From Rev. Florence Caplow
I spent all of Election Day supporting UU ministers from around the country as they shared powerful practices for spiritual grounding and prayers for the election. It was an amazing way to spend the day. And then, like many of you, I scanned the early results and felt my heart break. But I was reminded that having my heart broken because of my commitments to justice and anti-racism isn’t “wrong”. It means I care. I care for a future where the earth does not warm catastrophically, where there are checks on power, where we finally begin the hard (and heart-breaking) work of confronting the awful legacy of American history – genocide of the original people, slavery, Jim Crow, and today’s incarceration and disenfranchisement of immigrants and people of color – and where the common good and kindnews to one another, love in all its forms, is paramount in the minds of policy makers at all levels of government.
Big dreams, I know, but I refuse to turn away from those dreams, no matter who wins this election. These are the bedrock of my life and faith. And no matter who is President – and perhaps even by the time you read this we will have a good sense of who that may be – our work continues. “We who believe in freedom cannot rest” sings Sweet Honey in the Rock. Now, we do need to rest once in a while, but then we need to begin again. And again, and again. Side by side.
From Rev. Sally Fritsche
Take Heart: There have always been, and there will always be, people doing the work of liberation. Amidst unbearable uncertainty, this steadying fact remains as true as ever. There have always been and there will always be people doing the work of liberation: building community, speaking truth, rising up, risking everything. When religious communities are at our best, we are there too – building, speaking, rising, and risking, for the sake of everything that is most deeply human. When Unitarian Universalism is at its best, we are in the streets, in the courtrooms, in the hospitals, in each others’ homes, building networks of mutual care and accountability.
Take heart. The forces of supression, racism, and authoritarianism are real, but so are our own powers of justice, liberation, democracy, and truth.
May we keep moving, keep showing up for what we know to be true.
May we feel the deep centering force that binds us to each other and to this one precious life.
Take a breath, we are capable of diving deeper and surviving more than we ever thought possible. You are capable. You are not alone. We’re in this for the long haul, and we are not giving up.