The Beloved Community

My city is on fire.

Does anyone know the way to the Beloved Community?

Someone told me about it a long time ago.  I was only a child at the time.  It was a decade much like this one.  Tumultuous.  Divisive.  Streets  filled with protesters.  Signs said “peace” and “love” while war, discrimination, and distrust of elders and government fueled flames of despair and burning buildings.  A child living in the suburbs, I wondered how close the blaze was to the street where I lived.

It was a decade when answering the question of how to put a man on the moon became easier to answer than the question of how to treat a man on the street.  We lost a president to assassination.  Later, his brother, a presidential candidate and civil rights activist would be gunned down too.  Many great leaders of the civil rights movement died by violence even the ones preaching peace and love.

We have been wandering through this wilderness longer than Moses and the Israelites.  People can only wander for so long.  It is hard to live on promises.

Like Dorothy on the way to Oz, we don’t really know where we are going.  We’ve become distracted.  Falling asleep in a field of poppies, we awakened to find we are alone.  Where are our brains, our hearts, our courage? There are voices coming over the loudspeaker, but it is all bluster.  We are leaderless and on our own. There is no one behind the curtain.

Once again, we have set our sights on conquering the heavens.  Did we give up on the earth?

Does anyone know the way to the Beloved Community?

Seeking an answer, I tried Mapquest.  The Beloved Community might be in Jersey City, Chicago, Birmingham, St. Louis, Greensboro, or Atlanta.  It is hard to find without an address. Without a leader.  I must rely now upon the people who know, who remember…

I have an old description of the place.  A worn pamphlet reports that courageous people live in the Beloved Community.  Nonviolence is a way of life.  Members of the community seek friendship, understanding, redemption, and reconciliation.  Any resistance that exists in the Beloved Community is resistance to evil and injustice not to people.  It is a place where suffering educates and transforms without fear of retaliation.  People of the Beloved Community choose love instead of hate.  They believe that the universe is on the side of justice. 

I want to be on the side of justice too.  Does anyone know the way to the Beloved Community?

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