The staff of the institute invited me to join them as a clergy fellow in 2005 as they prepared to take members of the U.S. House and Senate, upper-level staff and constituents on a civil rights pilgrimage that would celebrate the 40th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Raised in the civil rights cauldron of North Carolina in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I knew in my heart that this was to be a southern journey for me as well, a pilgrimage with personal memories and meanings.

By late February of 2005, the institute had 35 members of Congress and another 165 adults and teens preparing for a three-day pilgrimage through some of the most important civil rights sites in Alabama. Joining these pilgrims of hope would be a small, diverse group of South Africans who we also had invited. These women and men were significant leaders in their freedom movement. They would share generously from their long walk to freedom even as they learned more of ours.

In early March, the pilgrimage began. We were a wonderful mix of African-American, Hispanic and Anglo members of Congress and teens from around the country. We flew out of Washington, D.C. A few hours later, we were in Kelly Ingram Park in the center of Birmingham, Alabama, the site where city authorities had unleashed fire hoses and police dogs onto the local teens who had been peacefully demonstrating for basic human rights, including voting rights. Standing with us in the park, Congressman John Lewis, "the boy from Troy [Alabama]" as Dr. King called him, spoke passionately about his own experiences in Birmingham during the early 1960s and how they inspired his growing sense of call to provide leadership for the movement.

In the nearby 16th Street Baptist Church, we listened to the story of how, in 1963, a racially motivated bomber killed four young African-American girls. The personal testimonies by those who lived through those years helped us to understand how Christian churches like this Baptist church, dotted across the southern landscape, had served as the training sites and anchor communities for the Christian nonviolent witness that was carried out even in the face of such brutal violence on the part of individuals as well as local and state authorities.

Called to self-examination
The second day of our trip found us in Montgomery's Rosa Parks Museum, again enriched with a story provided by Congressman John Lewis. He challenged us to examine our own hearts.

We then gathered in Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a modest structure within sight of the massive Alabama state house, where a young Dr. Martin Luther King had served Dextor Baptist as pastor. A number of prominent leaders from that period told of the African-American struggle for personal dignity and civic freedom, still denied just some 40 years ago.

We walked several blocks to the moving memorial to those who died during the apex of the civil rights movement. Some 40 names are etched into a stone "table" with water quietly flowing over them before falling into the lower fountain.

As the crowd moved on, I stayed behind. Moving around this stone circle, I touched each name until my fingers rested on the name of Jonathan Daniels. As I recalled how this Episcopal seminarian was murdered some 40 years ago while protecting a young black woman, the memorial suddenly felt more like a baptismal pool, a place of life rather than death.

Prayers on behalf of those being baptized took on a new and deeper grace: "Will you, by your prayers and witness, help them grow into the full stature of Christ?" Our prayers at this civil rights memorial was a uniquely transforming moment for all of us, I suspect, as people's faces reflected the truth regarding the transforming work of God's Spirit that is always present in such faithful living and dying, and God's commitment to raise up new life even out of the desecration of human violence.

One of the last stages of our long walk to freedom was on the 40th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" and occurred in the small and impoverished town of Selma. After having our hearts set on fire at Brown Memorial Chapel, we "put feet on our prayers" and began the march that re-created the first attempt to walk from Selma to Montgomery to push for the 1965 national Civil Rights Voting Act.

Stopping to offer prayers along our way through town and out onto the infamous Pettus Bridge, I began to feel like I was walking the way of the cross, stopping to mark the cost and promise of all such pilgrimages that dare to invite the crucified and risen one into our lives.