The City #21

Riding the subway this morning, I had a feeling of dread thinking about the verdict coming this morning concerning the Shawn Bell trial. I’m worried about the outcome.
Update: The verdict is in and all three policemen were acquitted. What happens, now?
This morning I debated wearing clericals at the last minute before I left for work. Friday’s are “business casual” at CPG, and frankly I didn’t want to wear anything around my neck. Sitting on the subway, I wish I had.
There were a couple black people sitting around me, and I wanted to ask them what they thought would happen this afternoon. I wanted to know what they were thinking and feeling about all this. I didn’t because I am a “white-boy asking stupid questions,” someone intruding upon personal space. There comes a point when a person just doesn’t want to try to explain a lifetime of experience to someone they know they will never see again – especially someone they think cannot understand to begin with.
Wearing a collar, well, there is still an identification with something more than someone who just can’t understand and who won’t do anything anyway. (Don’t laugh.) With a collar, there is a generally understood justification for asking such questions. People still recognize a “something more than self-interest” – a concern that goes beyond the individual, beyond race, beyond being worried about my own lily-white behind.
The other thing is that the collar still gets a priest into places a “regular/normal” person can’t go. The collar still gives me an entré into people’s lives (strangers) that I can’t enter otherwise (and of course the opposite can be true, too). There is still, remarkably, a respect for the collar. It’s also becoming a curiosity.
Anyway, I wish I would have gone with my instincts and worn clericals. My soul is heavy, right now. There are no easy answers, and too many people will be terribly grieved this day. Was the judge right in his decision? Hindsight will tell us, but right now it doesn’t make a difference. People are functioning on emotion and not rational thought. Tomorrow and the days ahead, hopefully we will be rational.