UU Justice Florida

Reclaiming Our Power for the Common Good

“A compassionate community is an uncomfortable community!  A community that is uncomfortable when anyone is homeless or hungry.  Uncomfortable if every child isn’t loved and given rich opportunities to grow and thrive.  Uncomfortable when, as a community, we don’t treat our neighbors as we would wish to be treated.”

― Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong wrote that decades ago when the modern world was seeing (and sometimes contributing) to the marginalization and sometimes annihilation of entire religions, communities, and tribes, in their home countries.  

Alarmed by the human suffering all over the world, Karen Armstrong  decided to start a Call to Action inspired by The Golden Rule and fueled by the strongest human loving emotion, Compassion.  

The first step is naming what is happening in our country and elsewhere.  We must refuse to normalize cruelty and indifference. We must help our neighbors now as we are able and revitalize our governments (local, state and national) by using compassion as our lens for viewing what is happening and what needs to change.   

We are at a crossroads. The path of action, though difficult, leads toward justice, dignity, and hope. We need to reclaim our power for the common good by expanding the application of the Golden Rule to individual lives, to our families, to our neighbors, to our organizations and our governments. 

Join us in our communities as we affirm and embrace the ethics and principles of the Charter for Compassion (www.CharterforCompassion.org) by making a commitment to embrace a view of health and wellbeing that embraces social empathy. Apply The Golden Rule to all we say and do.