Practicing Resistance: Every UUCL Committee can practice resistance!

Yesterday, during our Message For All Ages, we talked a little bit about how hospitality is a practice of resistance. Providing food and drinks helps to make people feel welcome, but what more is there to hospitality? Welcoming the stranger in a time of fear and division is an act of resistance. What is the best way to do this? How does this expand outside of just the committee and become everyone’s responsibility? Here are some great UUA resources to get you thinking!

https://www.uua.org/lgbtq/welcoming/ways

https://www.uua.org/midamerica/resources/new-leaders/radically-welcoming

https://www.uua.org/leaderlab/hospitality

There are many ways to practice resistance and I know that every one of our committees can come up with ways that they can push back on a culture of fear, division, consumerism, waste and environmental degradation, and all of the things that operate against our Shared UU Values. I think it will be important to identify the things we do that run counter to our values, problem solve together to figure out how to align with our values, and then to amplify the things we do that are in alignment with our values. Let’s be explicit, communicative, and generous about the ways we practice resistance so we can lead people towards Love centered ways of being in this world!

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Many of you have requested to see my pictures from Qatar. I am happy to share and if you really want a slide show, I can do that after service at some point. But for now, here are some pictures from the Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque, also called the Qatar State Mosque. It is located in Doha and sits directly across from the downtown area. It’s quite a view! It is named after Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th-century Sunni Muslim preacher, scholar, and theologian from the Najd region in central Arabia, founder of the Islamic revivalist and reformist movement known as Wahhabism (from wikipedia).

The architecture in Qatar is amazing! My sister’s friend gave us a tour of this mosque. She stated: beauty attracts people.