A strange fate

In The Bitter Southerner, Silas House nails the strange fate of being a progressive Southerner (we’ll not quibble over whether Kentucky is the “real” south), where people love you but not people like you., where the people who taught you to love can be less than loving, and where it takes disaster for us to live up to our best ideals.

I also love, love, love this:

The culture of my homeplace taught me to love others without judgment, a tenet that many of the loudest voices in the public arena do not want us to practice because we are more easily controlled when we are divided. I will not let them take my love away any more than I will let them take my joy. I will be no one’s doormat and I will never make myself unsafe but I will give everyone grace, even those who deny it to me and so many others. I will fight back. I will resist, but I will refuse to hate anyone. I will look for the open arms of acceptance, and they will be there, somewhere in the crowd, waiting for me.