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For the 2026-2027 program year, the Supportive Ministries Team decided to focus on the Beloved Community as a Pursuit of Justice. This past year, we have published articles pointing to resources to help us deal with the fears that often prevent us from moving out of our comfort zone; to connect with the larger community in our neighborhood; how to prepare our congregations and their members for action; we are reminded that to believe is to care, to care is to do; spiritual disciplines that can help form our spiritual lives and building community among those who join on-line. Yet, we still have members, and congregations of which they are apart, stuck and unable to move out of their sanctuaries to recognize and act on the injustices experienced in our communities.
Perhaps the problem is that we forget that we are God’s beloved – and belovedness is the quality that empowers us to act for justice. As theologian Grace Ji-Sun Kim puts it in a reflection for U.S. Catholic: “This understanding of being beloved calls us into action.”
What happens if we don’t believe it when we are told that we are the beloved? In an article for Weavings, Henri Nouwen reflects on the story of Jesus’ baptism, in which a voice from heaven says, “You are my beloved.” “Yes, there is a voice, the voice of love, that speaks from above and from within and whispers softly or declares loudly: ‘You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.’” Yet this voice gets lost, Nouwen says. “It certainly is not easy to hear it in a world filled with voices that shout: ‘You are no good; you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable; you are nobody – unless you can demonstrate the opposite.’ Those voices can drown out the message of our own belovedness. They are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them and live our life according to their dictates. . . . That’s the great trap. It is the trap of self-rejection. Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are integrated into the much larger temptation to reject ourselves. When we believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection.”
In The Cottage, Diana Butler Bass wrote: \“When Jesus came up from the water, there’s a miracle. A dove, a voice, a naming: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved.’ God’s love was made manifest to Jesus, wrapped in belovedness. We tend to fixate on miracles. But the miracle only happened because Jesus stood in solidarity with us. And the solidarity raised a question: If Jesus stood with us and for us, weren’t God’s word also for all of us? With Jesus, we are named beloved of God.”
Cameron Trimble, in an article from Piloting Faith titled “Becoming More of Who You Are,” says: “To become more of who we are is not self-indulgence. It is moral courage. It is choosing to live from the truth that we are loving and loved, even when the evidence around us tempts despair….A willingness to carry what is ours to carry. A refusal to abandon our goodness. A commitment to give the world not a false-self shaped by fear, but our truest selves shaped by love.”
But how do we let go of these negative thoughts to become our truest selves? Gunilla Norris, in her book The Light of Evening, suggests a practice that is simple and readily at hand. She says: “Could we practice exhaling?....Every exhalation is an opportunity to let go a little. The more we let go in our exhaling, the more room there is in our lungs for new air…. Could we imagine that thoroughly exhaling may start something wonderful we have no idea about? As we practice letting go in small, daily increments, we will become spacious. We will breathe into a sense of allowing that is at the heart of letting go. Allowing is not a fight we have lost nor a diminishment we have suffered. It is an enlargement into more being….. It is letting the out-breath be an act of surrender, releasing what is old, and then the in-breath becomes an opening to receive something new…. We then truly understand that during our whole life we have been breathed and infused by Love itself.” We are, indeed, God’s beloved.
As we become more of ourselves, believing that we are God’s beloved, we will recognize that to believe is to care and to care is to do. In their article “From Coffee to Community: How One Church Found New Life in Laundry,” Nancy Dyson, Dwight Zscheile, and Terri Elton suggest seven pivots toward acting on the injustices in our neighborhoods. They say:
- Follow the Holy Spirit’s lead
- Experiment without fear of failure
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Prioritize relationships over results
- Move from fixing to listening
- Move from membership maintenance to discipleship formation
- Move from standardized programs to contextual engagement
- Move from clergy-led to empowered lay leadership
These pivots don’t require elaborate strategic plans or significant financial resources. It takes a person or a group of people who believe and know that they are God’s beloved who can then turn to their neighbors and help bring about a more just world.
Meditation from “Daily Meditations” by Henri Nouwen:
“There are just as many ways to be a Christian as there are Christians, and it seems that more important than the imposition of any doctrine or pre-coded idea is to offer the students (and adults) the place where they can reveal their great human potentials to LOVE, to give and to create, and where they can find the affirmation that gives them courage to continue their search without fear.”
Resources:
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Grace Ji-Sun Kim, U.S. Catholic, “Sunday Reflections,” Jan.11, 2026.
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Henri J. M. Nouwen, Weavings, “Forgiveness: The Name of Love In A Wounded World,” 1992.
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Diana Butler Bass, The Cottage, “Sunday Musings: Baptism of Solidarity,” Jan. 10. 2026.
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Cameron Trimble, Piloting Faith, “Becoming More of Who We Are,” Jan. 12, 2026.
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Gunilla Norris, The Light of Evening: Meditations on Growing in Old Age, 2023
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Nancy Dyson, Dwight Zscheile and Terri Elton, Faith+Lead – Blog Post, “From Coffee to Community: How One Church Found New Life in Laundry, March 3, 2025.
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Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, The Henri Nouwen Society - Daily Meditations,” January 16, 2026.
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