When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a martyr.

 Like, literally, I dreamed of dying for the One True Church. From the day I joined it as an incoming third-grader at St. Rose of Lima parish, Catholicism took over as a core aspect of my identity. And I know how it sounds: pathetic, a little bizarre, possibly indicative of some mental health issues, but if you know anything about Catholic doctrine and/or the psychology of nine-year-old girls with divorced parents and prominent Leo placements, it actually makes quite a lot of sense. Martyrdom is the highest achievement to which an ordinary Catholic can aspire. Martyrs are heroes: their stories are told and retold down the ages, they get feast days and prayer cards and dominion over aspects of life that correspond to their agonies. Martyrdom gets you attention! Respect! Admiration! Martyrs are ballsy and courageous, whereas regular saints are mostly pious and annoying. It’s also a vastly more attainable status than regular sainthood, which requires a lifetime of poverty and service and probably also misery. To be a martyr, all you have to do is die.

The problem, obviously, was that when I was growing up in 1980s Cleveland, Ohio, there were precious few things for which a little Catholic girl might hope to be martyred. Nobody was persecuting Catholics that I knew of—in fact, it seemed to me in those days that everyone in the world was Catholic (except for my dad and his family, who adhered to some weird alternate version of Catholicism called “Protestant” that sounded the same to me but in certain critical, though incomprehensible, ways…was not). After extensive research and investigation, I was forced to conclude there were only two ways I was likely to qualify. One was to follow in the tradition of virgin martyrs like 11-year-old Maria Goretti, who was canonized after fighting off a rapist whom she then, with her final breaths, forgave for stabbing her fourteen times (preserving one’s hymen: consistently among the most reliable paths to sainthood). The other option was to carry a life-threatening pregnancy to term, and die refusing an abortion. For obvious reasons (no rape; no stabbing; actual sex; the prospect of months being fussed over before death), this option seemed preferable.

Obviously, neither of those outcomes materialized. But fast forward a couple of decades: I read a book called In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen. It’s the story of Leonard Peltier and the American Indian Movement, and a series of terrible events on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and I couldn’t put it down; my mother-in-law made fun of me for bringing it on our family beach vacation, because it was not light reading. Up until I read that book, I had never been able to imagine valuing anything in the world more than my own life. The drive to martyrdom had been about attention, recognition—it was about wanting to be one of those beautiful, serene girls on the holy cards and the stained glass windows—but it was also about belonging: to something bigger than yourself, which is what Matthiessen’s incredible book spoke to in me. As I burned through his chronicle of life on the reservation, and the history that led up to it, the struggle to survive a genocide and the drive to maintain an identity and a culture that generations of white men had worked to erase, I got it. I understood that there were things more important than individual lives, and understanding that made me yearn for it, in a way. We are all of us, inevitably, doomed to die. If it has to happen anyway, wouldn’t it be preferable to die in the service of something vast and irreplaceable, for the betterment of the people I left behind? Wouldn’t I much rather die resisting tyranny than by, I don’t know, choking on a blueberry, or falling down the stairs?

My friends, I’m thinking it might be time for all of us to start to asking ourselves what we would be willing to die for.

This weekend I went to a training organized by a couple of local activist groups. I’ve been to quite a few since they started offering them last summer, and when they started back in May, the sessions were held in a church basement; there’d be a potluck first, followed by the training, and there were probably 30-50 people any given week. Saturday was my first time back since August; they’re meeting in a new location, a big church downtown that also houses a homeless shelter, and when I got to the church, there was a line out the door. The sanctuary, by the time we got started, was full. I’d guess there were a couple hundred people packed into the pews, eager to learn about what they should do if they came upon ICE harassing their neighbors.

It was incredibly encouraging to see so many people there, less than two weeks after Renee Good’s murder. The group leader asked people to call out the emotions they experienced when they learned about the shooting, and the immediate responses were fear and outrage. Everyone in that room, I suspect, was scared. Is scared. Nobody wants to end up slumped over their steering wheel, or bleeding in the street. But they were also furious, and horrified, and determined not to let this really be the path we choose. 

The next hour or so was spent on the actual training, which focused on how to monitor police interactions with the community. There were four rules we’re asked to follow, and the first rule is, Don’t look away. When you see the cops roll up on someone and start asking them questions, pay attention. Take a moment to observe: is everyone ok? What’s happening here? Is this situation about to escalate? Rule #2 is, Don’t make it worse. We talked about how not to trigger cops, when and how to film them, how to support the person being targeted, and what to do afterward—for the target, or with the video. We were encouraged not to scream at or verbally assault federal agents, but also to “respect diversity of tactics,” which I felt was an elegant way of acknowledging that sometimes screaming at them is really all you can do.

