Today marks the first day of Climate Justice Month, the day we start thinking together about changing everything.

Our current crisis requires transformation. It’s less about changing a few individual behaviors and more about imagining radical new ways of living.

Our current paradigm assumes the expendability of some people and species in service to the dominant culture. In it, we willingly forgo human health and even human and non-human life on this planet as long as we can live in comfort and convenience today. In this paradigm, we willingly sacrifice the people on the margins of society—generally people of color, immigrants, and people who live with great financial instability—to maintain the industrial growth economy. This economic system assumes ecosystems, communities, cultures, and non-human beings are all externalities that are expendable in the pursuit of maximizing profit.

Today, Unitarian Universalists and other people of faith and conscience begin to think deeply together about altering social norms and creating climate justice. Climate justice is a global fight to dismantle the paradigm that disadvantages marginalized people and approaches Earth as supply source and sewer rather than a system of interdependent life, a single, beloved community. Climate justice pays deep attention to those most affected by climate change to find transformative solutions grounded in profound connections with Earth and each other.

Today, we begin to shift the way we understand and approach the world.

The month before us offers the opportunity to begin, continue, and support the necessary work of transformation.

Week One: Rejoicing and Celebrating  in Our Natural World
Week Two: Reckoning with and Grieving the Loss We are Confronting
Week Three: Reconnecting with Front-Line Communities and Earth in All Her Glory
Week Four: Committing to A New Way

Each day will offer a spiritual reflection on the topic of the week. And each week will focus on an element of the Earth to ground that reflection.

Week One: Water
Week Two: Fire
Week Three: Air
Week Four: Earth

Our hope for you, and for us all, is that we lean into the process, allowing the reflections to become catalysts for the day and the week and the month. And our hope for you, and for us all, is that we connect with Earth and our desire for greater life, deeper life, more sustainable and healthy and even exciting life, and that we can enter this new stage in faith, together.

Your Commit2Respond Resource Team,

Rev. Sofia Betancourt
Rev. Peggy Clarke
Tim DeChristopher
Kat Liu
Jennifer Nordstrom

 

This post marks the kick-off of Climate Justice Month, a month-long spiritual journey for climate justice from World Water Day (March 22) through Earth Day (April 22). You can sign up to receive these daily messages as emails at the bottom of this page, or you can follow along and share them on Facebook or Twitter.

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.