At the Poor People's Campaign on Monday there seemed very little division, while at the same time, very little sameness. We were a mixed bunch of skin colors, religions, economic and educational backgrounds. We walked together to the Capitol. We sang. We heard testimony — and not the massaged sound bites or suave screeds we are accustomed to hearing from the politically adept.

At the Capitol I talked to colleagues in ministry. And strangers. A pastor up from the Bronx prayed for me. And yes, I was a little embarrassed — I'm a Lutheran! — but his words hit home, reminding me to have hope in the work we do.

As I walked back to my car I thought about another kind of work I did many years ago, pre-seminary, when I was a graduate student at the University of Virginia.

I ran a small dress shop on the pedestrian mall in Charlottesville. It was a satellite store of the larger one up near the university. By the university it was chic and upscale. Downtown on the pedestrian mall, not so much.

One day the owner came in, checked my sales and said, "You know I'm not racist or anything. But you have to watch the blacks really close, right? I hate to say it, but the blacks are the ones who'll be doing the shoplifting."

Besides being a graduate student, I was also somebody who had recently returned to church after a long hiatus. I ardently pursed what it meant to be a person of faith.

But the blacks? I had to watch them more closely?

Which I did next time a couple of young African American women came into my dress shop. I watched closely. I noticed they didn't buy anything. Sissy Spacek, the actress, would sometimes come in and drop a sweet bundle on our clothes and jewelry and creams and moisturizers. Rita Mae Brown, the wealthy writer, came in and did the same. And I'd wrapped up plenty of earrings and outfits for faculty members' wives — or equally as often, girlfriends. Not everything in the English department was chaste talk about Faulkner, Joyce and James.

So I watched the young black women closely. Mostly, they didn't buy. I never saw them steal, though. Were they cleverer than I?

The store owner's words, with their proud Virginia twang, rang in my ears. And I realized that I really disliked her.

A few weeks after she gave me her "advice," I quit the job. I told her why. And none of that makes me any kind of hero.

But I did learn something about what it means to be a person of faith — any faith: The truth of a faithful life is the preferencing of love over prejudice and judgment.

Honestly, that has gotten harder and harder to do in this current political climate. We are polarized as we have never before been, at least in my lifetime. It has become acceptable to be crude and harsh and unthinking, acceptable to point fingers and assign blame, acceptable to discount and dismiss the truth.

Whether you ground your position in moral secular authority or in a concept of God, the truth is that any kind of faithful life requires the preferencing of love over prejudice and judgement.

God is not manifest only for the whites. Nor for the straights. God doesn't speak to our near neighbors but not our far neighbors, those who cook with different spices and wear different kinds of clothes and face Mecca when they pray.

The truth is that the truth is often unpopular, given the prevailing winds. But truth that is unpopular in the prevailing climate has been known, powerfully and historically, as prophecy. Search the Hebrew scriptures and that is what you find. The prophet's words may be perceived as weakness in the face of the political structures of the time. But that doesn't make them untrue.

I think prophecy is again raising its tenacious head in this contentious time.

And as we sang as we walked on Monday in the Poor People's Campaign, "We are a new unsettling force. And we're here."

Jo Page is a writer and Lutheran minister. Her email is jopage34@yahoo.com. Her website is at https://www.jograepage.com.