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In the second week of Side With Love’s 30 Days of Love campaign, take a moment to celebrate our planet’s resiliency and hold space to reimagine climate justice efforts.
The 30 Days of Love celebration offers spiritual nourishment and shares wisdom from compelling UU voices, Side With Love says. This week's theme is Re-Imagining :: Climate Justice.
When it comes to fighting for and learning about climate justice, we might stick to what we know, such as joining a protest, reading a news article, or watching a documentary. During 30 Days of Love, let's think about how we can envision and explore new solutions for the climate crisis.
Here are some ways to begin and sustain this effort.
Learn about the '4 Rs of Social Transformation'
Rachel Myslivy, the climate justice organizer for the Unitarian Universalist Association's Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team, introduces the 4 Rs of Social Transformation shared by the North Carolina Climate Justice Collective.
They are:
- Resist: working against the current systems
- Reform: working within the current systems
- Reimagine: envisioning a just new system
- Recreate: creating models for a just new system
Read Myslivy's reflection note to learn more about how to use this framework. Mindful exercise, Myslivy states, is important for social transformation:
"Reimagining is not spiritual bypassing. It is not daydreaming with no action. It does not dismiss the harmful systems of oppression or ignore the climate disruption that is breaking our communities and our world. As we work toward a future where all are free, we must dream beyond our current circumstances. Those dreams are the seed of that future, and as we believe, we begin to shift our relationships, our commitments, and our actions to creating that world."
Find Inspiration in a Grounding Poem
What moves, comforts, and centers you?
The words of author and activist Mya Sophia in the poem "Together," which ran in the Fall/Winter 2022 edition of UU World might help.
No matter what—justice will be achieved
the pipelines will be stopped
the Earth will heal
And harmony will weave into everything
Because no matter what we will still tryMother Earth shifts
and so do we
When a movement is created
the Earth breathes
Read the full poem: uuworld.org/articles/poem-together.
Review 30 Days of Love Week Three's Resources
Side With Love offers tools to support UUs' journeys to reimagine climate justice work. Find those resources, including the reflection excerpted above, at sidewithlove.org/week-two-january-22-january-28.
The following video is Prayer for Climate Justice by Rev. Kelly Dignan.