By Candlelight: Springfield, Missouri

It has only been over a week since we began and I already miss my family. That feeling of loss, however, was rectified today when the Equality Riders arrived at the First Unitarian Universalist Church here in Springfield, Missouri. We were welcomed to their congregation this morning, greeted with smiles and affirmed with a service titled “The Inherent Worth & Dignity of Me.” Together we sang, shared stories, and were even the privileged audience of a poetry reading from one of the congregation’s members. While my family rests miles away, it is comforting to know that family I had never met rests within pocketed communities that punctuate the plains of the Midwest.

We were provided lunch following the service, including two vegan dishes to accommodate the dietary needs of certain riders, an effort that required certain members to stay awake half the night when they had realized that they had forgotten certain ingredients. A small detail it seems, but is helps to illuminate the way in which we were welcomed and embraced today during our visit. As we laughed about it over lunch, I looked around and realized how long it has been since I have been in a church that felt like home. I have spent half my life as a member of numerous congregations but always feeling like an outcast, even as a heterosexual. At twenty-two years old I am, after today, reconsidering my stances on serving as a member of a spiritual congregation.

We returned to the church later this evening for a candle light vigil that Equality Riders opened in a singing of “Amazing Grace.” Our directors led a discussion concerning relentless non-violence and civil disobedience for those members who demonstrated interested in visiting Central Bible College with us tomorrow morning. This congregation, in realizing the lack of welcome we may possible face, will send some of its own members to stand beside us tomorrow outside school parameters. To emphasize our mission, philosophy, and the necessity of this movement, the directors revisited the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King by reading passages from “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” I turned around in my pew to witness the movement of spiritual energy that fluctuated throughout the room, finding comfort in the expression of a common conviction: truth is found in movement and transformation requires tension.

The congregation watched us as we lit candles, singing “We Shall Overcome” while each rider used the candle of the other to light their own. Standing before the faces of this new-found family, within the glow of my fellow riders, I thought to myself, “And to think that all this light was born from a single flame.”

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