30 Days Of Love 2025
INHABITING OUR FREEDOM DREAMS

INHABITING OUR FREEDOM DREAMS

Now is the time to practice that which we seek to grow in our world—deeply, compassionately, and at the scale of relationships in our communities. As the governing and power structures of our world rely more and more on domination, exploitation, and disposability to consolidate power, we must hold onto and grow ours.

Our power is grounded in our values that proclaim the transformative power of love and harness the enduring power of community. We are the antidote to our fear.

Our collective work is to practice the new world we seek to build, drawing inspiration from abolitionist and emergent strategies for liberation, as explored in Andrea Ritchie’s Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies. Liberation is our North Star guiding us through these times.

This year’s theme, Inhabiting Our Freedom Dreams, draws inspiration from Robin D.G. Kelley’s Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, tracing the prophetic affirmations and spiritual work of justice movements as guides to how each of us can call new worlds into being.

Week One: We Are Home

In January 2021, immigrant communities, organizers, and their allies met the change in the US Presidential Administration with determination and courage, focused on ending the cruel, xenophobic policies from the Trump administration.

Envisioning a pathway toward healing, over 20 immigrant-led coalitions came together to launch the “We Are Home” campaign, delivering a clear message rooted in their undeniable humanity and worth.  With three concrete demands and an intersectional organizing strategy shaped by youth, worker, and multi-racial coalitions, the “We Are Home” campaign not only called out the dehumanizing policies that have long criminalized immigrants and immigrant families, but centered the essentially transformative role that immigrant communities have in a free and fair society.  “We Are Home” was, and is, a message of invitation - to become a country that truly welcomes, cares for, and celebrates all. 

Today, the current Presidential Administration threatens to enact even crueler policies than previous administrations. As exclusion and brutality become further codified in our nation’s practices and policies, “We Are Home” invites us to reflect honestly. Can any of us feel at home in a society that continues to deny the basic rights of millions of our friends, family members, and neighbors?

Take Action

Body Practice

Ritual: “under state violence, we harbor each other” 

by Rev. Alaina Alexander from sacred incantations: rituals of trans wisdom for every season

  • Time Needed: 5 minutes

  • Items Needed: A handful of dirt

  • Context: State violence looms large over our lives as a constant threat or worry.  Because of this we often feel as if we don’t belong here, wherever here may be, and we forget that we have existed and found shelter in each other since the beginning. 

  • Ritual

    • Find a place outside.  Sink your fingers into the dirt.

    • Pick it up, clutch it, smell it, experience it.  Remind yourself that we are creatures of this earth.  It is where we came from and where we return.  You belong.

    • Imagine the world before states and how we cared for each other.  Imagine collapse and how we support each other through.  Imagine you and the people you love free from the worry of governmental harm.  

    • Let the dirt slip through your fingers, and imagine how to bring pieces of that world to life now. 

Family Activities

READ/WATCH TOGETHER

Where Are You From

Written by Yamile Saied Méndez, Illustrated by Jaime Kim

Watch and Listen

Watch the official launch video of the “We Are Home” campaign from January 2021, created by undocumented artists Samantha Ramirez-Herrera and Aline Mello.

Creative Practice

MURAL OR COLLAGE

Listen to Ricardo Levins Morales’s invitation Dreaming of the Soil.  Then, create a mural or collage that responds to his invitation:

“What stories, what narratives, what beliefs – if they were widely disseminated in the soil of our communities – would make it easy to win?”

Journal Practice

Write about a vision of home where everyone has freedom, safety, and access to resources.

  • What’s one thing you can do now to make this vision a reality?

SING TOGETHER

Migrants Day 18 December 2024 : Migrants Day Kids Song

Week Two: Trans People Are Divine

Trans people are divine. This profound truth, first gifted with the world by J. Mase III and Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi in their Black Trans Prayer Book, is not just a statement but a powerful declaration of sacredness and resilience. It reminds us that trans and nonbinary existence is ancient, predating the oppressive systems of colonization, white supremacy, imperialism, and patriarchy that seek to erase or control it. Last week, one of the first actions of the current administration was to enact executive orders that limit the ways trans and nonbinary people can legally identify in our country. It was the latest effort in an ongoing campaign to legislate these divine beings out of existence.

It will not work.

Trans and nonbinary people have always been here. Acknowledging this calls us to honor them as vital and irreplaceable members of the human family and essential threads in the divine tapestry of creation. We affirm this not just as a response to oppression, but as a truth that has always existed. Their presence is a testament to the enduring power of transformation and creation, defying the forces that seek to constrain them and teaching us all how to manifest a more liberated future.