Near the end of the session, our leader returned to a point that I know she makes often at these trainings: that none of what we’re talking about is theoretical. Here in Charlottesville, we know this. We’d been living with the realities of 45’s America for months before Unite the Right descended on our little town, and we know that those same Proud Boys and neo-Nazis who terrorized us with torches in 2017 are now employed as masked federal agents breaking down doors in Minneapolis; throwing teargas canisters under family minivans; smashing people’s car windows and dragging them out, unconscious, in cuffs. We have seen what counter-protesting can cost a community, and we know that when push came to shove, the police did not protect us. They put on their riot gear and formed corridors with their bodies to keep the Klan safe from us, and they stood by doing nothing a month later when the “alt-right” returned for a long-planned weekend of brutal violence, and murder. As we approached the end of the meeting, our leader reminded us that standing up for your neighbors against ICE can get you hurt. It can get you killed. Each of us needs to consider what level of risk we are willing to assume. 

I think about it all the time. The other day my daughter was telling me about a video she’d seen where a family in Minneapolis had a Door-Dasher beg to be let into the house because ICE was after her. They did let her in, but eventually the threats and intimidation from ICE wore the homeowner down, and she sent the woman outside, both of them sobbing, distraught. I immediately proclaimed this homeowner a terrible person, handing a woman who’d looked to her for help over to federal agents. I was horrified, judgmental. But later on it occurred to me: what if that woman’s kids were in the house? What if ICE was threatening them? What would I do in that position, if ICE was threatening to arrest or assault my children, or my dog? ICE agents have shot people’s pets, even when they were safely restrained. Would I send someone out to be arrested if I thought that cops were going to kill Roxy?

I suspect none of us knows what we’d do in a crisis until it arrives, but here’s what I know right now: I don’t want to die. Like, at all; I have an amazing life full of people, places, and things I love, and I hope to continue enjoying it for many years to come. But also? I have an amazing life. Full of people, places, and things I love. Already, at this point, I have experienced more joy, more privilege, than a lot of people get in a whole lifetime. I could go on and on explicating my precise feelings on this subject, but the nutshell is: it’s enough. I’m not finished, I still want more, but honestly, I can’t ask for more. I don’t want to get hurt, or maimed, or emotionally disabled by a traumatic assault, but I also don’t want those fears to be what drives me. Those fears are what Stephen Miller is counting on. Those fears are all he’s got. I want to think bigger than fear: about who I want to be in this moment, what I value, and what matters more than my comfort, or even my life. 

Maybe this is what Catholicism and Leonard Peltier were preparing me for.

We Americans are part of something vast and irreplaceable. For all our country’s flaws and shortcomings, all the many ways that we’ve failed to live up to our ideals, those ideals are precious, and worth preserving. Traveling has given me a perspective on this country that I didn’t have before—our friendliness, our absurdity, our unrelenting optimism; we’re like children in the household of the world, adorable and entertaining, but frequently destructive and generally oblivious to anyone else’s point of view. However ironically we stumbled into it, however poorly we’ve manifested it, this nation was founded on something beautiful that the world needs: a presumption of equality. A belief in the inalienable rights of every individual. The idea of pursuing happiness. And more recently, the creation of a government that exists to serve its people; to provide them with the basic necessities of life so that they can be free to pursue whatever happiness means to them. All of this is still possible. But it’s slipping away from us, and wresting it back won’t be easy. One year in, on this Martin Luther King Day, I think we have reached the point in the story where everyone who cares about this country and its future has to wrestle with the question of what they’re willing to do to save it.

Last night, my friend was telling me about that morning’s sermon at her church service. She said the minister encouraged people to formulate a saying—like a mantra—that they can come back to whenever their resolve wavers, or they feel afraid. Something that will remind them, not of their personal worries, but of the larger project we’re each a part of (whether we like it or not). Something, I assumed, that you can say to yourself when ICE comes tumbling out of an SUV. My first idea was (as usual), Well, we’re all gonna die anyway! Then I thought of the prayer of St. Francis, always one of my favorites: Make me an instrument of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love. When I was a child, the nuns at St. Rose’s encouraged us to repeat to ourselves, The Lord provides for His children. As a child with a greater-than-average inclination to worry, that one worked for me for years. The options are infinite, we can all find something to encourage us, remind us what’s important. This morning I thought, maybe I’ll try something smaller, more specific. Maybe this weekend gave me a mantra without me noticing. 

 Don’t look away.