Find Your Brave/ "Your smile got me through"

 "Why are we singing this insipid children's song?" I thought in annoyance at the multi-faith service on ICE-Out strike day, two days ago.
I joined in, anyway... If Senator Amy Klobuchar can sing this earnestly, I can too.

And then at last night's candlelight vigil for Alex Pretti (and all), I called out to the crowd,
 "Let's sing This Little Light of Mine!"
The very same song. 
And we did.

I NEVER thought I would find myself leading a sing-song at a vigil. What happened was... 

(My god, this is all happening so fast.)
Yesterday after I blogged, I got the message that ICE had murdered a second Twin Citian: Alex Pretti.
(You'll have heard, so I won't repeat the details.)

Stunned, I went back to bed and slept for three hours.
Sleep is my go-to drug.

I woke up, dressed up warm, and went out to find sticks for making God's eyes. 
On my way home, I stopped and said hello to a woman standing with a handwritten cardboard sign–– ICE IS FUCKING DANGEROUS-- at the busy street corner where people always Sign for Democracy on Mondays.
People were taking shifts all yesterday (Saturday) too.

I imagine they were coordinating on Signal.
 I don't want to be on Signal, 
but it turns out that being on Foot works just as well.

I scootled myself home, made a sign in 4 minutes (“stop killing people”), and went back out. The woman was gone, so I stood by myself as long as I could stand the cold---only about 20 minutes--but it was heartening.
Almost every vehicle driving past honked, and many waved, or both---including the CITY BUS DRIVER!!!
Love, love, love.

And simply taking physical action helped me enormously.

Here, I want to say, we in the Twin Cities and other places where Ice is active, have a psychological advantage in this crazy time:
There are things we can DO.

Talking to friends in other places, 
I see they suffer from watching and worrying from afar.

Of course they can and do do other things!
Write to their reps, donate to Mutual Aid, pray, make art, light candles---send messages of love and support, and of course some places hold protests too.
IT all HELPS.
It matters!

Hitting the streets is a physical boost that we have at our toe-tips, and it is a win/win:
When you take one tiny step toward bravery,
 you are met with a wave of other people taking their tiny steps, and we all are carried along together.
And we rise. 

I think it's important that at this time we dig deep in ourselves and find our own bravery.

"Look", I want to say to people who feel hopeless--
"SOME ancestor of yours was a member of the Resistance."

They got on a boat, or they got thrown in a boat, or they met an alien boat---but do you think they did any of that passively?
Maybe some?
But SOMEONE was brave.
Many, many of our people were brave.

Where there was a bum deal or a real jackass, someone resisted---maybe only in a tiny invisible way—you can count on that.

My own Sicilian grandmother trapped in a marriage to a violent brute, my grandfather, used to put salt in the sugar bowl when he brought his cronies home for coffee---and she used to STARCH his undershorts! To make them rub uncomfortably.

What I want to suggest is, 
We can ask those ancestors to help us Find Our Brave.

It is yours, and it will arise from your own life, 
and it will look like you. 
And it will help us all, even if it feels like it's too small to matter.

It's not, and it will.

So, what I found myself doing at the candlelight vigil last night was...

I'd taken a hot bath to warm up after the street corner sign-ing; 
got dressed in fresh dry clothes (the ones I’d been wearing were damp with sweat because I'd been jumping up and down, to stay warm---while my toes froze!); 
got my battery-operated candle that Alice had given me for Christmas (I'd thought, Oh, I don't want that, and had intended to donate it---thankfully I hadn't!!!!);
 and headed out to MLK Park.

I expected to hear singing, but when I got there, the large crowd holding candles was circled around an open space on a hill, where a sort of altar to commemorate Alex Pretti was set up. 
People were chatting quietly among themselves.

I walked around looked for The People in Charge to suggest that they should get people singing, but there didn't seem to be anyone in charge. This all happened so fast, within hours...
Even with Signal, no one was Running the Show.

So, WITH HUGE RELUCTANCE, I walked into the empty circle on the snowy slope. 
I pulled up the lyrics to "We Shall Overcome" on my iphone (your phone works great, you fuckers!).
And then I stood there, frozen with fear.
I am NO singer!
I try to avoid leadership, generally.

But I thought, 'If you don't do this, you will forever regret it', 
so I called up my Big Girl Voice, and I called out to the crowd,

"Hey, everybody! Do you want to sing? 
Do you want to sing We Shall Overcome?"

And this lovely young woman--maybe twenty? smiled at me and said, "I do."

I tell ya. I have been feeling Large Forces at work in these days. 
I think there's angels and archangels and Bodhisattvas--call them what you will:
 just plain old humans being our best selves.
But you know how I've been saying Mary (Jesus' mom) has come as a friend to me this past year?
Well, looking back, this girl felt like Mary.

WHATEVER you name this energy, it was good, and she strengthened me.

 I launched into this song, and a few people sang along, and at the second verse I called out,

"I know we're Minnesotans, but we can do better than that!"

People laughed, and more joined it.

Next I said, "This Little Light of Mine"--
and thank you, whoever chose that ridiculous song for the multi-faith service, because a couple hundred people holding lights in the darkness sang it out.

All along, this girl, my Mary, sang and smiled a little gentle smile at me.

After a few songs, we dispersed, and she came up and thanked me, and hugged me, and I said,

"Your smile got me through."

 So I'm telling you: 
You don't have to be an action hero! 
You don't have to take a bullet. 
Maybe you will be given the grace and the opportunity to smile at someone. 
And-- believe it, my friends--if that comes to you, that's going to be 

PRETTI
GOOD.