I’ve been writing this blog for around eight years. I started it as a place to gather my thoughts about a wide range of topics. I know a lot of people visit this blog looking for articles on technology, politics, media, and other random topics. I have every intention of writing more about these topics, but right now, I am especially interested in the idea of religious identity and so a lot of my writing is on this topic.

I also write in various styles on this blog. Sometimes I try to adopt a journalist tone and other times, I seek more of a journaling tone. In the struggle to define religious identity in the twenty-first century, I am a participant observer, so many of my posts along this line are likely to be a mixture of these tones.

Friday night, I went to Dinner for a Dollar at my church. You don’t really have to pay a dollar, you just give whatever you can. It might be nothing. It might be more than a dollar. It isn’t a soup kitchen where those who have give to those that don’t have, setting up unhelpful power dynamics. It isn’t a fundraiser, although Dinner for a Dollar often does take in more than in spends. Dinner for a dollar is a chance for everyone to gather for a good affordable meal. Some folks are food insecure and come for the food. Some folks are lonely and come for the companionship. Some folks have young kids and come for an opportunity to speak with other parents as their kids run around with each other. It is a vital ministry of our church that I don’t participate in as much as I would like.

I went to Dinner for a Dollar Friday night because I was going to spend the night in the undercroft of the church with others from the parish as well as some homeless guests. Every winter, Columbus House takes groups of homeless people to various faith communities around New Haven where they spend the night. Members of the faith community stay with the homeless guests, providing food, companionship and a warm, safe place to sleep.

This year, many of our homeless guests headed off to bed pretty early and the hosts sat around chatting, and heading off to sleep in one corner of the church or another. I sat on one of the couches and chatted, and as the hosts still up dwindled, I sprawled out on the couch and went to sleep.

At one point, one of the other hosts found a blanket which they put over me, thinking they could do it without even waking me up. I was in that half asleep, half awake phase, that I associate with the beginning of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. I felt loved, cared for. I thought about when I was young and had drifted to that half awake state sitting around a campfire and my father picked me up, carried me into the tent, and put me in my sleeping bag. I thought of God’s Love, covering all of us in our spiritually half awake state.

I drifted in and out of sleep for the next few hours and then got up for breakfast. After our guests left, the hosts sat around and talked. There were two African American hosts, one Asian American host, one Hispanic American host, and two Caucasian American hosts. We are all hyphenated, and several, trying to make up for lack of sleep were trying to become caffeinated as well.

The discussion drifted towards racial justice, the differences between inter personal racism and systemic racism. By personal racism, I mean the kind you see represented by a confederate flag on the back of a pickup truck, or the kind you hear when someone uses the N word, or if you are more attuned here in micro aggressions.

For systemic racism, we talked mostly about education and black history month. The history we’ve grown up with is the history of the happy slave making desert for her master and the Europeans having a nice dinner in November with their Native American welcoming committee.

One of the things that often comes up is people asking why we need Black History Month. Shouldn’t Black History be taught every month? Well, yes, it should, but it isn’t. What we really need is Black History being taught every month as well as a special Black History month, to help everyone, students, and their parents and community, to catch up on the Black History that hasn’t been taught. It is a discussion about equality and equity. It is a discussion about fairness.

After breakfast and cleaning up, I drove home, where I quickly showered and then headed off to the annual Episcopal Church in Connecticut’s Mission conference, this year, entitled ‘Walking Together - Living God's Mission’.

I was tired. I was missing some of my normal Saturday activities, both chores and relaxation, but I believed it was an important event for me to attend, so I powered onward.