Alabama, my heart, forever

This past weekend I made a pilgrimage to Alabama to visit several sacred sites from the civil rights movement. I am still trying to process this experience, but will tell you that I have been changed! Not in that church revival sense, but in that, I've seen something that I can't ever erase from my psyche sense. Like the first time you see a naked person. It's there forever. You've passed some rite of maturity, and you can never go back. It was like that.

I've gone to bed each night since returning from the pilgrimage with freedom songs stuck in my head. The images, sights, sounds, and yes, even tastes!, will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Haunt? More like, inspire. This pilgrimage has inspired me towards something new. A new understanding of freedom, justice, redemption, forgiveness, love. All of those trite, hackneyed words that are rubbed raw with abuse in our modern vernacular have all been made new for me.

Here are two posts I've written about the pilgrimage for Sojourners. And below, some footage I shot of the delegation marching across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma while singing "We Shall Overcome," on the 45th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.