Today a few of us went to church in the Tenderloin, at Glide. Definitely the most ethnically and socio-economically diverse worship service I've ever attended. It was absolutely beautiful.

Mostly we celebrated Dr. King's birthday, with the Gospel/Jazz/Rock band and choir playing, a few people getting up to talk. A powerpoint of Civil-Rights related photographs and quotes and news clips played during all of the worship... It was so interesting to celebrate Reverend King's birthday in a church, to find myself wondering why none of the other churches I've ever attended even mention it, to find myself amazed at the vigor of these people still walking the freedom march (in a movement most of us grow up learning is shelved in between the start of the Cold War and disco. Oi).

I think I grew up very much in an environment that silently explained oppression and privilege have little to do with me. Except in learning to give money to the poor and vote for the marginalized in ballot measures (kind of 'limousine liberal' style, as Shane Claiborne might call it), issues of racism, classism, ableism, and heterosexism really never came up. Sexism is something I've gotten much more interested in with the past couple years, and I see how my upbringing kind of weakly tried to deal with that--you know, "date as many people as you can, Cari, and don't get married for a long time!" or "You have such opportunities in going to school, so just keep going, and then you can get a job that pays the bills and puts food on the table!" pieces of advice. But really, and probably unintentionally, these issues of privilege and oppression have been so largely ignored. And in the past few years, I've decided to learn more about them, but it's all been so scholarly, so theoretical and distant...

So now here I am in San Francisco, and suddenly theory meets action or I'm just a faker, and that's all there is to it. And suddenly I see how racial and class stereotypes have ground and bred themselves into me, in ways I never would have realized living in my northern wilderness or in rich Santa Barbara.

And I want to acknowledge the enormity of these problems, so that I can help contribute to solving them.

And I want to know why we crucify people while they're around and canonize them when they're gone, when they're safe. Jesus, Ghandi, MLK, hell, even Shane Claiborne. I mean, even take CS Lewis. Evangelicals eat him up, and he was damn controversial! And MLK kept saying, we're all extremists, so will it be for Love or for Hate? And he was killed at only 39. But I want to take that over mediocrity, over complacent participation in an endless cycle of oppression and violence and hate.

And I'm struck by the polarity of the places I have lived, only 4 places, in only 2 states... and yet they're each so incredibly different, and each has contributed so much to these things we must care about, I must care about.

In true San Francisco form, I find myself once again overwhelmed. But overwhelmed beats fine, any day.