Working together we can create the Beloved Community

Working together we can create the Beloved Community. It is a place where we can live together in health and harmony helping each other create a better version of ourselves. It is a place where pain, suffering, and sorrows as well as gladness, achievements, and joys are shared among people who care for one another.

Too often people falsely accuse one another of insults, injuries, and disappointments. Transgressions occur surely and people need to be held accountable to pursue their better selves for their own benefit and for the benefit of their families and communities, and yet holding accountable, and punishing out of vengeance and retribution are two different things.

In the spiritual life, we are aware of the innate goodness of all people and strive to elicit it and call it forth. We make the effort to hold people up and love them. It is not always easy but it can be a great joy.

Peace Pilgrim once said, "I look for the divine spark in everyone and then focus on that." In the Beloved Community people are looking for and acknowledging that divine spark. Fanning the sparks leads to a warming flame and a warming flame grows to fire that fuels a Beloved Community. In Unitarian Universalism we might call it Chalicefire.

Rev. Michelle Yates as said that the future of Universalism will involve ever widening circles of inclusiveness. This will take the bypassing of fear and the embracing of Unconditional Love.