Creating a Beloved Community

Creating a Beloved Community…. It’s still our desire

“Our goal is to create a beloved community, and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”  -Martin Luther King

These words of Dr. King have a call that reaches to needs of our world even more urgently.  They are as true today and needed even more so, given the many tragic events unfolding in the United States and around the world.  In this blog, the story I want to shed some light on is the millions of migrants and refugees on the move seeking a more safe and secure life for themselves and their families. However, this is a story not just about the difficult and tragic circumstances of the lives of these people, but it is a story that is also about us. 

I think most of us came from somewhere else in our home country or in a new country.  According to the UN, 244 million live in a country other than where they were born; 20 million of these we call refugees and asylum seekers escaping violence or persecution and a pandemic in their home countries.  They are seeking home somewhere else, and some among and with us. We are part of this story and we contribute to how this story will evolve.

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So many of us are yearning for a better ending to many stories we see on our TV screens or in the books we are reading.  We long for stories of love rather than hate, or creativity rather than destruction, of win-win cooperation rather than a win-lose competition of peace rather than war.  I am unable to do this alone, and it must be more than a wish.  Our wish is part of the qualitative change that happens internally in our souls, but it also calls for a quantitative change in our lives.  We can all be involved. To be part of creating a “beloved community” starts with some very practical actions and one person at a time.  It is letting love lead the next chapters of this story. Part of this story is one of justice and joy, love, and peace, and we still get to win, just not at everyone else’s expense.  We can move into a reality in which we can live in harmony with one another.  Then we can be part of creating conditions in which peace and well-being are not only possible but normal, and in which inevitable conflicts can be resolved through justice, kindness, wisdom, and love.  Let’s each contribute to writing the next chapters of this story.

-Joan Atkinson, CSJ