Friday evenings I try to help out with a community dinner our church hosts. On a typical Friday we serve about forty people. Some come because they are hungry. Others come because they are lonely. They all get a great meal and community interaction. Last Friday we had a Thanksgiving meal; turkey, fixings, desert, the whole deal. We had about twice the normal crowd, and it was one of those rare events where a few people didn’t act appropriately.

The director of the community dinner asked one person to leave because he was drinking and told a few others to leave as well. A couple of them started talking back to the director, asking who she thought she was. I don’t know if it was simply because they were drunk, because they didn’t respect women, because they didn’t respect black people, or some other reason, but I felt pretty sure that they would not be talking back to me, an older white man, the way they were talking back to her. I have a privileged place in our society because of my race and gender. I have a responsibility to use that privilege appropriately.

It is why I wear a safety pin and have spoken about it a lot recently online. I believe I have a responsibility to speak up for those who are being disrespected because of their race, religion, gender, or any other reason they might be marginalized. I believe it is something all of us with privilege are called by God to do.

We must be thoughtful about how we use our privilege. We must seek to use it in ways that don’t reinforce cycles of disrespect for marginalized people, but instead challenge that disrespect.

So I stepped in, and answered the question. Who does she think she is? She is the director of the community dinner. What she says goes. I was there to assist her in any way she needed. Perhaps they just needed to hear that in the voice of a white man. Perhaps they just needed to see that the community was supporting the director of the community dinners. Whatever was needed, they heard the message and left.

Perhaps in the greater scheme of things, this little incident doesn’t make a lot of difference in political discourse with recently empowered people who do not act and believe in the words of our Pledge of Allegiance, “with liberty and justice FOR ALL’. Perhaps it was only a little ripple of hope for a few people.

Fifty years ago, Robert Kennedy said,

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

So, I will continue to help with community dinners. I will wear my safety pin. I will speak up and do whatever is needed to make sure that we love our neighbors and have liberty and justice for all. With God’s help, I will make as many tiny ripples as possible, and I hope you’ll join me.