For people whose hearts are broken by seeing news of parents, families and children suffering anywhere, this has been a difficult month.
It was an ideal moment to be buoyed by hopeful news like the messages the King Center in Atlanta shared during their celebration of Be Love Day on July 9, as they invited people to pledge to Be Love every day in order to create and strengthen the beloved community Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned.
As part of the Be Love pledge says: “I pledge to allow love to drive my thoughts, words, decisions and actions, and honor the humanity of every individual. I pledge to speak the truth to power in love. I pledge to focus on defeating injustice and not destroying the person. I pledge to support leaders who demonstrate a love for humanity. I pledge to promote unity and refuse to perpetuate or magnify division. I pledge to demonstrate a life of courage, care and compassion as I boldly confront anything that stands in opposition to love.”
This is a needed path. Later this month, faith leaders and child advocates will gather at Children’s Defense Fund’s Haley Farm in Tennessee, CDF’s own space for building beloved community, for the 2025 Hall-Proctor Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry.
Named for Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall and Rev. Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, this is a place where faith, action and joy come together to build a better world, and an experience that helps participants continue the necessary, hopeful, sacred work of pursuing justice and joy for all young people.
Ten years ago, the beloved late South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu sent attendees a video message with a timeless exhortation for this work: “Justice needs champions. Good leaders with the ability to identify the challenges and the tenacity to address them. Good leaders driven not by personal ambition, but by an innate desire to improve the circumstances of the human family and the human condition.”
Archbishop Tutu continued: “We inhabit a moral universe. Goodness, righteousness and fairness matter. We are born to love — all of us, including Black, Latino and White [children] and everyone else. As members of the human family — God’s family — we were created with equal, infinite worth for interdependence. In conditions of harmony, equity and common purpose, the whole family thrives. God does not use strong-armed tactics to ensure justice is done. God empowers us to do the right thing. It is up to us — you, and you, and you, and me.”
He then shared what he believed was God’s dream for all children: “And God says, I have a dream. I have a dream that all of my children will discover that they belong in one family — my family, the human family — a family in which there are no outsiders; all are held in the embrace of the one whose love will never let us go; that each one of us is precious to God because each of us has their name written on the palms of God’s hands. And God says, there are no outsiders — Black, White, red, yellow, short, tall, young, old, rich, poor, gay, lesbian, straight — everyone. All belong. And God says, I have only you to help me realize my dream. Help me.”
Marian Wright Edelman is founder and president emerita of the Children’s Defense Fund.