I read the news and watch anxiously every day, trying to find the balance between being informed and overwhelmed. I observe families separated, people afraid, beaten and shot in the streets of the United States. I watch those who weep and those who applaud what they see.

In response, I hear the Bible verses I grew up with repeating in my head. I hear them in Spanish, a mother tongue I now fear speaking in public. The verses are persistent and urgent, and they call me back to a church I stepped away from a long time ago.

Like many cradle Catholics, I baptized all three of my children. I observe Christmas and Easter and even send my eldest daughter to a Catholic school. Like many of my contemporaries, I haven’t often attended Mass. The wounds are deep and familiar: the rejection I felt from the church when my mother finally left an abusive marriage, the protectiveness I felt for friends in same-sex unions, my belief that reproductive choice lies with the woman in question. Then there are the scandals caused by the sexual abuse of children by clergy. As a young woman, it was not at all difficult to walk away. The church felt cold and intransigent, and I wasn’t sure it wanted me anyway.

And yet, even as I distanced myself from the faith in which I grew up, it remained within me, deeply embedded in my sense of justice and my way of seeing the divine. There is something sacred and holy about being a part of something bigger than one’s self, in living out a vision of humanity that exists in service to others.

There remains the haunting beauty of my grandmother reciting the rosary and praying the psalms by memory after she had gone blind, each word stated with unwavering conviction. Years later, I can still hear the cadence of her voice and almost feel the smoothness of her fingertips as she held my hand and recited, “Jehová es mi pastor, nada me faltará….” I would sit with her and breathe deeply, her boundless faith and empathy enveloping us both.

I do not know if that kind of faith resides within me; it has been battered and bruised and disappointed. Every time a prominent Catholic voice resorts to punditry over mercy, many of us take note and retreat further back from the church that formed us, though it is rightfully ours too. I understand the desire to stay away, just as I understand the pull to come back. Despite it all, I have long associated the church teachings with my grandmother’s love, with the very highest love.

That unconditional love is on display in the streets of Minnesota, where the battle for our souls is taking place one protest march, one defense of one’s neighbor, one bullet at a time. Daily life is disrupted by fear and uncertainty. This is the moment in which followers of Jesus are supposed to intervene on behalf of what is decent, but many of us have not met the moment. In the public square and in many places of Christian worship, many of our youth, especially, are being told to close doors rather than welcome the stranger, to rejoice in power rather than humility. We are being told that Christ favors those in power, when in fact it is incumbent upon the faithful to disturb the comfortable.

And yet the Beatitudes whisper in my ear, resistant to erasure. I implore all Catholics like me, those of us who have long struggled with the church and our place within it, to show up and be a voice for grace. Let us place our bodies in places that back up our words and do the work. We can refuse to let the words of Scripture be used as a tool of the state. Those who have “drifted” but still value the teachings that shaped us need to start being the body of Christ we wish to see. There can be space for all if we make it so. Perhaps we do not need to agree with everything to stand for something.

The path to hope lies in resisting complacency and detachment. I have started to reclaim and to share with my children many of the things that our Catholic tradition has to offer, to tell them about how we all belong to one another. I have started to quietly sit in the pews between Masses, considering how easy it can be to absolve ourselves and look away from suffering because we are afraid or disillusioned. The world is imperfect, and only imperfect people may save one another from despair.

If you are a drifted Catholic who still feels the church is a spiritual home, consider entering the trenches and supporting the houses of prayer and communities doing the tasks of mercy and justice. Faith needs works. We may not be able to shift the tide of Christian nationalism, but we can find the courage to reclaim Jesus (and ourselves) from the coldness that has befallen us. If there is a time to embody a thirst for righteousness, it is now—not just for the Latino and immigrant communities but to let the light in for us all.

Lara Dotson-Renta is a Puerto Rican writer and educator based in Chicagoland.