SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE for Personal Growth for January 2026
Learn about and connect with a group in your congregation or in the local community actively working on justice issues related to abolition. If you’re already connected, explore how you might deepen your involvement.
Some things to explore at UUCD include:
- Greater Danbury Unites for Immigrants
- The Palestine Solidarity Committee at UUCD
- UUCD’s work at Dorothy Day Hospitality House
- The CT UU Social Justice Ministry
As always, I’d love to hear about your experience with this challenge if you choose to take it on.
DAILY PRACTICE
Daily Chalice Lighting
We come together and light this chalice to unify our hearts again towards the clarion call of our time: May justice and equity guide us help to dismantle systems of oppression within us in order for all of us to be free. Adapted from Rev. Rebekah Savage
Daily Chalice Extinguishing
Leave this place with hope rekindled, not as wishful thinking but as stubborn practice. In a world drenched with despair, choose joy. Choose action. Choose to believe another way is possible, and live as if it’s already breaking through.
Daily Reading/Meditation
Civil resistance aims to change the status quo, but that’s not the only measuring stick. Protests of this sort are not only about the impacts they have on the external world; they are also important for effecting internal change. People who participate in these protests learn to straighten their spines and lift their voices. They learn about the possibilities for broad solidarity, and they learn the value and the discipline of nonviolence. Protests like No Kings are a way to exercise fundamental democratic rights and assert moral principles against the nihilism of the MAGA program. By locking arms with others and directing our shared sense of despair toward building a resistance movement, we bolster the sense of agency and possibility that democracy requires.