Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls on us to confront the crisis of climate change that plagues our world and narrows the possibilities for our collective future.

Our primary challenge isn’t convincing people of its devastating impacts. It's helping people truly believe that we can win and create the profound changes necessary for a better world. As people of faith we have the responsibility and opportunity to bring forward our spiritual traditions, rituals, and practices to help people meet these times with courage.

We look to, learn from, and join forces with front line working class communities and communities of color in the United States and around the world confronting the worst of climate chaos. Climate chaos unleashed by economic systems that turn the earth and people into resources to exploit and commodities to sell and by political systems that concentrate wealth and power for the few at the expense of the majority.

We look to, learn from, and join forces with front line communities generating resilient community strategies for sustainability, cooperative economics for a new way of being with each other and the planet, and resistance movements that can bring about the systemic change we need.

Let us pray, sing, march, and take direct action; let us look into the face of oblivion and choose to believe that we can ensure a just and vibrant future. With the courage of our ancestors, the power of global solidarity, and the commitment and community of our faith, may it be so.

Chris Crass is a longtime social justice organizer and the author of Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy published by PM Press; learn more at www.chriscrass.org.

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Today’s practice is to reflect on the resources—material, spiritual, relational—that you have at your disposal that can help you make change and deepen your impact, as we move toward the final week of Climate Justice Month, focused on grounded commitment. Where do you draw strength, what resources are available to you, and who are you connected to that can support you in making new commitments to action for climate justice? Make a list in writing, in a journal or elsewhere, of these vital resources.

Today’s resource for deepening this message is the incredible Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project, an Oakland-based group that inspires and engages in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. Movement Generation is rooted in vibrant social movements led by low-income communities and communities of color committed to a Just Transition away from profit and pollution and towards healthy, resilient and life-affirming local economies. Find out more about their work.

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Commit2Respond's Climate Justice Month intends to take you through a transformative spiritual process leading to long-term commitments to climate justice. At the end of the month you will be asked to SHIFT to a low carbon future, ADVANCE human rights, and GROW the movement. Learn more and start thinking about how you will #commit2respond to climate change.