Justice and Peace Consulting

Hello, good people!

Most of my followers are here on my professional business page because a piece I wrote about welcoming children in worship that went viral several years ago. It is so delightful to see your names pop up again every fall as it is reshared, and a blessing to me that it was, and continues to be, meaningful. You may not know that working with groups, often in congregational settings, is how I follow my calling.

Others of you have already experienced me as a workshop facilitator, speaker, preacher, or in one-on-one or small group settings of learning, growth, change, love, kindness, intervention, curiosity, and ethical reflection.

Yesterday, a beloved reminded me that it is helpful for me to make it easy for folks to find a list of what I do.

My website is, like me, at times, a bit lengthy. I have yet to master the art of micro-blogging or pithy memes, but I have this straight-up list for you at the link below. Easy as pie.

If such things are helpful for you, click through.

If you’ve experienced me facilitating a workshop, giving a talk, facilitating s*xuality and consent education classes, or leading a worship service, I’d love to hear about your experience.

Did the learning stick with you or was it something you remember, perhaps even fondly, but don’t remember what we did?
Did the work we did together have an ongoing impact?
Was the experience of working with sometimes challenging ideas or feelings one that felt safe enough for you to engage it bravely?
Did you find that your next move toward justice in some area was mapped out for you in part due to the experience?

What might you share with me below? I'd love to recieve it.

WORKSHOPS, TALKS, SERVICES AVAILABLE As much as I love a good story and meander toward a point, many people prefer lists over a narrative.  So here is a list of some of the workshops and offerings that are available. I bring over…

Today, in my faith tradition, many congregations engage in the practice of a ritual of mingling the waters as a symbol of how our community and faith come from many sources and join as one. It is a return and re-commitment to presence, to our covenantal relationships.

Different communities articulate this ritual of How We Show Up in their own unique ways. This piece below is about just one component of what is necessary for us to show up for one another, to develop and deepen relationships and community.

I have never worked with a congregation or other gathering of community life that did not struggle with Unstated Expectations And Lingering Resentments.

Like the ubiquitous Acronyms We Forget Aren't Actually Words And Tell Newcomers Nothing, unstated expectations interfere with building a beloved community. We can notice and name our needs and give those we have expectations of an opportunity to clarify how they can show up.

And finally, although I wrote this from a particular perspective, I have been on all sides of this piece more times than I can count.

***
Text is provided here, and also provided for screen readers in each image.

On Building Community II:
I want to show up for you, but
I didn't know I was meant to be a mind reader

I didn't know I was to anticipate needs
that had not been spoken.

I didn't know
that you are the one who always brought the pie,
the potato salad, the mac and cheese,
who brings the flowers for the front or fills in at the
nursery;
and that I ruined it
when I asked someone else.

I didn't know
when you said you wanted me
to visit you sometimes,
that you meant every week.

I didn't know the paint color I called "interesting," was
chosen in honor of the beloved founder, Fred, and his
unique bow ties, or that he ws your ex-husband.

I didn't know that when you said that you
didn't need anything that I was supposed to ask you
three more times;
until you told me the truth.
And I didn't know
that by believing you the first time
I would become the bad guy who didn't
help you properly
during your hour of need.

There's a mysterious set of rules here.
Opaque. Surprising and puzzling in turns.
No one told me,
but everyone believes I know.

I'm not even sure you know you expect it of me.
There's a blank space between your need
and my response,
full of assumptions that because of my role
I will automatically meet that need.

And worse, the belief that if I don't,
it is because I don't want to.

In the end, which may come unnecessarily soon,
you may say I failed you.

If so, it will be because I didn't know
I was meant to be a mind reader,
and you failed to notice that you
kept your true needs to yourself;
tightly wound in an unturned compost pile
of assumptions and "the way we've always done it."

It won't be me failing you;
we fail one another.

But if this continues, you will have a story to cling to;
a story of failure, again or still.
It might be an easy story that leaves you
with a predictable and familiar
righteously aggrieved disappointment,
but that will be in place of
what might have been the more subtle
and complex stories of our
developing relationships and growing community.

