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As part of a series of videos to help inspire Meet the Moment conversations, a group of Unitarian Universalists were invited to reflect on core framing questions, including “What Is the Moment We Are in as UUs and in Our Wider World?”
UU World adapted the following selection of answers, with permission, as a snapshot of their thoughts. Explore more at uua.org/mtm-storytelling.
Rev. Kierstin Homblette Allen (she/her), Meet the Moment project manager
The practice of really facing the enormity of the times that we are in is not for the faint of heart. There are daunting challenges facing our planet, our nations, our faith, and probably your congregation, too.
But as the great Black American cultural critic and philosopher James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
When we do the collective work of discernment about the realities of this moment, we give each other strength and permission to actually face into it.
At our best, Unitarian Universalists are both deeply grounded in our shared core values and commitments, and nimble enough to respond to the challenges and opportunities that emerge in rapidly changing times.
This is the moment to go deep, to be curious, to listen to the truth that we each know and to not be afraid of the answers that we might find. We invited several UU thought leaders to reflect on the question that we are asking all of us now to consider: What is the moment that we are in as Unitarian Universalists and in our wider world?
Rev. Joan Javier Duval (she/her), minister of the Unitarian Church of Montpelier, Vermont
We are in a moment of profound crisis in the United States and globally. Our political system, the democracy that we have known here in our country, is under attack.
Authoritarianism is on the rise around the world. An economic system that was never designed to benefit all is continuing to be exploited by those with the most financial resources for their own benefit. It’s a moment that is causing harm to so many people in our communities. It’s a moment of true reckoning for all of us; some of us are being harmed in greater ways than others, and yet we are all affected.
Gretchen Maune (she/they), UUA Accessibility Resources coordinator
Right now, it seems like injustice is running rampant around every corner, and there are serious threats to those of us who are most vulnerable. There are disabled people afraid to go out, terrified of overwhelming threats to their existence. You have neighbors who are struggling to choose between buying medicine and buying food because of price hikes on groceries and other services. You have people in your community who have no place to live, and others who are being ripped away from their families. Our care is needed now, and as UUs, we were made for a time like this. But business as usual is not an option because we need everyone. There are a million ways for bodies and minds to move through this world, and for us to truly put love at the center it’s more important than ever for our congregations and our buildings to be a sanctuary of radical welcome for all.
Gretchen Maune is pictured above with her Seeing-Eye Dog, Royal.
Rev. Elizabeth Buffington Nguyen (she/her), community minister at First Parish in Malden, Massachusetts
This moment, in our world, in our faith as Unitarian Universalists, and in this country, is a fight for the belief that every single person deserves wellness, surviving, and thriving. There are so many who are trying to say that only certain people deserve wellbeing, and we say: no, everything for everyone! And we say that as people of spirit and people of faith who believe that something is possible that we haven’t yet seen with our own eyes or touched with our own hands or felt in our own hearts. Healthcare, housing, freedom to migrate, education, mental health, physical health—when all of these things are possible for all people, that is what is at stake right now.
Rev. Luke Stevens Royer (he/they), minister of First UU Church of Rochester, Minnesota
I believe we are in a moment of chaotic reminder, of age-old oppressions, of hatred, of greed, of power-grabbing, of empire and fear. I think we’re in this moment like tree rings going out—those on the margins have felt and known these things in profound ways for generations. And now we’re in a moment where that feeling, the intensity of those things, seems to be creeping into new places and in new rings closer to those who have not felt them in the same way. I think we’re in a moment as Unitarian Universalists, and in the wider culture, to do what ancestors before us have done to respond in those moments: Where there’s greed, to respond with generosity; where there is fear and hatred, to respond with love. I think most critically right now we are called to move that love from our center out to the widest possible rings on this interconnected circle.
Zr. Alex Kapitan (ze/per), co-leader, Transforming Hearts Collective
We are in a moment of extremely high stakes. It’s one of those moments where it feels like the entire world is on the brink. We’re in a moment of faiths being tested.
Your faith is no good if it only helps you when times are easy. Faith is something to be practiced. Faith is something to catch you when you hit your knees. So, what practices catch you? What practices help you stay present when things are hard? What connections help remind you who you are and who we are together? We don’t have time to waste on trying to appear put together when all of us are falling apart in one way or another. How can you catch me, and how can I catch you? How can we pool our resources—money, housing, time, skills—and catch more people, as many as we can, the people who won’t make it otherwise? The most urgent challenge of this moment is to practice care in everything that we do.
Alessandra Nysether-Santos (they/she), director of Religious Exploration and Worship Leader at UU Church of Tallahassee, Florida
This moment is one where extractive, capitalist, and white supremacist structures have divided people further apart and collectively moved us towards a precipice, where total apocalypse feels more real than the apocalypses we have faced before. For me, the Climate Justice Revival, which was unveiled by the UUA last year, provides a vision for what moving forward in this moment might look like.
Our future is dependent on practices that are restorative, innovative, creative, and sustainable—on a vision that is community-oriented, values-grounded, that allows us to move forward into what we want to come next. And one that doesn’t ask us to hold too tightly onto what almost worked before.
Rev. Latifah Griffin (she/her), minister of First UU Congregation of the Palm Beaches, Florida
I think the moment we are in is one of deep reckoning and rapid transformation. Climate change is accelerating, authoritarianism is rising. Wounds from racism, and colonialism, and economic inequality remain unhealed.
But at the same time, we’re called to resist this despair by cultivating different or new models of justice and mutual care and spiritual courage—essentially, a different way of doing church and reaching out to people who are affected and impacted by this current administration. It’s how we’re meeting the moment.
Nicole Pressley (she/her), UUA Organizing Strategy Team director
Solidarity is the moral and strategic demand of our time. I think we are witnessing a decades-long, divide-and-conquer strategy reach its final stages. It is imperative that we show up for each other, not just because it is politically necessary but because what happens to our souls and humanity if we turn away?
Unitarian Universalists face the same challenges and opportunities of the larger world in this moment, and that is to make the radical choice to side with love, to turn away from all that diminishes our humanity, and instead center love as our anchor so that we can have that moral and ethical center as we do the work of solving some very real and serious challenges in this moment.
Rev. Victoria Safford (she/her)
This moment, like all moments, is not a pinpoint on a timeline. It is the continuous unfolding of all the moments prior, all the days and decades, the gathering centuries that came before. The cruelty may be more explicit, the danger more widespread—touching even those who in other times were protected by our privilege—the racism, the xenophobia, queer phobia, Islamophobia, disdain for the old and the young, and the sick and the poor. This all may be fiercer now, but none of it’s new. Capitalism, white supremacy, the desecration of the living earth, all the evidence of empire—none of this is new, however newly emboldened and empowered. But what’s also not new is the power of radical love, the power of hope, the power of brave and organized imagination. It is rising within us, among us, all around us, this collective power. And with it, we shape the next moment.