Week 100 - Sitting in the Power

Beloved Community, Guest Host, Nancy Bragg

Community isn't something we discover by accident—it's something we create together. In this meditation group, we are welcomed not because we are the same, but because we honor one another's unique spiritual journeys. Here, compassion, courage, empathy, and healing weave us into a community, where everyone belongs.

My Unitarian Universalist congregation is also one of my beloved communities. Beloved community is not just something the people before us, created for us to discover, it is a spiritual practice. We each become part of the spirit of welcome for those who come after us. Belonging is both a gift we receive and a promise we make to one other.

In both this meditation group and my UU congregation, I know I will receive the gift of open-hearted listening and, in turn, I will listen deeply to others. I know that if I need a virtual or real hug, I will either be offered one or I can feel free to ask someone. Love is at the center of this community; it radiates out in all directions.

Beloved community comes alive as a united whole when together we choose connection over division, curiosity over judgment, and love over fear. Within each of us is divine light that we bring to the whole. Our active hope grows stronger when it is shared. We become one another’s companions on the journey to a more just and compassionate world.

The circle of beloved community is easily expanded. It widens with every act of welcome, inclusion, and love. Since we are called to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of every person, what begins in like-hearted spiritual communities, can grow to embrace the world. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned a global community rooted in justice and love that transform relationships among all people.

Community

By Starhawk

We are all longing to go home to some place

we have never been—a place half-remembered and half-envisioned

we can only catch glimpses of from time to time.

Community.

Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion

without having the words catch in our throats.

Somewhere a circle of hands

will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter,

voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power.

Community means strength

that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done.

Arms to hold us when we falter.

A circle of healing.

A circle of friends.

Someplace where we can be free