This year and this time of year specifically bring me to a stronger consideration of principles - particularly the principles around faith and life and the living of both.
I am in a new place in my 60th year of life, always evolving and hopefully developing as a spiritual being in a physical body, toward being a liver of Agape Love in the world around me and thus following Jesus.
We are now in the middle of Kwanzaa.
As a straight, white, protestant male in America, I recognize that this society and its institutions have been created to and sustained to benefit me above others who are not like me. In fact, those like me get our privilege at the expense of others not like us. It troubles my heart and has since I was about 14 years old.
I believe that Jesus' teachings, as we have them in the Gospels, addressed the system called empire in His day, and applied the living of Agape Love as Kingdom values as an alternative to empire values around the love of wealth, power and status. Jesus' Good News was a Good News for those under the thumb of Rome, occupied people who were exploited and abused for the sake of the elites of Rome. I find in the radical teachings of Jesus around living in a different way MANY similarities to the seven principles of Kwanzaa, provided by a teacher named Maulana Karenga for the living of community in a time of the occupation by a corrupt system that exploited and abused African American folk in the United States in the 60's, a practice that has not stopped but has rather evolved.
UMOJA is the embrace of UNITY as Family, Community, Nation and Race.
People who are occupied and disenfranchised must come together, stand together, resist together and move together in order to move beyond existence to thriving.
KUJICHAGULIA is all about SELF DETERMINATION, the principle of being responsible for ourselves and creating our own destiny in a time when others would strive to have control over a people and make their destiny bleak for the sake of promoting their own bright destiny.
UJIMA champions COLLECTIVE WORK and RESPONSIBILITY, building and maintaining community and working together to help one another within community. This is empowerment, when people come together to counter the forces that would hold them down, back or out.
UJAMAA represents COLLECTIVE ECONOMICS toward the building and maintaining of the means of livelihood in mutual support. Economic Justice is social justice, and establishing economic stability is essential in building life beyond the occupation that steals the resources of those exploited and abused within it.
NIA is PURPOSE. The purpose is the recognition of the true greatness of a people who have been held down, back and out for generations but who continue not just to survive but thrive, thanks to their ancestors and who will continue to thrive thanks to those who will follow. It is to simply BE the great people they are who have continued in their greatness even in the face of empire.
KUUMBA is CREATIVITY, used with imagination to make community better, always better. Resourcefulness in creativity has been a phenomenal aspect of African American expression and participation in society, often emulated and never surpassed, and a central part in continuing to make a great people even greater.
IMANI is FAITH. Faith in God includes faith in God's people, teachers and leaders. It means knowing that this people is a righteous people and recognizing the righteousness in their struggle for equality, equitable treatment, mutual respect, mutual power and sustained well-being.
These are, as I have learned, the principles of Kwanzaa, principles that I embrace and celebrate not just for seven days once a year but in how I live my life with those who I love, who I respect and value.
I am also being introduced in this time of my life to the 7 (8) PRINCIPLES of the Unitarian Universalist Church, principles that I also see as consistent with Jesus' teachings around Agape Love and Grace in a time of the occupation of and toward the resistence to empire.
1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person.
2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
5. The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.
7. Respect for the interdependant web of all existence of which we are a part.
8*. Journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural beloved community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.
(presented by Black Lives of UU and up for adoption by the whole church body)
I believe that I must, as a follower of Jesus, join with those who live the Agape Love that Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us, as we have witness in the Gospels. These principles are consistent with that living of Agape Love (active commitment on behalf of the other, even stranger and enemy, and especially the most vulnerable) and Grace (loving mercy given freely regardless of merit). These are the principles that by living them make me part of the resistence to empire.
What are the Principles by which YOU live?
Pastor Jamie
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