Welcome to the Month of Love!

By Lisa Presley

Well, actually, every month should be a month of love in my books, but February is the time that we’re reminded to think of the people whom we love. Parents, family, friends, partners, people not related to us—we do well to remember, each day, those we love, and show that love to the people in our lives.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love, and in particular, this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Over the past few months, your regional staff has been engaged in learning more about what it means to join power, love, and justice together as we’ve been taking a course on Trans Inclusion in Congregations, created by the Transforming Hearts Collective. In this course, we learned more about what it means to be Trans, and how we can provide deeper welcome (justice) to our Trans friends and family. For example, many of us think that we’ve done what we need to do when we designate bathrooms as ungendered. But there’s much more: it’s about developing relationships, learning enough to offer deep welcome. It’s about working to ensure that we don’t make assumptions about gender identity, know why it’s important not to live in a dualistic world (he and she only), and to learn how to be more inclusive of the variety of expressions of gender, the various definitions of gender, and finding space for not only welcome, but also inclusion. We found this course, and our conversations, to be helpful to us as we explore how we make welcome for trans people in our programming.

And why bother? Because melding power, love, and justice together is how we can become more fully ourselves, as Unitarian Universalists. It’s the way that we can extend our understanding of what it means to embrace the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

In this month of love, I hope you find every more ways of giving and receiving love.

About the Author

Lisa Presley

Lisa Presley is a life-long Unitarian Universalist who was an active lay leader before entering our ministry in 1991. As a lay leader she was board president, board member, worship associate, stewardship campaign chair, religious education teacher, bookkeeper, secretary, and shoveled the snow as...

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