Lia Rivamonte, Beloved Community Communications Team

Long ago, I was part of a small acting troupe from a local theater that toured rural areas in the upper Midwest. Typically, we performed in a school gym or an auditorium and it was the school principal who served as emcee, introducing us by name to the students and faculty. The challenge to pronounce our names was exasperating for them; funny and ironic, to us. Waiting to go on stage, we never knew what might emanate from the mouth of the person who introduced us. The show was about growing up Asian American, an attempt at humanizing us by interweaving music with humorous and moving stories about Asian American history, culture, family life, and the immigrant experience. 

The botched intros seemed to illustrate, at that time, how necessary it was to dispel the notion of Asian exoticism and inscrutability, that has long permeated Asian-ness in the country; notions that exploited difference in order to justify unequal treatment. While our names sounded strange and we may not have looked like the majority of the students or their families in their community, the narratives we shared were probably similar to their own predominantly European immigrant histories. That touring show took place 30 years ago. 

The pandemic revitalized that sense of foreignness of Asian Americans; some blaming us directly for Covid. And while there have been no recent reports of violence toward Asian Americans, renewed skepticism and opposition towards all immigrants is a hallmark of the incoming administration. We have yet to see how “successful” this anti-immigrant campaign will be not only in terms of government policy and economic feasibility, but also in regard to an unabashed retreat from that to which we had once aspired: a democracy where all are treated with equal respect, where all feel that we belong. 

The cultivation of a sense of belonging and genuine human connection has taken on a new urgency. For many of us, present-day hyper-connectivity through social media has served to heighten our awareness of disconnectedness. Our social media posts often portray our accomplishments, our close happy times with family and friends, career successes, vacations, smooth life transitions, etc. In the Unity All Our Fullness (AOF) initiative, we want to go deeper with you to cultivate authentic inclusion and connection. 

As Rev. KP Hong, Unity’s Minister of Faith Formation says, “At the heart of a faith community is creating belonging where there has been exclusion, border, social fragmentation, and segregation.” The current Unity Church fourth Ends Statement may be aspirational, “to know each other in all our fullness and create an ever-widening circle of belonging for all people,” but as KP says, “A religious vision of belonging is always revolutionary, prophetic, imagining a way beyond othering.” This is the belonging that we call Beloved Community.

Did our theater presentation make a difference? Did we persuade the mainly white, Euro-American students to see Asian Americans as having the same desires and needs, despite seemingly unpronounceable names or other perceived differences? Maybe, for a minute. What I do know is the kid in the audience who was a Korean adoptee or whose family owned the local Chinese restaurant was always the first to greet us backstage; often in tears, grateful to hear their own story elevated and told as something about which to be proud. It felt to them as if they belonged — if not in that gym, in the larger world they hoped would be waiting for them one day.

We, too, are waiting. It is easy to isolate and never stretch ourselves, but I think we are all a bit tired of living among strangers. As curious Unitarian Universalists, who believe in the interconnectedness of our universe, how about starting with ourselves? 

With this in mind, we warmly invite you to All Our Fullness, to share your personal story in response to one of the following prompts: 

• When did you become aware of your own cultural identity?
• Share a story about a time you encountered difference; and what difference did it make.
• What stirs your yearning for multicultural community?

We welcome videos (two minutes or less), art, photographs, and/or your written response (300 words or so). Submit via the All Our Fullness online form.

Thank you! We are grateful in advance for your participation. Responses will be shared with the congregation on Unity’s website and/or in commUNITY in the coming months. Please note that your contribution may be edited for length and clarity.

Feel free to direct any questions about AOF to [email protected].

As we begin the new church year, we are reminded that Unity is rich in numerous opportunities to be together as a congregation in all the ways that matter — joy, pain, grief, celebration, worship, social justice — and in learning about ourselves and one another. The arrival of Rev. Oscar brings our congregation an especially charged atmosphere of promise and renewal. The Beloved Community Staff Team (BCST) is already at work exploring opportunities for deeper connection for this new year.

What is the BCST?
The BCST was initiated in 2016 by senior co-ministers Rob and Janne Eller-Isaacs to coordinate and sustain efforts across the congregation that explore and deepen learning explicitly through the lens of antiracist multiculturalism. Aspiring to achieve the Beloved Community, prophetic practice — developing meaningful ways to integrate our values into our day-to-day lives to make qualitative changes in our souls—is a constant. The BCST serves to expand and strengthen our collective capacity for antiracist multicultural understanding, and ensures that this remains foundational across the congregation from how we operate to our programs and activities, embedding our antiracist multicultural Ends throughout congregational life. 

