SeaChange
Reifying the Beloved Community
"Hand in Hand" - One of several children’s drawings brought back from Iran by Vivien Feyer in 2007.
Imagine a society that doesn't just tolerate our ever-expanding diversity but cherishes it, that sees our humanity as as our greatest, that recognizes our inescapable mutuality, honors everyone's inherent worth and that strives to be better today than we were yesterday.
This is what it means to be the Beloved Community.
If there's one thing we must never forget, it's that societies don't have lives of their own. They live because the people who are part of them, believe. We infuse them with love, imbue them with life and nurture them. We sacrifice for their well-being and rally to their defense.
We create their institutions and infrastructure and entrust them to act on our behalf. And because we believe, we’re bound to and care deeply for the members of our societal family; both individually and as a collective. When those same people stop believing, those societies begin to die.
But that doesn't have to be our future. We can build a better one if we can find it within ourselves to be our better selves, holding one another's humanity close, and our sense of unity high.
Right now, today, we can make the Beloved Community real.
Hover to read captions. Click to enlarge.
“But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of a beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this kind of understanding and goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles.”
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
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“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But... the Good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”
Martin Luther King