I believe one purpose of this community of ours
is to practice being in healthy, whole relationships.

You believe that, too.
It's the how that's tricky.

Making a community anew in times of change
is incredibly complicated.
It's unpredictable, frequently messy, and vulnerable.
Although we mostly don't like that feeling,
we can choose patterns of communication
that will move us toward more wholeness.

Here's a thing we don't often talk about:
Many of us were never taught how to
do this complicated thing of telling the truth
about our needs.
Some of us were taught that there is shame in need.
We can begin the work of unpacking that and reject it as nonsense. We can choose to lean into one another.

If I begin to ask you, "What else do I need
to know in order to support you?"
and "What do you need?"
will you tell me the truth?
Please?

CB Beal, 2024

Bearing Witness After The Mother’s Day Church Service

~If motherhood as a concept or a person for you is painful, rest your mind on the knowledge that many share your struggle. We share this internally contested territory that contains feelings of love and rage, loss and longing with millions. We bear witness~

***

Mother’s Day is a day on which we honor mothers.
They say this glibly as if it’s simple.

That’s the cultural message, but it’s so much pain for many of us, and today, I bear witness and invite you to as well. It is a day that left behind its origins as a day when some (white) mothers started demanding that the state stop sending their sons to war. It has become a day that honors a particular image or idea of motherhood founded in post-war 1950s white USAmerican picket fences, Dick and Jane and Spot. It left behind any semblance of proto-liberation for a whole people for an image and idea of individual mothers who stayed at home and lovingly cared for their children, making few mistakes but working so hard that an entire day had to be set aside annually for them to get it “off.”

Mother’s Day was never intended to celebrate mothers who spent six days and nights a week caring for other people’s children and then went home to their own, being raised in between by Grandmother or Auntie. Some of us parent but aren’t mothers. Some of us for whom this day was not designed may have found ways to adopt it as a celebration of the survival of a people and of the fierce commitment that many mothers bring to their children.

So, like many of our holidays, today’s celebration is contested territory. This holiday, revered in public, is poorly examined or contested in the broader social world. Nonetheless, it bears pain in the mind, bone, muscle, and ligaments of many bodies’ relationship to the idea or person of “mother.”

There lives in some of our bodies’ memories of pain, loss, and neglect. There, the pain of injury, intentional, and injuries of ignorance gnaw at us. Some of us were raised by mothers who wielded a hand to teach us a type of capitulating and fawning self-control they thought would or might protect us in our homes or in the world. Others of us were raised by mothers who wielded a hand in anger.
And also this: sometimes the things mothers did, the hands raised, the voices sharp and cutting, these things were reflections of what their own mothers had taught them. So many of us were raised by generations of mothers who did not know or understand that these would cause harm as they tried to teach us to be safe; these actions ultimately became some of what harmed us the most.

In some of our bodies lie the memory and pain of mothers who did not protect us, who did not notice or affirm us, who misinterpreted our calls for help, whether out of ignorance or their particular pain.

Some of our bodies mourn the loss of a mother who loved us and cared for us well but who has left us. Others of us mourn the loss of a mother who is still in the world but distant. We mourn mothers perhaps physically present but broken or mentally absent, or incarcerated, or removed from us by an acrimonious breakup. Some of us mourn the loss and absence of mothers we never knew at all.

Some of us experienced childhood with kind, generous, caring people who did not use the word “mother.” It was not an accurate gendered word for their identity relative to parenting. Nonetheless, they parented with kindness, nurturance, and compassion, only to be reminded on this set-aside day that our society considers them to be, at best, mother-adjacent. There are no cards that say Noni, MaDa, or Zaza. These parents know why their children will probably always make homemade cards. Some of us are these parents.

And some of us have chosen to detach ourselves from our mothers. We hold the pride of self-care necessary and finally obtained, as well as the grief and rage of all that made that necessary. We carry all that in our tiny, fragile bodies, even as we stride through the world, appearing fierce and independent.

