Things I Support

In a culture heavy into everything that’s wrong and passionate about everything one should be against, it behooves a person of integrity and decency on occasion to review and share what he or she supports.

In no particular order, at this particular point in my life, here is what I support.[1]

·         I support substantive ideas over generalizations.

·         I support having something redemptive to offer.

·         I support public and private help for vulnerable people who are placed in our path.

·         I support engaging in difficult conversations about complex issues and testing and trusting my words and my ideas.

·         I support public policies and transparent politics that give hope and inspire vision, that give honest appraisal of challenges and consider alternative proposals and concrete ideas in the search for real solutions.

·         I support public education as a context for teaching critical thinking and respectful disagreement.

·         I support diversity, equity, and justice as qualities that make us better people and a better society.

·         I support facing problems openly and working cooperatively to define them accurately in terms of needs.

·         I support clear and transparent communication and openness in sharing.

·         I support the ideal that every America adult should have a voice in the electoral process of this nation.

·         I support the idea that a human being’s body, gender identity, or sexual orientation are nobody else’s business.

·         I support the integrity of every ethnic group’s identity.

·         I support the idea that illness should not be a financial death sentence.

·         I support a police force fully trained in anti-racist law enforcement. [In order to retain standing as an ordained minister, my denomination requires Boundaries Training every five years.]

·         I support the idea that human safety from preventable gun violence should take priority over profits of gun manufacturers.

·         I support empathy toward migrant families and the working poor and people of color in their struggle for equity.

·         I support fair elections.

·         I support accurate American history taught to children.

·         I support LGBTQ+ human beings as deserving to be acknowledged.

·         I support anti-racism.

·         I support anti-fascism.

·         I support and trust Science.

·         I support wearing a mask in a pandemic.

·         I support bullied children and their parents.

·         I support being addressed with the gender with which one identifies.

·         I support pollution free communities and a pollution free planet.

·         I support empathy that makes human beings human.

·         I support the idea that compassion is the better path, that more voices make a sweeter sound, that everyone should have the chance to have joy in this life.

·         I believe in kindness, compassion, generosity, and love.

·         I support all it means to be deeply human.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim


[1] This list is adapted from a blog by one of my favorite bloggers, John Pavlovitz.


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