Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis considers how individual decisions create collective change:
All of us must face and embrace the urgent need for deep social change—change that begins within, then spreads like ripples on a pond, and finally becomes a tsunami of love-inspired change. No matter your age, race, faith, gender, or sexuality, I hope … [to] give you a new sense of the power you have to be good and to insist on good; to care for others and insist on being cared for; to stand up for the vulnerable and stand against injustice; to love and be loved.…
I know this to be true: The world doesn’t get great unless we all get better. If there is such a thing as salvation, then we are not saved until everyone is saved; our dignity and liberation are bound together. We must care for ourselves and the village around us. If we don’t, the village’s problems become our problems, and together our children will continue to hide from bullets in their classrooms. Our elders’ safety nets will be threatened. Our young adults will face mounting debt and earn less than their parents. Fear, xenophobia, racism, bigotry—these problems belong to all of us, and they will get better as we all get better!
Father Richard Rohr points to the value of faithfulness to the common good:
What’s the great principle of Catholic moral theology? The common good. What is needed for the common good, and not just my private good? That’s a very hard question for Western people to ask. In fact, many of us don’t even know it’s a question anymore.
So be faithful! Go to the edge, find the beloved community, build the alternative, the parallel culture, in small communities. Václav Havel, the poet-president of the Czech Republic, is a good example. He was already building an alternative culture before the Berlin Wall fell. Through literature, study, poetry, ritual, and education, he helped create people who had a bigger vision and who thought in another way. When the system fell apart, they were ready to live with positive belief—not only clear about what they were against, but what they were for.
Lewis concludes:
I can see a bold new path led by a vision of the sacred goodness of humankind and the abundance of the planet’s resources…. You and I are the ones we’ve been waiting for to create better lives for ourselves and our communities and to build a better world—together. All we need is the courage to imagine, and the will to make it be so.
Source: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/a-collective-impact/ Thursday, June 26, 2025