Some of us face this day with pain because of our desire to be a mother, to give birth to a child from our bodies, or to parent. These desires have not come to pass, and we grieve the loss of a child or the possibility of children.

Some of us face this day as mothers ourselves, mentally running through a litany of regret and failure. Instead of remembering the time we taught our child the feeling words for his anger and rage, instead of hitting, we focus on how we could not accomplish something else.

Some of us struggle with self-recrimination. We bear deep grief over how long it took or is still taking to overcome our addictions or illnesses. We cough up this messy combination of how much we love our children and how ill-equipped we are to care for them. It tastes in the back of our throats like every kind of bile we have ever experienced, and we struggle not to drink, eat, or exercise that taste away but to live in the complexity of the distance between what we wish had been and what actually happened.

And yes, some of us were raised by caring, loving, giving, well-balanced, and healthy mothers who saw and respected us and helped us develop autonomy and self-esteem. Some of us were raised by mothers who set a standard of care for themselves and others, both. Like mama bears, these mothers were fiercely protective of us and also knew when they needed to move away and hibernate, a time away, even if just a good solid nap. They rejected the one-day-a-year off from imaginary parenthood but practiced a productive, as-needed re-filling of reserves. These mothers took it upon themselves to take mutual care of themselves and family and set a standard for us.

And for some of us, these mothers were other people’s Mothers, Fathers, MaDas, and Aunties; homes where we sought and received refuge, adults who saw, witnessed, and loved us.

In a world where we embrace the truth that many things can be true at the same time, “family” is right smack dab in the middle.

Today, amid the images of all this happy, shiny joy, after the breakfast in bed or that Mother’s Day set of hymns in church, and after you watch those adorable five-year-olds making their cards, I want you to know this: If motherhood as a concept or a person for you is painful, rest your mind on the knowledge that many share your struggle. We share this internally contested territory that contains feelings of love and rage, loss and longing—a territory about which we talk and share and listen and read books, which we heal through therapy or anonymous groups but not, perhaps in the church lobby this morning—with millions.

I join and witness you in this territory today even as we quietly sip our tea at coffee hour and simply smile politely when someone says, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

I bear witness. We can all bear witness. Together, we can bear the complexity of many things being true at the same time.

***
CB Beal, c. 2019, 2024
***
I invite comments and sharing on this public post.
If you choose to comment, do so to share and bear witness, not disagree or argue.
This post was written specifically for those for whom this piece resonates. If it resonates with you, I welcome sharing about that and invite others to witness you with comments and encouraging/loving reactions.

Transgender Day of Visibility.
(Two posts today, this is the long one.)
Dear my cisgender people,

It's International Transgender Day of Visibility,
and I’m Trans.

Genderq***r. Nonbinary.
And
I do education for a living.
It is literally how I pay my rent.
And
who I am intersects with, becomes,
is inextricably entwined with what I do.

I do my work as a visibly trans person every day,
but that's different than putting up a public post on
the Transgender Day of Visibility.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that every
fat,
q***r,
trans, or
neurodivergent person
wants to educate you or
open themselves to your gaze just because they post one day to claim space.

Or that I want to do that all of the time.

It's how I make a living, education.
But my work is rarely *about* me.
It’s about justice and liberation for everyone,
and how you, yes you, can move toward it.

Sometimes, like today, I open my heart and let people
peek into my whole and holy life, to
the way my identities complexify who I am in the world.
And I have complicated feelings about it,
because people often make the mistake of thinking
that education offered on social media
means it is free.

There is always a cost to public disclosure,
it's just that sometimes we choose to bear it,
the emotional cost.

This year TDOV has again been especially challenging.
The interpersonal, emotional, spiritual, physical, and legal assaults
on the well-being of me and my trans siblings
are heartbreaking and enraging in turn.

Some of it is political power-driven terrorism,
designed to make us run back to the closet,
to keep us from the health care we need,
while solidifying a reactionary base.
Some of it is white Christian nationalism
undergirding story after story in right-wing news;
finding an 'in'
to otherwise loving Jesus-followers
through sound bytes and ever-escalating rhetoric
designed not for thought or freedom, but for reactivity and control.