Take Action

Body Practice

Ritual: “a cleansing ritual after an experience of racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic speech” 

by Audria Byrd from The Black Trans Prayer Book (co-edited by J Mase III & Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi)

  • Time Needed: 5 minutes

  • Items Needed: fragrance oil*

  •  Ritual (as formatted in book)

apply a fragrance oil to the wrists

hold your wrists up to your nose and inhale

breathe deeply in

hold the breath for a beat

and exhale fully

allow the scent to fill your lungs

let the violent speech dislodge from where it has taken

unwelcome residence in your mind

and leave your body on the wind of your breath

then recite the words,

“your ignorance has no power over me”

and once more breathe deeply in

hold the breath for a beat

and exhale fully

move on in your freedom

engage your mind with other matters worth your time

continue to inhale the scent when the violent words

whisper in your mind

if it will not leave you still

call upon the counsel of someone you trust

and tell them of the violent speech you witnessed

and allow them to carry the burden and dispose of it for you

*Individuals with scent sensitivities are invited to adapt this practice by focusing on the coolness of the air they inhale, as it replaces the encountered speech

Family Activities

READ/WATCH TOGETHER

Calvin

Written by J.R. Ford Vanessa Ford and illustrated by Kayla Herren

Watch and Listen

Everybody Deserves to Be Free" by Deva Mahal with The Resistance Revival Chorus

Creative Practice

Work through the “Symbols of Support” portion of Session Three from the UU Common Read Resource Kit for Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and Their Families

Alternative prompt possibility: Create an expression of “the sacredness of expansiveness” of gender through collage, music, sculpture, fashion, etc.

Journal Practice

Alok Vaid-Menon reminds us:

“The beauty of being nonbinary is that we are limitless.”

Reflect on how binary thinking in general limits our collective freedom. How can you embrace the sacredness of expansiveness you learn from your Trans and Nonbinary siblings in yourself and others?

SING TOGETHER

“Let’s Sing about GENDER!”

Created by Lindsay Amer

Week Three: Water is Life

Mní Wičóni. Water is life. This sacred truth, which echoed around the world as the Standing Rock Sioux Nation led the movement to resist the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline across the Missouri River, reveres the interdependence that defines all of our existence. In both the original Lakota and translated English, Mní Wičóni (Water is life) reminds us that honoring our connections to the elements—the air, the land, the water—transforms our communities. When we fully embrace water not just as a resource for life but as the source of life, we shift from extracting its power to tending to it with reverence. Water—life—is no longer a commodity or an obstacle but instead accompanies us as a close relative.

Mní Wičóni, Water is life, is not just an anthem of resistance against the devastation and violence that colonization continues to inflict upon this world. Yes, to declare “water is life” is to demand an end to the pipelines and mines that destroy ancestral lands, as well as the deadly pollution of waterways and neighborhoods caused by chemical plants and industrial agriculture. But it is also a message of healing and hope, grounded in the wisdom of communities that have endured and persevered through the worst of humanity. It is sacred guidance—an invitation to all of us—to not only end the harm we have caused but to restore the gratitude and care inherent in the ecosystems to which we belong.

Take Action

Body Practice

Breathing Meditation

Suggested Time: 10 minutes

Instructions:

Family Activities

READ/WATCH TOGETHER

CaWe Are Water Protectors

Written by Carole Lindstrom, Illustrated by Michaela Goade

Watch and Listen

"The Waves We Give" by Beautiful Chorus

Creative Practice

Create your own Zine to illustrate and/or deepen your responses to the journal practice question, “Indigenous water protectors remind us that water has inherent rights and wisdom.  How can you shift your thinking to honor water as a relative rather than a resource?” 

Journal Practice

Indigenous water protectors remind us that water has inherent rights and wisdom. 

How can you shift your thinking to honor water as a relative rather than a resource?

SING TOGETHER

“The Water Song”

by Mary Lou and Dan Smoke

Week Four: There are Black People in the Future

We are on new terrain, but the work remains the same. Side With Love proclaims the power of love to end oppression and build a just and loving world where we all thrive. In this final week of 30 Days of Love, we honor Black History Month at a moment when this administration seeks to resegregate America and establish and enforce a global racial hierarchy. This week's theme is a bold proclamation of sacred and revolutionary truth: there are Black people in the future. What becomes possible when we inhabit this prophecy of Black resilience and liberation in our lives today?

These words from Interdisciplinary Artist and Cultural Producer Alisha B Wormsley are a declaration of resilience, commitment to solidarity, and insistence that victory is ours! It is a refusal to accept the erasure of Black existence, imagination, and liberation. It is a call to action for Unitarian Universalists and all people of faith and conscience to engage in the sacred work of co-creating a future where Black lives thrive. 

At its core, "there are Black people in the future" disrupts all narratives of disposability, which sanction discrimination, inequity, injustice, and genocide. It offers instead a vision of boundless possibility. As a faith committed to justice and love, this theme challenges us to ask: What are we doing today to ensure a just and liberated future for Black people? Are we confronting the systems that perpetuate harm? Are we uplifting Black leadership, creativity, and wisdom? Are we actively dismantling white supremacy within and beyond our communities? Who must we be? What must we do? What transformation unfolds today if Black life and thriving are the promises of our future? What will you put into practice today to fulfill this promise?

May we move forward with courage, faith, and unwavering love. The future is now, and Black liberation is the path to collective liberation. Let us build it together.

Take Action

Body Practice

Climate Justice Multigenerational Body Practice

by Antoinette Scully (originally recorded for 30 Days of Love 2024)

Family Activities

READ/WATCH TOGETHER

The Day You Begin, Written by Jacqueline Woodson; Illustrated by Rafael Lope

Watch and Listen

""Together", Lea Morris

Creative Practice

Self-Portraits, from UUA curriculum Deeper Joy: Games, Songs, Activities and Practices for Community-Builders!, Module: Canyons of Deeper Sharing

Journal Practice

Write about a moment when you felt the power of Black resilience in history. Ask yourself what action you can take to facilitate a future that builds resilience by nurturing Black joy?

SING TOGETHER

"I Am The Future of Black History”, Culture Queen