I’ve been revisiting Naomi Klein’s appeal to a universalism in her book, Doppelgänger, where she considers the non-shared, bifurcated reality most of us inhabit. I’ve shared about this book before, but the Deep End class is discussing it this week, so we were able to dive into it in a more intentional way. You can hear a discussion of the book here.

One passage struck me and, I think, expresses a deeply meaningful appeal to a congregation of Unitarian Universalists as we think about how to respond to the brokenness in our world. Klein writes:

“One overarching message I choose to take at the end of my doppelganger journey: time to loosen the grip on various forms of proprietary pain and selfhood, and reach toward many different forms of possible connection and kin, toward anyone who shares a desire to confront the forces of annihilation and extermination and their mindsets of purity and perfection… It will not be enough to protect ‘our’ people; we will need to have the stamina of true solidarity, which defines ‘our people’ as ‘all people.’ This kind of universalism is hard. There are so many reasons for people on the broadly defined left to be fed up, angry and disappointed with one another, and to latch onto those disappointments to rationalize splintering into smaller and smaller groups… Up against oligarchy, all we have is the power latent in our capacity to unite.”

These are profound questions for a community like ours who commits itself to community within and without, and who wishes to be a force for justice in the world. How might we reach out to other forms of connection and kin? I know that is a question I will be thinking about for some time to come!

Sometimes it is hard to tap into our spiritual selves or find time to nurture our creativity and intellectual curiosity. Here is a section that reflects on some nourishing materials from around the web and related media channels in order to get us thinking, get us feeling, and get us reflecting on the lives we are living in this big world. **Some Adult/Mature Themes May Appear in Links and Other Attached Material**

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Allan T. Georgia, MDiv, MTS, PhD

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