“Organizers are very necessary, but that isn’t and can’t be the only role in the movement.”
—adrienne maree brown, Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation
Like many congregations, mine believed you could hand its social justice work to one committed person. As strange as that seemed to me, I would end up being that default “justice human,” a proxy for good deeds in the world. As Social Justice chair at my congregation, I’d try to convince people—often, with frustration—that it was our collective duty to work for a better future.
I’d been a Unitarian Universalist for ten years before I connected my activism and my faith. I believed that working for justice was my responsibility, and would bristle when others didn’t take the same approach. When a group of my UU friends came together to worship outside of my congregation, though, I figured out that we approached our spiritual needs in very different ways–and it didn’t have to be on the front line.
Today I approach organizing as my primary spiritual practice. My prayers are the emails I send to start a relationship with someone. My meditations are the calls I receive from community members about how they can show up better, or at all. The sacred flame that I carry illuminates the world so many of us dream of: a sanctuary for everyone.
Organizing as a UU is not my only spiritual practice, but it soothes my soul in a way that no walk in a labyrinth ever has. It cannot be separated from how I worship, both as an individual and in my community/congregation.
The work of justice can’t be carried out by one person—or even a few diverse people. Organizers have never changed the world without groups of people who trusted them to hold that future imagining. When we do social justice work, we’re always a team. Democracy is all of us, together.
I don’t believe that only a few people make real change, and the rest of us (of you maybe?) are sitting on the sidelines, in the next pew over. We all have a place within our movement of Love at the center.
I believe that the act of entering a congregation is its own form of justice. Organizers need people who can bring snacks, give rides, build spreadsheets, volunteer songleading, and much more. Your gifts are what bring about our collective liberation; your voice, big or small, is how we grow democracy together.
Prayer
We are bound to each other, and to this great earth. May you be held in the caress of your community, and may your flame illuminate the path for justice.