***

I can educate till the cows come home,
but I need you to do the work of figuring out
what you are willing to learn.

***
Today is Trans Day of Visibility.
I’m transgender. Genderq***r. Nonbinary.

When I was born, a doctor looked at my ge****ls and pronounced me female. Then, everyone thought that female and girl were the same exact thing. And most everyone thought that society had the right to supplant my individual autonomy and decide for me what I was; and more, society had the right to punish me when I deviated. I had no individual right to identity or autonomy.

But as I grew up, it was clear I wasn’t a girl, not really. People told me I was, and bullied or punished me for being the wrong kind of girl, but they were wrong. I was, at most, some sort of girl-type person. There wasn't a word for what I was, just what I wasn't. 

Now, I am clear that I’m not and never was a girl/woman. I am transgender. I exist across and away from what people expect, given the s*x I was assigned at birth.

(There are quite a lot of assumptions people think they can make just by looking at a person, eh?)

I’m also not a man. My trans/ness isn’t about people thinking I’m a woman but I’m really a man. I am neither a man nor a woman, although some trans people are.
I’m nonbinary.

By “nonbinary,” I mean that binary is the idea that men and women are opposite each other, just as yes is understood as the opposite of no. In computer programming, everything is either a one or a zero without alternatives or midpoints--Binary. My gender is not one of two “opposite” choices. it's a false dichotomy.

I’m genderq***r.
(Newer definition: a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with the idea of neither, both, all, or a combination of genders.)

People look at me and will variously think that I’m a woman-type person with a beard or perhaps a man-type person with breasts. I am comfortable being in a body that confounds people based on their expectations. My body isn’t anyone else’s business, even if I do choose to talk about it just a little today.

If people want to believe they can predict who other people are based on their physical attributes, I am happy to q***r that process for them.
(Older definition: strange; odd, confounding)

Other people might choose language to describe their gender with the exact words as me and mean something a little different, or they may use different words that mean something similar to what I mean. We are constellations. Our genders are stars and galaxies. We are not trapped between point a and point b, between man and woman—we are part of the vast creation greater than anything we can imagine.

And so are you.

***

Why on earth do I have to tell you these things that many consider private?

Firstly, I talk about this in solidarity with my trans siblings. I don't live under the radar, I live as a visibly trans person. I talk about this out loud because trans youth are harmed by caretakers every day; by family, friends, social workers, law enforcement, teachers, and entire state governments. People harm trans people in all manner of ways. It is heartbreaking and frightening.


I also talk about this here for you, my cisgender* friends. Allies, find out what the trans people and organizations in your area need, and fill that need. Stop causing or permitting harm. The fire hose of anti-trans news and anti-trans legislation is funded by the same people, organizations, and institutions who fund climate change and c0v!d denial. Hysteria can quickly supplant individual or parental rights.

Search deep in yourselves as well. As long as cisgender* people believe that humans only come in the two genders, men and women, all sorts of cisgender people also have to cram themselves into a box. They have to pick a box that answers the question, “Am I a man or a woman?” This part, to a cisgender person, might not seem a big deal.

But then they have to answer the *next* question, and this is the one that holds danger. “What is a man, and how do I perform it correctly to keep people from shaming or harming me for not doing manhood right?”

Or, “What is a woman, and how do I act like one well enough to avoid people shaming or injuring me for doing womanhood wrong?”

It hurts everyone to have to grow up learning and enforcing gender and gender stereotypes instead of just becoming who they are.

(*A cisgender person is one whose s*x assigned at birth matches up with their gender in the commonly expected way.)

Thirdly, being visible as a trans person is a decision I have made to be on the Side of Love, on the side of people who are among the most vulnerable in the world. I experience privileges that help protect me from some of the worst of gender identity-based oppression.

But I will not allow those privileges to make me complacent or suggest that I should hide or pretend, for convenience and better employment opportunities.

