Dear Ones,

January can be a dreary month.  The joyful winter holidays, with their lights and singing, are behind us, and the days ahead are longer but they’re also cold and monochrome, and sometimes lonely or even scary.  There are so many reasons to seek out community these days, and this season adds to them.  At the same time, I’m learning that simply being in community may not be enough.  In my own life, I’m finding that it’s important to my well-being to feel like I’m doing something, to engage in acts of resistance. 

And resistance takes so many forms!  We Reebers are really good at showing up for marches and protests, and that’s definitely one form.  But so is playing music I love and dancing in my kitchen, because the joy that brings me pushes back against the despair that seems to be always lurking nearby.  And so finding sources of hope and sharing them with you, and supporting you as you find your calls to resist.  We’re not just resisting the actual authoritarianism, we’re resisting having our spirits crushed by it! 

So please don’t hear this as me saying you’re not doing enough – hear it as me saying that resistance also means doing things to take care of ourselves and each other, and to keep our communities strong and safe.  This month’s Covenant Groups will be working with a resource by Satya Boyle Byock called “Twenty Archetypes of Resistance,” which outlines many roles I bet a lot of us haven’t thought of as resistance, and might help us discern our own roles.  I hope you’ll take a look here.  And I hope you’ll talk with me when you feel the onslaughts of these times, or worry about your loved ones and neighbors, or want to find ways to be part of making change.  We’re in this together – and that’s resistance too!

In faith and love,

Karen