The last question we wanted to talk about this morning was sort of what's the future of universalism as it informs of our social justice efforts.
Here is Rev. Lane Campbell's answer:
That social justice General Assembly
was in Phoenix. It was taking action around immigration particularly and it was
a time when all our denominations showed up and in droves to get to take
action around some of the inhumane immigration policy.
For many things I would say
that universalism and this idea of love being
at the
center of the justice work that we do is so key.
When I first
got involved in activism in my own life I was very angry, and I was very
self-righteous, and I was like, you know, these
people should be doing something differently! Why aren't they doing things
differently? I'm seeing now an evolution in like in embracing more love at
the center of our justice movements,
more healing language at the center of our justice movements, realizing that to
be involved in social justice is also to be exposed to trauma, and to be exposed
to generational trauma.
How do we feel some of the generational trauma that
particularly marginalized communities experience, and also how do we heal
the generational trauma that privileged communities experience as well?
I'm
seeing a lot of sort of love and healing. I feel like our faith has something. I mean certainly faith
communities we can bring an experience to justice communities and and help us
to make our justice efforts sustainable because I think probably in 2039
we're still going to be fighting the good fight and still planting some seeds
for the next generation.
I kind
of look forward to seeing in 2039 what our work, where are we going to be sort
of on the leading edge and what's going to be pushing my comfort zone.
How am I going to feel challenged to show up? How is this deeper this
call to love going to continue to transform us and invite us into a
deeper sense of justice?
This section with Rev. Lane Campbell's ideas is from 09:38 - 11:40.
The idea the love is at the center of UU social justice activities is key to the spiritual development of the people engaged in the activities and the change it is intending to facilitate. Without love, the efforts are misguided and silly.
ReplyDeleteWhat I have learned from A Course In Miracles is that we can't change projections and illusions. What we can change is our mind about our projections and illusions. If social justice is just another form of attack, "the good guys against the bad guys," it fails based on its premise. You can't fight evil with evil and as Rev. Lane suggests self righteous anger gets us no where. However, forgiving the judgmentalism and attack, we can shift onto a path of forgiveness and love. I think MLK had it right when he chose the path of nonviolent witness to change the laws of discrimination in our country. Social justice work is best done from the center of love and compassion and nonviolent witness to the idea that there is a better way.
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