Today I walked across a bridge. The sun shines down from a bleached blue sky. The air may by cool, but our spirits don't notice, as we stand and sing under the sign, Edmund Pettus Bridge. We are in Selma, Alabama on Bloody Sunday.

And no, after today I will never be the same.

I came to Alabama for a pilgrimage.

As it turned out, I walked smack dab into an epiphany.

Or perhaps, the epiphany walked into me.

Either way, it wasn't in my plans.

I find that I navigate my days a little easier when I have some semblance of control. It's just that epiphany and control are not to be found in the same sentence.

On Friday morning I was honored to join a group of new friends on the 13th Annual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage. We gathered at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. (I want to reassure my friends from Notre Dame that the football national championship game was not mentioned. At least not more than twice.)

On June 11, 1963, history was made when James Hood and Vivian Malone walked through two white wood doors at Foster Auditorium to enroll at the University, the first African American students in the school's history.

Their action proved all the more courageous, given that they needed to pass the Governor himself as he stood in that doorway, defiant in his intolerance and the fanaticism that still reverberated from his inaugural address, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" said Governor George Wallace.

I cannot imagine their courage or their fear. I can imagine that they shook more than just a little on the inside, and wondered, if only fleetingly, "Is it worth it? Maybe, this is a good time to turn around."

I walk past the ordinary white wood doors--now enshrined in the lobby of the renovated Foster Auditorium--into a gymnasium with fellow pilgrims to hear the words of Dr. Sharon Malone (Vivian Malone's sister) and Peggy Wallace Kennedy (the daughter of Governor George Wallace).

Diminutive in stature, Peggy is still youthful and carries a Southern grace in her face and demeanor. I had no expectations for her address (save for my skepticism radar in all matters having to do with the heart and reconciliation). In story form she took me to a swing-set outside a family home where a 13-year-old girl swung, unaware of the fateful remarks made by her father, a 13-year-old girl who would grow up pondering and wrestling with what it would mean to live under the shadow of her father's words.  

While her story is a long way from that of a nine-year-old boy in rural Michigan, we did have one thing in common: the realization that just because a parent lives from certain script, it does not mean that script is binding to the child. At some point in her life Peggy Wallace Kennedy knew that she could choose her path, choose her script, and that she must stand where her father stood with her own son as a testament to change, to bear witness as to why she chose to say NO to exclusion and YES to the need to protect the least among us.

"So today I rise," she told us in the gymnasium. "Today I rise to stand in the schoolhouse door. Every day I rise... to speak to a child. To comfort a parent. To offer a hand. To enable justice."

The doors she walked through were not literal, but real nonetheless. Each and every one of us fashions a life by the choices we honor--or more fundamentally, by the doors we open, and the doors we close.

Here's the deal: There will always be a door to hope or gratitude or respect or worth or kindness or delight or compassion or mercy or dignity or vulnerability or value or opportunity or dreams.  

And, we must first open that door to our self.

Only then do we realize that when we walk through that door, we say NO to shame or resentment or self-righteousness or fear or indifference or detachment or numbness or hopelessness or humiliation or hatred or despair.

"Count me in," I said (on the inside), knowing full well that this will be easier said than done. Because, I tell myself, courage is not easy to come by.

On Saturday morning I stood in the kitchen of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Parsonage, the home to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family from 1954 to 1960. By the time the Montgomery bus strike was achieving both success and national attention, Dr. King began receiving telephone death threats (as many as 40 a day).

"One night very late around midnight--and you can have some strange experiences at midnight--the telephone rang." Dr. King relates the story in a later sermon. "On the other end was an ugly voice."

"For some reason, it got to me. I was weak. Sometimes, I feel discouraged... You can't call on Daddy anymore. You could only call on the Something your Daddy told you about, that Power that can make a way out of no way."

And at that kitchen table, he prayed. "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right... But I must confess... I'm losing my courage."

King explained what happened next: "I could hear an inner voice saying to me, 'Martin Luther, stand up for truth. Stand up for justice. Stand up for righteousness.'"

Maybe that's what clicked. When I see acts of courage I see heroism, and I don't see myself. Or I see how far I have to go. Or I see how far short I have fallen.

But I do understand tired.  

And I do understand discouraged. 

And I do understand the end of my resources.  

Mother Pollard was one of the elders of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, during the bus boycott of 1955-56. When her pastor Dr. King, suggested she go back to the buses because she was too old to keep walking, she told him, "I'm gonna walk just as long as everybody else walks. I'm gonna walk till it's over."  

King marveled. "But aren't your feet tired?" he asked.
"My feet is tired," she replied. "But my soul is rested."

So tired is one thing. Being soulless is something else altogether. Mother Pollard knew this. I doubt she went to a workshop to figure it out. She just knew in her bones; that she is whole, and filled with grace and sufficiency.  

Which meant that for Mother Pollard, her rested soul allowed her to live fully into this life. (I read that the best beauty product is to actually have a life.) She walked toward, and not away from, life. This life, her life, with its contradictions, frustrations, weariness, tired feet and injustices.

Mother Pollard knew who she was. Her strength came from that place. Because she did see herself as a victim, she could live with intention, beyond circumstance or public opinion. In other words, tired feet was not an impediment. And from that soul flows tenderness, tenacity, compassion, joy, passion and justice.

I am still unpacking my trip--writing this in an airplane somewhere over the Rockies. There are many more stories I want to tell my Sabbath Moment friends, and I wish I could tell you where these stories will lead me. The truth is, I don't know. Because in my mind, I'm still on the Selma Bridge, with no need to fight back the tears standing in the salty prism of mid-morning rainbows.

With the witness of James Hood, Vivian Malone, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, Mother Pollard and Dr. King, I do know that I will be on the lookout for doors--of compassion, forgiveness, second changes, understanding--that I can open.

And I will look for more bridges--reconciliation, grace, hope--that I can cross.

(1) The Pilgrimage is sponsored by The Faith and Politics Institute