Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community

What the Great Turning means to Me To me the Great Turning means the turning point -- right now -- in human history when the human spirit must, of life-or-death necessity, finally free its wings of enough mud and clay to begin to soar. For thousands of years our species has lived under conditions that have forced upon us fear and egoistic, "me-first" qualities. There was always an "out-group" out there somewhere who could threaten the "in-group" we belonged to, and as a result, our paradigms of togetherness have been "security through sameness and conformity," "security through accumulation of force," and "security through accumulation of wealth." Those paradigms have, with the globalization and universal interlinkage of the human habitat, been brought face to face with their own negative results: the possibility of global nuclear winter based on irreducible human differences, political hostility, and military violence, and the possibility of run-away climatic and ecological disruption based on economic abuse of the biosphere, each one or both together ending in a full-fledged Extinction Event. The alternative paradigm, toward which we must make the Great Turning, is "security through partnership." Other terms include "security through symbiosis," "security through mutual aid," "security through both sides winning," "security through prefering thy neighbor to thyself." Earth Community is, like God, transcendent. It looms beyond us, both as a past that was and is now lost and as a future that could be again but may fail to be born if we do not ACT. And yet, unlike the traditional God of past religions, Earth Community -- or the lack of it -- is also right here, right now, in our breath, in the food we eat, in the news we hear and see, in the diversity we can turn to almost anywhere. It is the medium in which we have our being. The Great Turning is my own turning. It is me summiting myself, climbing the mountain of my own inner potential for being engaged. Every free hour, every free minute that I can take another step upward, counts!! by John Dale, Board Member