I opened my umbrella to keep the sun off my head, and held it high enough that it didn't jab the people close around me. One woman looked up and moved to my left, so she, too, could stand under the shade. There were people everywhere, on every side a stranger. Our shoulders touched. I had been walking with all the Unitarian Universalists in their yellow Love shirts, but the crowd had pushed me away from anyone I knew. I didn't feel any fear, though; the crowd was peaceful and we were all walking in the same direction. I could see our red chalice banner hundreds of feet ahead, already rising up the arch of the bridge. I felt proud to see it up there. I knew some of my people were on ahead, and I had only to follow in their footsteps.

I was in Selma, Alabama for the commemoration of the Selma to Montgomery march of 1965. 50 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee had led a march across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma to demand passage of the Voting Rights Bill. After several days and setbacks, after the police killed a young African American man, after white supremacists killed a white Unitarian minister there for the protest, the march was able to cross the bridge and walk all the way to Montgomery. Ku Klux Klan members would kill a white Unitarian Universalist laywoman as she drove to Montgomery to meet the marchers. In Selma last weekend, we remembered Jimmie Lee Jackson, the Rev. James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo. We remembered the four little girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church. We remembered all who had died on the long march toward freedom.

Sunday morning, before the march, I worshiped at the Selma Community Church, an integrated church founded in recent years to challenge racism and share God's love. In that progressive, evangelical church, where the Bible-based preaching spoke out in support of gay rights and we sang R&B songs with new, Christian lyrics, I learned about the ongoing civil rights struggle in Selma today. I learned that the Klan is still active in Selma, and had leafleted the city before the march. One leaflet, accompanied by a rock, smashed through the window of a young African American woman. I learned that a private school in Selma, founded by white families in 1965 to escape integration, had enrolled its first African American student around 2009. And all around us was evidence of rural Alabama's ongoing struggle with poverty, that eternal breeding ground of hatred and desperation. I learned that a community of young people, sponsored by the church, were working to rehab one of Selma's abandoned buildings into a non-violence training center. I learned that the struggle for civil rights, in Alabama and everywhere in America, is not over.

In 1965, history and leadership and will and tragedy came together in a powerful moment when people marched across a bridge. People died along the way, and in the wake of that march and those deaths the law and heart of the country was changed. Looking back, we can see clearly how important it was for the march to take place, and for leaders from all over the country to join in the effort.

Today, we may be called to march for justice without being able to see clearly what the outcome will be. There will be strategies along the way, and leadership meetings, and we will listen and help and do our part. But in the moment, when our feet are walking on the ground and the sun is hot on our heads, we may not know exactly what the outcome will be. We may be surrounded by people we don't know and we may only be able to glimpse the beacon ahead of us. We are not called to have it all figured out; we are called only to stay on the path, walking with those who are walking toward justice and freedom.

In faith,

Rev. Sarah Stewart