“The honorary duty of a human being is to love.” Maya Angelou
“Each one [of us] has a mission to fulfill, a mission of love.” Mother Teresa
“May there be more love to liberate us all, and may we keep on, today and every day, until we find it, and share it, inch by precious inch, with one another and the world.” Nancy McDonald Ladd
BELOVED WORLD COMMUNITY
I remember the first time I saw a shanty town. I was visiting a friend, who is Founder of a non-profit in Mexico called Centro Mujeres (Spanish for Women’s Center), at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula of Mexico. Cabo San Lucas is known as a tourist destination, particularly for those of us living on the West Coast who travel down to Mexico. My friend, Teresa, helps very poor women with employment training, health access, and hygiene education. She would go out to the poorest neighborhoods in the region to connect with women who were limited in their ability to travel.
She warned me ahead of time that I may see a level of destitute poverty I had not experienced before this. We drove south on the highway towards the tourist city of Cabo San Lucas from the Southern Baja State capitol of La Paz. Many tourists fly into San Jose del Cabo (just north of Cabo San Lucas), where many of the locals live. At some point as you get to the city area, there are very tall dirty white/light grey cement walls. Behind these walls are the Shanty-towns.
We drove up the hill side for a bit and crossed the ridge, going down the back side, where I saw endless rows of homes—these homes were made of cardboard—the really poor folks had the smaller ones at the base of hill. The larger ones were toward the top of the hill and may have up to 250 square feet, where the ones at the bottom may have been 50 square feet. A block might share an outhouse and kitchen stoves might be located outside.
A shanty town is described as a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud, aluminum, and wood. A typical shanty town lacks adequate infrastructure, including proper sanitation, safe water supply, electricity, and street drainage.
We see shanty towns almost anywhere around the world—we may think of Dhaka, Mumbai, Rio De Janeiro, Lagos, Haiti, Mexico, among many other cities and countries.
In the United States we see shantytowns—or our versions of them–tents, as well as rusted and parked vehicles on the streets. Many are temporary, as people are forced to leave in areas on sidewalks or public spaces. Some are more permanent in more discreet areas, such as along the industrial riverside areas of the Willamette River—some with cardboard and aluminum walls and ceilings.
In my own contemplations I often wonder–What are the moral and spiritual ramifications for this state of inequality?
I think to myself “How does this happen when not only do we have Shantytowns in Mumbai, but also in one of the wealthiest countries of the world, as well as one of the wealthiest cities in our country?”
And I often think of what author Raoul Martinez describes as the lottery of birth. Why was I born in the United States and not South Sudan, war torn Syria, Bangladesh, among other countries who are at war and/or food insecure? And what, if any, is my responsibility to others, where I reside in a country that has relative privilege (often at the cost of others). Not to mention, we reside in a country where Native Americans were subject to genocide and a country built on the backs of slave-laborers.
Actress and United Nations Envoy Angelina Jolie has said
I have never understood why some people are lucky enough to be born with the chance that I had, to have this path in life and why across the world, there is a woman just like me–With the same abilities and the same desires, same work ethic and love for her family, who would most likely make better films and better speeches. Only she sits in a refugee camp, and she has no voice. [PAUSE]
We live in a world of extremes—shanty towns to multi-million-dollar mansions. $500 meals in Manhattan and London to soup kitchens across the nation and aerial food drops from planes in impoverished war-torn areas of the world.
This is one reason why I appreciate the United Nations. The UN address the inequalities that include—hunger, violence/war, women’s equality, and more recently LGBTQI rights.
Eleanor Roosevelt represented the United States in developing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the United Nations in 1948–a guide for the world in how to live more just and equitably in an inter-connected world.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights states: “THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international.”
The United Nations is an alternative to nationalism, an alternative to self-interest, an alternative to inequality. It is not perfect, as no institution is, but there is hope of a better future, a better way of engaging cross-culturally, cross-politically, a way to collectively save the Earth, whereas with individual nations it becomes a less-effective piece-meal approach.
In regards to the human rights of hunger, almost 1 billion people world-wide experience food insecurity of the 7.8 billion in the world. 113 million people have acute hunger (suffering from starvation) leading to over 7 million people dying of hunger worldwide just this last year by October. The United Nation’s World Food Programme is the largest institution in the world addressing hunger. After years of seeing a decline in world hunger, in 2018 & 2019 there was an uptick, and that is before the devastation of Covid hit the world.
As we continue to suffer the devastation of Covid in our own country, we can see where Covid has wreaked havoc on our most vulnerable throughout the world as well. Our own food banks and soup kitchen lines have increased in demand by 5 times in many areas of our country since the Pandemic hit. There are too many families with no safety-net to living on the streets.
And then there is our faith. Do you know that Unitarian Universalists have a United Nations Office for almost 60 years?
The United Nations was founded in 1945 and The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) has been involved with the work of the United Nations since 1962.
Unitarian and United Nations Ambassador Ad-lai Stevenson, appointed by John F. Kennedy, wrote to UUA President Dana Greeley, stating, “In this disastrous and shrinking world it is no longer possible—if it ever was—for local communities to be more secure than the surrounding world. Our ultimate security therefore lies in making the world more and more into a community.”
As Unitarian Universalists, how do these issues relate to our theology?
