This piece is an excerpt from It Is Time Now: Offerings from the Beloved Community Project, an educational resource produced in 2019 as part of Star Island’s Beloved Community Project. The Star Island Beloved Community Project is a journey SIC has begun as an organization to create a more inclusive and intentional community, to help spread more empathy and understanding in the world, and to become a more welcoming place for all people. We recognize and affirm that many have been on this journey for a long time, and we are excited to listen and learn as we continue on this important journey.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,”
Excuse me, who, is ‘we’?
and what do you mean when you say truths…and these…?

Ministry and majesty

condoning supremacy

throughout millennia, see,

in manifest destiny

and colonizing from the redwoods

to the gulf stream

whose land can this really be?

Unlearning centuries of practices of domination
invading and making ministrations
with lots of condemnation of those who otherwise
may make an oblation to the ancestors and the Earth
and the rhythm nation,
for generations and so-called civilizations.

g and f
n            a
i                   l
s                      l
i                          i
R                             n
.                                      g

so rarely calling us
to our better selves
even as we sought a better life.

Instead, a replication
of systems of subjugation
leading to the ruination of all.
As if we had to ration
all our sources rather than set a new course for the
distribution of soul force where they are actually needed.

Our norms are not normal if they leave some out.
If our aim is to normalize honesty and integrity,
sustainability and voluntary complexity,
island or mainland multiplicity,
covenants of accountability,
let’s make explicit our agreements
so we might all get free.
The delicacy of the taste of fresh joy on our lips
dripping with beloved community.

Speaking our heart’s deepest longings,
received by ears and hearts that
inspire a sense of belonging;
packing up our sorrows, not to hide them
rather to move with and through them
for we are not only our grief
or the hard things that happen to us.

Our habit may be to weaponize
long held habits that demonize
Perhaps this changing could be part of the resistance

the persistence
and insistence
for interdependence.

Practices and rituals building resilience.
Each of our gifts used to make a difference,
that we might just choose, once and for all,
to answer Love’s call,
offer a faithful hand when we fall,
especially if we’re in it for the long haul.

It is time now that we thrive.
Let us choose to pick up the best of our hearts.