Reimagine, Reclaim, Repair: Together We're Better | By Rev. Edward Livingston

Interfaith Philadelphia strives to increase peace and understanding among people of all faiths and backgrounds in our region. Our aim is to replace hate and fear with harmony and acceptance.  We call upon people to Dare to Understand. This encompasses our dream that people will take a chance for understanding. We believe that interfaith learning and engagement is key to promoting peace.

It is heartbreaking to acknowledge that hate has a home in our communities.  The heinous hate-fueled mass shooting suffered in Buffalo, NY is among the latest of violent acts that ends lives and harms those who live on with the trauma.  There are many efforts to promote peace, equity, and justice in the local area and across the country, yet hate for the other is being sustained across the land.  Hate is being passed on to younger generations and younger people are carrying out violence that targets people based on their religious, gender, racial/ethnic identities.  

In grieving the loss experienced from the Buffalo massacre, answers to questions can help to gain understanding.  Understanding may help to prevent repeating mistakes that our society repeats that hold us back from living into becoming ‘one nation’ under God.  Who raised this 18-year-old? How did his community fail him? He is a product of someone’s doing.  What outcome and legacy did his family desire for their son? Our families, educators, legislators, neighbors, leaders, and friends must be held to account for the community we make if we wish to learn from and prevent the next massacre.  

So many of our families and communities are fractured.  We are too fractured as a nation.  There is a soul sickness within us that enables us to be so violent and paralyzes so many of us from denouncing the violence of hatred and reclaiming the dignity of human creation.  Our actions indicate that human life is not valued equally by too many people.  Something different is needed if we hope to see different results.  What will be different? What would happen if we stood united in proclaiming that all lives should be nurtured toward realizing our highest moral existence? 

Not keeping silent helps.  When we see indicators of hatred, speak up, challenge the behavior, and organize an intervention.  If we don’t make room to build connections across difference for peaceful coexistence, and encourage and support youth and adults to becoming their best selves, someone else with divisive designs will aim to shape them into actors of destruction.  Do we want to see different outcomes?  Now is the time to do something different.

Imagine the change for good that would result if we supported each other to inspect our language, actions, and ideologies for things that demean, or vilify another, and instead chose to speak and do what heals.  Commit to find the existing organizations that strive to save lives and proclaim equity, compassion, and restoration and stand with them.  Listen to the concerns, and solutions within our communities.  Act.  Call in people to pray, participate through direct action, gather to foster understanding, and engage the legislative process.  

Pledge to consider how our many parts may hold the solutions toward reconciliation and for repairing the world concerning the matters that divide.  Such change is possible, with individual and communal action.  Now is the time to reclaim that we share a common humanity and build spaces for healing and restoration.  What do you dare to imagine? 

The decision is yours.

Together, may we heal and thrive,

Rev.  Edward Livingston, M.Div.

Interfaith Philadelphia, Director of Religious Community Initiatives