Keep Yourself Safe

Crossing divides in small Southern towns.

Yesterday, I was in a small Southern town, the type of town with the court house at the square where the cars drive slow and old timers sit outside the soda shop and the waiter in the diner always says “God bless you, honey pie” when I tip him for my coffee and the bells on the door jingle on my way out.

It’s a deceptive town, of course. This town isn’t like this for everyone, and not even always for me. This is a town where flag waiving agitators stand guard at the Confederate monument, yelling slurs at young Black men. This is a town where white teens lined up in a dark alley, laying in wait for a Black Lives Matter march to round the corner. This is a town where my own child had to run away with other kids when the police physically attacked a church group marching to the polls.

But today it is sunny and lovely and there is the slight crunch of dry fall leaves under early morning shoppers feet as they peer into the windows at the antique store and walk with their packages to the post office and over by the courthouse a man is standing, waving at passerby’s holding a sign that reads: “Love Always Wins.”

It’s so beautiful a day, it could feel like he is the punctuation at the end of a long, long sentence; a declaration of where a long 2020 finally landed us; a confirmation; a certainty; calm clarity. But I know that “love winning” is a never ending process, something we have to believe in when it doesn’t even feel certain or true.