It was the BCST, for example, that:

• Implemented congregation-wide learning opportunities with Team Dynamics that sharpened our awareness and understanding of intersectionality and dominant culture.
• Created the Double Helix Model interlacing faith formation and spiritual practice with antiracist multiculturalism. 
• Worked closely with the Ministerial Search Team to engage the congregation in examining biases surrounding identity and expectations for a senior minister. 

Under Rev. KP’s steadfast, inspired leadership, the BCST is committed to 1) critical discernment — keeping in mind the larger historical implications of this work, 2) connection — sustaining our humanity and empathy towards one another, 3) tracking hypocrisy — aligning what we say with what we do and noticing when we have failed, and 4) hope — empowering our creativity to reimagine the future in building the Beloved Community. 

The Unity Ends Statements that ignite the BCST work are:

• Know each other in all our fullness.
• Create an ever-widening circle of belonging for all people.
• Create brave space for racial healing and dismantling the dominant culture.

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” — bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism

Who is in the BCST?
The Executive Team (ET), staff members, and lay leaders make up the BCST. The ET: Rev. KP Hong, Minister of Faith Formation; Laura Park, Executive Director; and now senior minister Rev. Dr. Oscar Sinclair. Staff members are Rev. Lara Cowtan, Minister of Congregational Care; and Drew Danielson, Coordinator of Youth and Campus Ministries. Lay member Angela Wilcox serves as project manager and scribe.

To better inform the congregation about this work, former BCST members Erika Sanders and Pauline Eichten created the Beloved Community Communications Team (BCCT). The team has been at work for over seven years and is charged with the task of sharing stories of the struggles, questions, and collaborations coming out of the multicultural work at Unity and in the wider world of our faith and city. The current team includes Shelley Butler, Becky Gonzalez-Campoy, Marjorie Otto, Suki Sun, Ray Wiedmeyer, and me, team leader and BCST liaison. Guided by the work of the BCST, the BCCT is responsible for collecting and writing Beloved Community News articles and blog posts that focus on the issues, ideas, and challenges of the antiracist multiculturalism work, and for positing questions and engaging in reflection that offers deeper understanding and multiple perspectives.

Complexity is our only safety and love is the only key to our maturity. —James Baldwin

Antiracist multiculturalism work is inherently complex. As much as we wish it were simple — “love is love,” “we are one,” and numerous other aphoristic phrases we employ that invite complacency, to build the Beloved Community is to embrace the many layers of identity and experience that each of us represents. To dig down into our own human existence and examine ways to “know one another in all our fullness” is often difficult and sometimes painful, revealing uncomfortable truths about ourselves and how we influence others to the good or ill, but ultimately redemptive. 

The BCCT would like to hear your story! What illuminates your commitment to creating an antiracist multicultural community? Share a story, image, and/or video in the All Our Fullness program, or just get in touch to let us know you are interested in working with us: [email protected].

In this new church year, may we be guided by our faith and connected in love as we aspire to build the Beloved Community. 

One of the blessings of our Unity Church community is the number of people that call it a spiritual home. With so many individuals that make up our community, it can also make it hard to get to know everyone at the depth we crave here in our work at Unity. As a way to create a tapestry of Unity voices, the Beloved Community Staff Team, aided by the Beloved Community Communications Team, is starting a new project within the congregation called, “All Our Fullness.”
The goal of the project is to provide a way for congregants to introduce themselves in a personal way. Here’s how to participate: 

• Fill out the form that includes a prompt or question for your consideration.
• Respond to a prompt in any way that is meaningful to you: write a story, poem, reflection, or play; offer a watercolor painting, photo, or sculpture; create a video with a song, a dance, or a recorded response or conversation; or a knitted item. 
• Upload images and/or videos via the online form.

The limit of your response is only your imagination. These contributions, as well as a photo and brief biography, will be posted on the Beloved Community News blog.

The idea for the project and its name is pulled from the fourth of the Unity Church ends statements, which guide our work, “Know each other in all our fullness and create an ever-widening circle of belonging for all people.”

We hope this project can serve as a starting point for deeper relationships among us. We also hope to create a tapestry, a sampling, a “Unity community quilt” of sorts, of the folks that make up the Beloved Community here.

For this introduction of All Our Fullness, here is the inaugural question and prompt: What illuminates your commitment to creating an antiracist multicultural community? Share a story, image, and/or video. 

This is just the very beginning of this project. We’re exploring many ideas, avenues, and directions for how this project may evolve over time, so we’re leaving the future of it open-ended to make space for its growth. Look for more information in upcoming newsletters and a future table in Parish Hall, as this project grows. The evolution is also going to depend on the level of participation, meaning you, yes, you dear reader, are the perfect person to submit a response. Submit to All Our Fullness!