Blue Boat of Youth and Young Adult MinistriesInterfaith Strong
DAY 22: Stand with Those Who Face Religious Discrimination Not long ago I read an article written by a young Muslim-American man who described the types of bias and discrimination that Muslim-American individuals experience on a regular basis. I figured as much – I saw how violence against people who looked Middle Eastern rose during the Iran hostage crisis in the 1970s, and then again after 9/11. What surprised and touched me the most in his story was when he reported discovering that his family members had had similar experiences but never shared their stories with one another, choosing instead to suffer in silence and keep it to themselves. No one should have to suffer,…
How Do We Love Concretely?
DAY 21: Radically Reintegrate the Formerly Incarcerated When I sat down to think about what it meant to reach out with radical love to formerly incarcerated people, I realized I didn’t have many personal experiences to draw on. But I did immediately think of a friend of mine, Aviva Tevah, who works to bring transformative education to individuals and communities affected by mass incarceration in New York City. She agreed to write a guest post for me, and these are her reflections on what it means to reach out with radical love to those who have been incarcerated. – Annie. by Aviva Tevah As scholars like Michelle Alexander remind us, mass incarceration is a…
Embrace Everyone
DAY 20: Radical Inclusion Today, 30 Days of Love invites us to consider the ways we engage all people, regardless of physical, cognitive, sensory, or psychological ability. I’ve found myself thinking about this quite a bit recently, as one of the courses I’m taking opens each class with an icebreaker of some sort. Our first day involved a number of icebreakers that required movement around a rather cramped classroom and one of my classmates has a motorized wheelchair. We “made do” but it was clearly not an inclusive environment. In subsequent classes, our icebreakers have been more verbal or take place sitting down in smaller groups with little moving around the room, now that the…
Challenge Your Bias
DAY 19: Practice Radical Love for our Troops Seek the stories you don’t usually hear I can count on one hand the number of people I know who are veterans of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can count them on one hand and still have three fingers left over. One is the cousin of my childhood best friend and the other is a guy I met at church through young adult gatherings. This means I don’t hear the stories of military members or veterans very often. Sometimes I would hear a report on the radio, read a news article, about veterans returning with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), veterans who can’t…
Bridge the Divide
DAY 18: For Immigration Reform At the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries at the UUA we think often about bridging divides, and in particular the multi-generational divide between Unitarian Universalist youth and young adults and other UUs, so it has become a reflex for us to consider how one’s identity informs one’s point of view. While in the office we work to build bridges of understanding amongst our constituents, it is not obvious it translates into being more aware of the divides we are all called upon to bridge in our daily life. Leaving the comfort zone of one’s own point-of-view isn’t automatic, isn’t always easy and requires a deliberate choice. Bridging a…
Radical Love in Action
DAY 17: Put Love into Practice Doin’ Good – A Labor of Love Yesterday I hung out with the Youth Group at First Parish in Milton to talk about what it means to do good in the world. This great group of teens is raising money for an organization jn the Boston area called Bridge Over Troubled Waters, which provides life-changing services for homeless and at-risk youth, including queer youth. Their fundraiser is coming up next weekend, so they were preparing by looking at the complicated questions that come from wanting to donate to those in need. We started by discussing how you decide to give money to people who ask on the street….
Push Beyond
DAY 16: Practicing Radical Love Open Heart In our denomination we talk a lot about love. Lately, we’ve been using the term “radical love.” Sounds like it’s right up our UU alley, but what does it actually mean? Today’s 30 Days of Love post describes it as encouraging each other, and ourselves, to stand on the side of love in ways that aren’t easy. When we practice radical love, we push past our comfort zone and strive to practice a love that truly encompasses all. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really think of myself as someone who seeks out challenges – I’m pretty self-indulgent, and if there’s an easy path I like to take…
Oral History to Vibrant Reality
DAY 15: Keeping the Story Alive Flat World Story My family arrived in America from Eastern Europe during anti-Jewish Pogroms at the end of the 19th century. My grand-parents on both sides of the family were born here, but their parents, and any family members older than they, were immigrants. Growing up I was fascinated to know where our family came from, but when I asked my grand-parents to talk about it the story always began and ended with the passage of their parents through Ellis Island. No matter how much I’d insist, my grand-parents were equally insistent on not telling me the family history from before about 1900 (give or take a few years,…
Prisms
DAY 14: Interfaith Perspective For me, stories are an absolutely essential part of my faith. As has come up each year during 30 Days of Love, I grew up Roman Catholic and spent much of my high school and college years around Franciscans. When I think about stories that have impact for me, many of them are stories of Francis of Assisi. The story of Francis embracing a leper – who he had previously ignored, avoided and had been taught to despise – reminds me to push past the cultural messages, personal fears and other barriers that keep me from recognizing the worth of each person and acting on the recognition. The story of Francis…
It’s ALL Connected
DAY 13: Intersectional Justice Making When I was a little girl I wanted to save the planet. At four years old my concept of saving the planet involved recycling, stopping pollution by singing songs about how much I loved the earth, and being really nice to animals. Sixteen years later, as a college student, I still recycled and brought re-usable bags to the store, but I had become much more interested in other justice issues, issues that I thought were completely separate from those hippie-dippy tree-hugging concerns. I was learning about institutional racism and western hegemony, and these problems seemed to have nothing to do with my naïve ideas about saving the planet. Then one…
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