This month we are exploring different aspects of liberation in our worship services. Together, we’ll be thinking about how we might answer the question: What does it mean to be a people of liberation?

Liberation is often equated with freedom, but I always think of the two as slightly different from one another. The notion of freedom so often seems tied up with individual rights. We want to be free to do what we please. We want to be free so we don’t have to answer to anyone else.

Liberation, on the other hand, has something of a communal nature to it. How can we be free together? What does it look like for freedom to transcend the individual desire to “do whatever I want” and become some both deeper and broader? In my mind, liberation is all about freedom in community.

The piece that gets added to freedom to make it liberation is the notion of responsibility. I think of our fourth UU principle: we affirm and promote the free AND responsible search for truth and meaning. You can’t just do whatever you want in that search. You have to be responsible as well. You have to be accountable to something or someone. We have to be accountable to each other in our searching.

This is the challenge of liberation: How can we be free and responsible? How can we be free and in community with others. It is also, in many ways, the challenge of Unitarian Universalism, the challenge of our “free faith.” As we explore liberation this month, let’s embrace that challenge head on!

Blessings,

Allison