photo by ezekial akinnewu
The 3 Basic Aspects to Vision & Mission
Step 1 | Vision | Who Is It We Believe We are Created to Be?
Step 2 | Honest Current Location (The Gaps: How We Know We’re Not “There”)
Step 3 | GPS’ing Commitments | Journeying from Where We Are to Who We Desire to Be
Vision | Who Is It We Believe We are Created to Be?
We are all beloved creations of God, the Universe.
We are beloved simply because we are created—each and all of us. We are beloved when we are our loving at our best, and when we are struggling with love. And because we are beloved, They desire for us is that we overcome our struggles in living towards our healthiest and fulfilled persons and lives.
This space is for those who commit to sweeping the sidewalk in front of our homes so that we can better support our neighbor in doing the same—we are practicing proactive self-accountability as innate part of our living community accountability towards justice.
Our living love, peace, and justice begin in us, to be nurtured to expand outward and interconnect (to inspire and be inspired!) with one another’s. We can only healthily recognize, address, and facilitate in the world what we are willing to recognize, address, and live from ourselves.
Honest Current Location | Where We Are Because of Where We’ve Been
photo by aksonsat uanthoeng
Reality Check #1 | Unhealthy relational and power dynamics in the form of supremacisms, oppressions, abuses, and harms are real—and unfortunately par for the course in human history as to how we tend to interact with one another.
Many of us unfortunately will do what we can to get what we want from others, in ways big and small, and all of this is dishonoring to our Selves and one another. This scales from impacts that are seemingly small and still unnecessary harms, all the way up to supremacisms and oppressions which are killing and will kill us all.
Transformation in healing towards our greater love and being requires acknowledging and addressing of these behaviors and dynamics:
We do experience them, and;
Most human beings at some time another participate with perpetrating them.
Got any form privilege or power over any human being? (If you are breathing and awake, the answer is most likely: Yes.) “Superiority,” “power over,” and “better than” are the default yet bs life settings taught to us by society—our governments, many of our communities, too many faith spaces, and—yes—even our own families. And we wittingly and unwittingly teach them to and use them on one another.
To be explicitly direct and clear: God and the Universe loving and intending well for us inherently demands that we question the idea anyone is supposed to or required to suffer these behaviors. And it would certainly say that it’s not okay when we participate with compelling others to suffer them.
In fact, the Love that we experience and receive intends that we learn to love our neighbors as our selves.
I certainly wouldn’t want my neighbor to learn to accept abuse or harm when we’re supposed to be receiving, cultivating, and sharing in Love. Abuse and harm are the opposite of expressions of Love. So spreading them or insisting they be tolerated is not only our failing to love our neighbor as our self, but is in fact participating with evil—a widespread or pervasive dynamic which runs counter to the character and being of God.
We decry the injustices and harms in the world, and call one another back into our beloved beings and towards beloved community when we perpetrate them.
And so we decry the injustices and harms that we are perpetuating in and through ourselves—being mindful that we are not projecting or deflecting our healing work onto others, while neglecting the ways in which we ourselves need to heal and grow.
If all shall be well, we must agree to be well, too.
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Reality Check #2 | Many of us desire greater life for ourselves and healthier relationship with one another—family, friends, community. We simply don’t know how to pursue it, may be afraid it’s not real, or are too frustrated to try.
And as the adage rightfully queries: “If not us, who? It not now, when?”
If we who believe in love and healing justice won’t pursue them, why would anyone else?
How could anyone else, if we’re the ones who help light the way, and we continue to stand, hide, and outright dwell in the shadows?
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Reality Check #3 | Many folks are already on the journey, and others have long gone ahead. We need to see them and join in. We’ve been waiting for someone else to be the tipping point—and we’re part of it.
We are not alone, and this journey is not new. It, or parts of it, may simply be new to us.
The path may seem narrow now, but how much narrower must it have been for those doing this before “mutuality,” “compassion,” and “justice” were words that we as a society have enough familiarity with to argue over? There may still be disagreements over what they are and how we live them, but at least we live in a time when we know they exist.
We are not necessarily asked to beat brand new paths, but often to make more visible the paths already originated by those who truly had to set off into the wild of beloved community with little prior guidance or direction.
We are not alone. The spirits and still living lives of those before us are waiting—and we have to help to continue to prepare the way with one another, and for those coming along later.
GPS’ing Commitments | Journeying from Where We Are to Who We Desire to Be
photo by ben ali
We agree to see, name, and compassionately address the gaps between who it is we desire to be (personally, familially, communally/filially, and societally), and how it is we are currently living.
We agree that we will not pretend that who we want to be is who we already are, when we have every capacity to bring our vision into reality. No pretending, no lying, no dishonesty, no deflection.
3. We agree that every misstep is an opportunity to learn and grown, not a reason to dwell in shame or defensiveness. Accepting the opportunity to grow means:
a. Acknowledging the harms that result (…there are reasons it’s a “misstep”…);
b. Learning and taking our responsibility for amends and healing; and
c. Committing to better learn and live with ourselves and one another going forward.
4. We agree that our journey is to discern our next meaningful step in openness, self-awareness, and truth, and learn to traverse it in love, compassion, and justice.
And then the step after that. And the step after that. And the step after that.
And, as with most visions, we won’t necessarily get “there”—we’re never quite finished. We are complex beings. We contain multitudes, and there’s always more of our Selves and one another to discover, explore, and grow into.
But we will move so much deeper in thriving as our fuller, healthier selves with one another, and further from the empty, one-dimensional binaries in which we tend to currently basically survive and exist.