Beloved Community Guide Foreword
Foreword
On behalf of the Star Island Corporation, we are excited to present The Journey Toward the Beloved Community: A Guide for Conference Leaders.
This guide is an important part of our Beloved Community Project, which began in 2017. In October 2020, the SIC Board of Directors adopted a Strategic Resolution. A top priority of this resolution is our Community Goal, which includes:
- A commitment to continuing the work of the Beloved Community Project, furthering the conversation about racial injustice, and demonstrating action around anti-racism and the end of white supremacy culture in our communities;
- Reviewing and revising the policies, processes, organization, and structures of the Star Island Corporation to ensure that they do not present barriers to inclusion;
- Through the lens of dismantling white supremacy culture, reexamining the history of the Isles of Shoals, the events and people that we celebrate, and our ongoing traditions.
This resource guide is an explicit and important step in our ongoing journey, and it is a central priority for the Star Island Corporation. This guide is not only a practical handbook – it also represents a statement of values and call to action that comes at a pivotal time of rebirth for Star Island. We are enthusiastically making this important and timely resource available to all conference leaders, as well as to others. We invite conference leaders to review this guide carefully, and to use it as you plan and implement your conferences. We anticipate that, like us, you will find it to be an essential and helpful resource.
This guide represents different voices from across the Star Island community designed to help us act in the present and invest in the future. It is made possible by many contributors, and we are deeply grateful to them for sharing their wisdom and guidance to help move us forward on our journey. We offer special and heartfelt gratitude to conferees, Lucia Green-Weiskel, Steve Lee, and April Rosario, together with Conference Center Director Justina Maji, our editorial team for this project, without whom this resource guide would not have been completed.
Star Island has been a source of hope and comfort for so many – a place where community is formed, sustained, and deepened. Star is a light that can be available for all who come to its shores. We recognize that we need to be intentional and put in the important and sometimes messy work to make this happen. In the now famous words of Amanda Gorman, “…there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”
With Star Spirit,
Reverend Debbie Duval, SIC Board Member
Joe Watts, SIC Chief Executive Officer