By Donna Johnson
Worship Team
Each month, WUUC explores a theme of the month. February’s Soul Matters theme is What Does it Mean to be a people of BELOVED COMMUNITY?
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our ultimate end must be reconciliation; the end must be redemption; the end must be the creation of the beloved community. … It begins by loving others for their sakes and makes no distinction between a friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends.”
Beloved Community is hard. Henri Nouwen, teacher, activist and pastor, described beloved community as, “the place where the person you least want to live with always lives. …That person is always in your community somewhere; in the eyes of others, you might be that person. We need to be able to count on Beloved Community. We human beings run away from community not just because others let us down, but also because we doubt that others won’t step up when we let them down. Beloved community stays at arm’s length not just because it is hard to build, but also because we don’t trust that it will be there for us.
Beloved Community calls us to action. “…Our goal is not to have white people sit alongside a person of color so as to affirm that those white people aren’t racist. Our goal is to build and be part of beloved community, united to end structural oppression and unleash collective liberation in our faith communities, schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and throughout society. … Our goal is to join our hearts and minds to the task of destroying white supremacy in every worldview, policy, law, institution, and governing body of our society. For our faith communities to be places of healing from the nightmare of racism that haunts people of color and white people…”
Chris Crass https://www.uua.org/worship/words/reading/all-get-free-together
Find the Soul Matters packet for February here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-4wPMkujGVV4FmXf2h_-o8V_Dc4XVW2k/view?usp=sharing
The Sacred Word supplement for February on Grace is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nyDmPwEY-K6-Rdzd5j9Nz-RQARqkNw06/view?usp=sharing