race. We learned about reverse engineering, looking inside clocks and seeing how they worked, as Benjamin Banneker taught himself by deconstructing a timepiece and putting it back together. We also learned about the stars, surveying land, looked into the eyes of a stuffed fox and stuffed wild turkey, and Aiden experienced writing with a quill and walnut ink.

From this fun interactive experience, we went to a deeply moving celebration of the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. at St. Bernardine, our sister parish in Baltimore, MD. While the renowned author, Taylor Branch, spoke eloquently and informally on the legacy of Dr. MLK, Jr. in front of our Archbishop, the commemoration of the pastor whose legacy this commemoration also honors was far more lasting in my memory. The legacy of love, community, and service that a longtime parishioner shared in speaking of the late Rev. Msgr. Edward Michael Miller over 13 years after his passing, spoke to a life of service that was a testament to the beloved community MLK envisioned.

For many years, in my late teens and young adult years, I sat outside of my friends’ group as a Catholic school girl with traditional values that made me feel at times lame and uncool. To this day, I will never decide on a political position, but inherent in the cultural and historical legacy that I’ve learned from my grandparents and elders, I will never betray a deep resounding belief in the right for people to not live in fear for inherent attributes. I was raised to believe in the ten commandments as the only laws that govern my behavior.

God knows, I am not perfect. I have failed to live up to these laws. My life is far from virtuous and for this I live with reconciliation and grace for others wherever they are in their life and on their path. I know that makes me a pain to be around, as it’s not always fun to be the one who sees the fuller picture and chooses to give grace to a bigger story at play. From this angle, anything I am receiving and able to comprehend from the limits of my known understanding and experience is minor to whatever else is really happening in someone else’s heart and head.

Each of us, unique, given inherent gifts and struggles that lead to an understanding of self and a body of lived experience that amounts to choices in who we want to be as humans on earth. Many have chosen success and status, but kindness, understanding, empathy, those are now seen as traits reserved for the weak and woke, and I was raised to believe they were Christian—and just signs of a decent person no matter one’s faith? I’ve never associated with a political party and now, because of these very values, I am being labeled and, again, left adrift in this new era of society.

How is it possible that we’ve come to a point where we are allowing a slow simmer of acceptance for some being less than human? Is it possible for us to find more opportunities for love and happiness for those we do not agree with? That is the gift my faith gives to me—the courage to seek love and not hate, to seek understanding over blame and justification, to see humans with humanity. It’s not just my faith, it is what my ancestors call me to do. And they call me to not be silent.

I pray for our country and global society and when ready, I’ll keep doing the work to make space for the beautifully diverse world that is richer and more prosperous in times when we come together. So that’s what we’ll continue to do, strive for more opportunities for others to sit in the comfort of being imperfectly perfect—all of us, together.

With love and warmth,

Mallorie