A Word with Rev Gordon

November 2024
Monthly Theme: Love as Interdependence

Hello Dear SepulvedaUU, Family, Friends, and Newcomers,

Love as Interdependence is the theme for November 2024, so let me try to share with you something that might be helpful, something that might uplift?  Something to keep in mind as we move through these days of the election season, the economic realities that cause upsets for so many, the social discord that comes when a nation never deals with its history and the holiday season that is upon us.

I won’t sugar coat it: in the eyes of many progressive to liberal Americans, our world is a bit dark right now. Between the seemingly omnipresent war mania in the Middle East or the ongoing violence in our cities or the starvation that comes with displaced peoples or famine based on climate change or the stupidity of the leaders of our world, we are in a time and many of us are struggling! 

Waking up every day with bad news repeated over and over again on your timeline is exhausting. I and many other people have found ourselves losing hope in the democratic systems that are supposed to help us. Voting rights are in question, civil rights are undervalued, human rights have been forgotten by our leadership. Or worse yet, the leadership of our nation never believed the words of our constitution or amendments.

Despite the situation, despite the negativity expressed by countless media sources, despite all of the chatter from liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, and those not even engaged in the political, social, religious sectors, I’m imploring you to stay actively engaged. I’m saying to you right now, this too shall pass. Our collective human family has been through difficult times before and I believe we will survive!

I’m here to beg you not to give up on our future. Don’t give in to the upsets that are all around us. Don’t allow dark thoughts and despairing ideologies to infect your beautiful minds. This country of ours and its experiment in democracy needs you.  

The future of the United States and how we as a nation choose to move forward is one of the biggest factors in making this world a better place, not only for us in California or New York, but globally. What we as individuals choose to do, how we choose to act, the ways we choose to function no matter what comes next, will impact our world.

Your showing up for community events matters. Your participating in Beyond Beloved Conversations matters. Your ability to reach out to a neighbor or store clerk that is different than you and sharing your centering love as a spiritual imperative matters. We need you folks to survive!

So, you can be angry for a minute. You can be sad for a time. You can hate the way things are being done. Yes, this is all true, but if you don’t put that energy into creating change, it’s meaningless. You control the keys to the change that must happen.

People consistently joked in 2016 that they would move to Canada if Donald Trump was elected president. Leaving a place where you’re in immediate danger makes sense, but the privileged people making those jokes didn’t realize that if they did theoretically leave, they would hurt the low-income, marginalized people who are actually in danger. Your upper-middle-class white family leaving the country because you dislike Trump’s policy is selfish. You need to be here to fight with all of your privilege.

For the poor, the marginalized, the disinherited of the earth, and especially here in LA County, where so many suffer daily, we must step up, step correct, step into the future with hope, with expectations of good things to come, with love guiding all we do!

“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead.

With hope in my heart, with a sense that healing begins within the mind and continues in loving action,

Rev Gordon Clay Bailey

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