All of our Unitarian Universalist values, in one way or another, embody the dynamic of change. Among them, transformation, pluralism, generosity, interdependence, equity, and justice, with love at the center, certainly justice stands out as a value charged with the need for change.
Social justice has been an aspect of my life for most of my adult years. When we lived in Alabama, I went to midnight vigils in the MLK park in Birmingham each time the State put someone to death, because we stood for change in the death penalty laws. On Saturdays, I often joined a group at a major intersection downtown with signs protesting the war in Iraq because we wanted to change the destruction that was happening to an entire nation of people. For the better part of a decade, I taught Social Justice because I wanted to help change the perspectives of young minds on so many issues. We took our children and walked in HIV/AIDS walks, and then later Pride parades because we wanted to change the way LGBTQ people were viewed and treated in our communities.
I’ve participated in walks, marches, boycotts, letter writing campaigns, phone calling campaigns, teaching, learning, writing, preaching, yearning, longing, praying and meditating around justice issues–because change is needed. And in every single instance that I can list for things I’ve done, every single one of them is a change that my heart picks up as a familiar tug. The tug, the pull, the insistence of compassion.
My experience of compassion invites me to consider your suffering, allows me to experience suffering together with you, requires me to notice your suffering, conjures my curiosity about how I might respond to your suffering, and calls me to be courageous in league with you about the suffering we hold together.
Compassion is a hard work to respond to. For all that I’ve listed above, I cannot tell you a single issue that has completely changed for the good. Yes, there are steps and movements forward. There’s also (currently) loss of steps, regression to places I never thought we would revisit again.
I think that’s why we hold justice as one of our most important values, as Unitarian Universalists. Change is needed. Compassion compels us. We find ways to respond.
~Bob Patrick
