History has shown us that time and time and time again, when the masses succeed in dehumanizing whoever is deemed the “other,” this has resulted in horrors perpetrated to those who are oppressed. -Aisha Hauser (CLF)
How can we resist forces of dehumanization?
I believe that our job as Unitarian Universalists is to love loudly. Louder than the hate in the world. Louder than the brokenness, the despair, and the darkness. We have to love so loud that everything else sounds like white-noise. -Tanner Linden
How do you love loudly?
As I’ve aged, I’ve become highly suspicious of any belief system without a “pressure relief valve,” any closed circular system where there is only one way forward and those not on that path are bad, wrong, deserving of whatever they suffer. Such systems seem to hurt people, and the more personal the content of a belief system, the more pain is inflicted. -Meg Riley
What are the pressure relief valves in your belief system?
How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
With these, I think, gently
we can begin: we will mend you with a rocking
chair, some raisins,
a cat, a field of lavender beginning
now to bloom. We will mend you with songs
remembered entirely the first time
ever they are heard. -Nancy Shaffer, from her poem “Mending”
What can mend the wounded parts of your soul?
“What impossible things does your heart yearn for? What hopes, if you named them out loud, would seem laughable? Does “peace” seem impossible to you? Is it laughable to think that we human beings could live in peace in the Middle East? Between the gang zones in your own city? In our own families? Or perhaps what seems impossible is that our culture will one day reflect the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” -Erika Hewitt
When have you witnessed something thought “impossible” become possible?