Our 6th principle states “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”
Our ideals include equality and justice for all and the acknowledgement of interconnectedness with our 7th principle.
But our principles don’t have any suggested definitive answer that has the science of why we were born one place over another. In the US, most of us are born of varying degrees of privilege. So, we have the privilege of not having to ponder this.
To know where UUs have been engaged with UN work, current Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office, known as UU-UNO, Bruce Knotts, has said “The three areas where we’ve made a difference are building Religions for Peace in the ’60s, leading the faith-based caucus to establish the international court, and recently really changing the culture of the UN to be proactive in endorsing LGBTI human rights.”
Consulting bodies, such as UU-UNO or Centro Mujeres, provide testimony, consultation, and witness to UN entities, such as the Human Rights Commission or the office of UN Women.
One day, about 3 years ago, at an interfaith event at the United Nations, I listened to the testimony of an LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex) advocate, Yvette Abrams, who is Christian and from Africa. She described what she called the genocide of LGBTI people in Africa and around the world—Those who live in countries where it is illegal to be identified as LGBTI, and therefore systematically harmed, including execution. She shared stories of hangings, or in best case scenarios, efforts to convert to heterosexual norms.
Yvette also shared stories of what she had heard, in Malawi, where babies who are born with both sexual organs, and are killed at birth, because these babies are perceived of bringing bad luck to a family or community. Intersex humans are estimated to be almost 2% of our world population.
She asked the audience convened that day, how can we be in the presence of God in the midst of a genocide?
If god is omniscient, what is said about genocide, hunger, starvation, disease, war, homophobia, racism, sexism, and other “isms” so, we can also extend Yvette’s question about hunger and violence.
Genocide is not an evil act happening on another side of a border somewhere done by God, but done by humans.
Universalist theology would say God is found in humans by manifesting love.
At that United Nations meeting, Ymania Brown from Samoa, who is Catholic and Co-Chair of the Global Interfaith Network for People of all Sexes, Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities & Expressions gave a list of examples where people in Morocco, France, Iran, Turkey, among other countries have been persecuted by governments or individuals who have either identified as LGBTI or been suspected of being an LGBTI person.
There are places on Earth, where it is a crime simply to be alive.
Accountability structures, based on shared values of equality and justice for all, must be in place. For certain countries where freedom is not accessible to all, the United Nations is one of the only political structures in existence that attempts to demand safety for all.
If we can see God as love, then maybe we can begin to comprehend more of what Dr. Abrams said at the beginning of the testimonials: We can begin to find God’s love in the midst of a genocide.
It is not “god” doing something to us. In the spirit of Universalism, our heritage as a spiritual people, teaches us that God is a loving god. This theology has evolved in that God is love—not a deity involved in the mundane activities of admonishing and praising.
In Universalist theology, God is beyond this. God interconnects us all in love. If we live out our theology, we don’t believe god is engaged in genocide, but it is humans who either engage in violence or humans who choose to look the other way, and where we forget that in our Universalist view–God is Love (a verb, not a noun).
With our ideals of equality and justice for all and the acknowledgement of interconnectedness, we have principles that guide our actions.
Faith is lived, not read. Fully understanding our faith requires us to live our faith.
And if we believe that an external deity/god isn’t responsible for externally produced human events, this also suggests that humans are empowered with agency to create change with opportunities to transcend this suffering collectively.
Do we live out our theological beliefs 24/7?
If we don’t even see our own contradictory actions, how can we be able to address them? I see how my garbage bag fills up to be put in a landfill, yet I support the idea of a circular economy. I advocate for protecting rainforests and cultures relying on the natural world, but I buy products—paper, plywood that is part of my home, without considering where that wood or an appliance in my home came from.
This is one reason why anti-racist work within ourselves is being so focused on in recent years. Hardly anyone admits to being a racist, yet racism is on full display in this country.
So I continue to reflect, where my actions are contradictory to my spiritual views.
We engage in activism, we engage in policy-making, we support laws of equality, but we are here on a Sunday morning to engage beyond this level—we are a congregation involved in the spiritual life.
And we can’t wait to be “saved” from the external world. Or maybe we can try, but I don’t think that is a Unitarian Universalist spiritual approach to the situation.
We have enough data, statistics, analysis, assessment, studies, proposals, agendas, and yet we are getting closer and closer every month to a destructive end of more hunger, more human death, more species going extinct.
But we can connect with our hearts to engage, love, connect, and transform any area we care about. It is love of our Earth and each other that will transform the world.
We know from our own experience in simply being a human,that love transforms what thinking may not. When we love a child, they are nurtured, when we love a pet we care for them, when we lovingly tend a garden it grows, when we lovingly tend and connect without judgement space is there for something transformative to arise. Unconditional love does not have an agenda—love is faith that beauty can arise, love is faith that change is possible, love is faith that love is enough for the sake of love, love is faith that we can transform what is hurt and suffering to a more connected and healing community, love is faith that we can help each other and Earth. Love is building beloved community with our hands and hearts.
Love the orphan in Sudan, love the homeless in your neighborhood, love the river that runs nearby, love the birds perched on the tree, love your family, love your neighbors, love Breonna Taylor, love yourself as the source of where your love spreads, and don’t ever stop.
Topics: Intention