Welcome to a month of Beloved Community!
What do you know about the Beloved Community? What do your children know? Come explore with us this month!
At the Table
Use these questions to help lead a discussion with your family!
- What keeps you together as a family, when you’re not very happy with one another?
- We belong to and depend on many different communities, all of which offer us friendship, love and security. How many different communities do your family members belong to? Have some fun adding them all up!
- What do you have in common with your dentist? Your mail carrier? Your school or city bus driver? Your bank teller?
- What’s one way you make life easier for someone in your family?
- Who in the family seems to like disagreement, and who doesn’t?
- What is the secret to getting along?
- What’s the difference between an opponent, and an enemy? How do those two words feel different?
- Have you ever made friends with someone whom you previously thought of as an enemy? What changed that allowed that to happen
- What is something in your life that feels unfair? How do you handle that?
- How does conflict feel in your body?
- Have you ever “turned the other cheek,” or “been the bigger person” in a fight or disagreement? How did that feel?
- What’s the best advice anyone has given you about getting along with others?
Return to the Discussion Throughout the Week
Thoughts develop with time. Find opportunities to bring up particularly compelling questions again during the month, maybe on walks, rides home, when tucking your child in to bed, etc. If thoughts grew or changed, notice together how we are all evolving beings, opening ourselves to new truths and understandings as we live our lives and connect with others.
Beloved Community is…
The Fair Housing Justice Center made a video with many voices sharing what the Beloved Community is, using their own words. Watch this video together as a family. Afterward, talk about which words most resonated with each of you. We’ve pulled a few powerful quotes below that you might use to prompt conversation.
“The Beloved Community is…
…people who make me comfortable, people who make me uncomfortable, people I don’t know, and people I’m very, very familiar with…and we are united by this divine call.”
…the opportunity to be truly free in a society that respects, hears, and understands its citizenry.”
…dignity and protection for all.”
…everyone has a stake in each other’s well being.”
…all of us together in the spirit of justice, in the spirit of love, in the spirit of humanity, in the spirit of oneness working to uplift communities that have been oppressed…”
Invitation: Spend time considering the many perspectives offered. What challenges you? What inspires you? The Fair Housing Justice Center is one organization founded on the principles of the Beloved Community. There are more! To learn more about endeavors inspired by the concept of the Beloved Community, join The King Center’s email list (bottom of the page) so you can plug into this organization’s ongoing educational and outreach work, or support it with a donation.
Extra Credit
Check out these readings and discussion questions about the Poor People’s Campaigns of the past and present: https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/poor-peoples-campaign-then-now