Pray for Charleston: I thought my heart couldn't break any more

I found out about Charleston first thing when I woke this morning, via an AP Mobile push notification.

My day didn't go well. At first, I thought I was being my normal amount of scatterbrained self. Running a little late, dropping things here and there, struggling to stay organized - it happens, sometimes.

At some point, I realized that it wasn't just that.

I was mourning. I'm still mourning.

I'm mourning:

The loss of 9 beautiful lives in Charleston
The loss of hope and innocence of so many more
The fact that I live in a country where this kind of hate crime still happens
The hateful bigotry put forth by the Michigan House in regards to LGBT marriage and the marriages of atheists
The loss of what used to feel like a place of sanctuary, at a local place of worship
The fact that on a day I was hoping SCOTUS would finally grant my family equality, not only did it not, but I woke up to a reminder of how much inequality remains in our society

Maybe I'm not supposed to let the African American civil rights movement and the LGBT civil rights movement get intertwined. I may lose readers from insisting that they're connected, that forbidding interracial marriage was no worse than forbidding same sex marriage. (Or maybe it's straight privilege to ignore intersectionality, to try to say that some are free while others are in chains.)

I may lose readers for saying that many people, bigots, politicians, select members of the clergy, and myriad others, have set the stage for this violence by allowing the belief that some lives are worth more than others, that some beliefs are more important than others, that gun rights are more important than public safety, that Christian fundamentalism is more important than my spiritual marriage covenant. The RFRAs going around have given an air of credibility and validity to discriminatory beliefs like these.

I have tried to be reasonable, to see the other side, to find middle ground, to strike you all as moderate, as wholesome, as proper and respectable and rational. Some days, I may even have succeeded.

This is not one of these days.

I am angry.
I don't care if I anger you when I say that I wish I weren't from the United States today.
I don't care if I offend you when I say that I'm ashamed to be from Michigan today.

Your outrage can't hurt more than the damage this bigotry, against this AME community in Charleston but also against my LGBT community in Michigan, already has.

I know this is not a cogent post. What has happened today wasn't cogent. I am not cogent. I don't know how to make you hear me. I don't know how to show you my heart, torn into pieces though it is. I don't know how to share with you my pain, my discouragement, my sorrow. I don't know what to do to make this stop. I'm Committing in the Mitten, though I'm not sure exactly what I'm committing to yet.