Dear friends,
We hope you and those you love are well in body, mind, and spirit.
Our system--our society--is not well. This moment of rupture has revealed more clearly than ever that our economy, our healthcare system, our labor laws, and our public life do not value life--particularly the lives of poor and marginalized people.
And yet this rupture has also revealed tremendous possibilities to mold our institutions to embody values of humanity, interdependence, and justice. Some are calling this time a ‘kairos moment.’ Arundhati Roy calls it a “portal” - an opening between this world and the next. She writes,
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next...We can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world."
Are you ready to imagine? To break the rules? To write new ones? Are you ready to walk through the portal, without having all the answers?
Here’s one way to get started: join us in attending Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project’s “Course Correction: Just Transition in the Age of COVID-19” online course. We encourage you to take the course with friends, family, and community members--and to find time to discuss what you are learning and what you might do about it, together.
Last month, we interviewed more than 50 people in the Nuns & Nones network. Mixed with the grief, uncertainty, and isolation of this time, we are also seeing glimpses of the new world through their eyes.
They’ve told us stories of retreat centers, empty convents, and schools opening their doors to those who are hungry, sick, and unhoused. The New York Nuns & Nones group has been supporting sisters to offer “listening sessions” to those experiencing disconnection from community and spirit. Sisters in our community are working tirelessly during this moment of pandemic to open a new, interspiritual hospitality house at the US-Mexico border. Amidst the chaos, new seeds are being planted.
Times of upheaval also give way to some of our greatest creativity. Many have pointed to the example of the New Deal, a new social program emerging from a Great Depression. We have been inspired by stories of sisters’ response to past epidemics, which created a legacy of healthcare infrastructure from which many communities continue to benefit today.
In past pandemics, whole communities of sisters responded as frontline healthcare workers. In poor neighborhoods with no hospitals, they went door to door, often tending to whole households of sick people. Today, though the conditions are different, the example of religious life still has much to offer this moment of crisis.
Committed communities are “essential workers” for building a new world. They always have been.
To disrupt the “normalcy” of a toxic culture, we need more courage than is possible to muster alone. We need new structures of belonging that invite people into courageously rejecting a broken system, boldly bringing forward a vision of a better world, and getting to work to bring it forward. We have so much to imagine and create together.
We can choose not to go back. We can choose to commit, instead, to an audacious, beautiful vision that will require a whole village to realize.
Will you learn with us? Sign up for Movement Generation’s “Course Correction: Just Transition in the Age of COVID-19” here, and send us a note to let us know!
What do you see on the other side of the portal?
With love,
-the N&N team ❤️