Author: Laurie Gauer
Dear LFUU Members and Friends,
Every time I type “Dear” in the salutation, it sounds weird to me. Too formal. Too intimate. But “Hi” doesn’t convey the care I have for this community. Then this popped in my head:
Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life--opening lines of Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy
Which made me think of Beloved Community. The greater Unitarian Universalist community has been using that term for years, but our congregation hasn’t. So, it also sounds weird to me. It was used in both the proposed 9th Principle and revisions to Article II of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Bylaws, and when we discussed them, many of you said it sounded weird to you. And that you didn’t really understand it.
So, what does it mean? I Googled it and found this on Wisdom Quotes: Josiah Royce first used the term 'The Beloved Community’ to describe a condition of reconciliation. Royce also founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation, of which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a member. King popularized the term.
The Beloved Community was not meant to be a vision of a heaven in the clouds, but a practical possibility humanity could create, on earth, as a spiritual goal. In Beloved Community, love and justice rule, people of all identities are equal and included, and conflict is solved by nonviolent means of reconciliation.
The UUA uses it to define one of our newly adopted values as stated in Article II:
Justice: We work to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all thrive.
We covenant to dismantle racism and all forms of systemic oppression. We support the use of inclusive democratic processes to make decisions within our congregations, our Association, and society at large.
I’m ready to embrace and start using Beloved Community. It conveys so much and it’s a practical possible dream to work towards. It’s what I want for this community that I care so deeply for. I considered changing my salutation to, Dear Beloved Community, but we have A LOT of work to do before we are. So perhaps I’ll use, Dearly Beloved: it recognizes that we gather to get through this thing called life AND to work for Justice. And as a nod to Prince, it's uniquely Minnesotan. Or maybe, for now, I’ll just stick with Dear.
Has “Beloved Community” sounded weird to you? How do you see us working towards it?
In Fellowship,
Laurie Gauer