I will do everything in my power to upend systems of oppression, and part of that is being visibly trans every single day.

The benefit to me is that where there was once sorrow or shame, now I experience the joy and power in authenticity and the spiritual wholeness that becomes possible when we embrace our whole and holy selves.

To you, my trans siblings in gender nonconformity and creative constellations of gender,
I love you.
Keep your beautiful selves safe.
Don’t give up and don’t give in.
You have the right to your whole and holy self,
to your whole and holy bodily autonomy.
It is your birthright to be able to make decisions about your body,
and live with autonomy and freedom.

My Unitarian Universalist faith rests on this foundation:
All of us means all of us.
We all get free together.

Today is trans day of visibility.

Hi, I’m CB, and I’m trans nonbinary. I'm genderq***r.




Image description.
This image contains multiple photographs of CB overlaid on the pink, blue, and white of the trans flag. One photo is from when they were a child and were wearing brightly colored striped bellbottoms in front of a house with a barn in the background. There is the date 1974 superimposed.
An image of CB in 1988 wearing heavy black glasses and a black leather jacket, hair short. Another of CB wearing comfortable loose clothing, holding a niece up in the air as she tries to catch bubbles at a science museum in 2008. There are other photos as well, head or upper torso shots of CB later in life, same heavy black glasses and short-cropped hair. Sometimes with a salt and pepper goatee. Sometimes with a vest and tie, sometimes with a flannel shirt and a ball cap. Always with a big grin.
The words read: Transgender Day of Visibility. Hi There! It's Me!
Authenticity is a birthright.
I've always been nonbinary. Genderq***r.
My pronouns are they, them, theirs.

This was a year ago, but I needed to revisit it this morning before I finish preparing for my day. Maybe you, too, will find it good timing.

"I learned from her that persistence isn’t boundaryless, but it is committed. It was obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. It was showing up again and again, mindful of time and change and growth, careful of the human heart, to say, “You can grow. You can be more sane. You can heal from the lies and violence done to you. And I can help you without doing the work for you.” ~me

Music includes:
Where You Go (Shoshanna Jedwab)
We Are (Sweet Honey in the Rock)
I'm Not Alone (Aly Halpert and Anat Hochberg)
I Am Light (india.arie)
Plowshare Prayer (Spencer LaJoye)
Blackbird (Jon Batiste)
You're Not Alone (Lea Morris)
One Voice (Clayton State University Choir, Sean Vogt, director)

Below is simply an image of the landing page. The L!nk itself is in the first comment to try to keep FB from limiting the reach of this post that directs you to a non-FB site.

The sun returns to my north-facing loft each spring like a fulfilled promise. ~CB Beal

I capture the moment with my phone's camera each year. Sometimes, it's a week or so before there is a cloudless sky in the late afternoon to allow for the noticing. Sometimes, it appears the first day, peaking around the walls outside my windows. Sometimes, the just-right picture doesn't appear for a few weeks.

But I wait and trust.

Even when trust is bitter in my mouth,
when trust requires a measure of faith in
humanity that has
gone on a walkabout
or hid in a blanket fort.
(It is often impossible to tell
if it is faith
or humanity
that is missing.)

I wait and trust.

I struggle against that which is heavy
and cold, that makes me sleep
with teeth clenched against
the screaming—
climate disaster, pandemic denial,
wars, rumors of wars, and
massacres misnamed as war; the
theft of bodily autonomy, and
elevation and celebration of fascist power—
those human choices that accelerate us toward
catastrophe, the horrors that
just
don't
end.

There is no promise of a return or
end to the disasters
that humans create;
yet the sun returns.

Through it all, that ball of fire in the sky,
consistent for billions of years,
reminds us of whatever we choose
to be reminded of.

The sun's return reminds me
of my belief that we are
inherently worthy of Love.
Completely separate from our choices,
our actions, our mistakes, and
intentional harms, we
are held in the embrace of Love
greater than ourselves, our world,
our universe.

We can choose, moment by moment,
sunbeam by sunbeam, to
act out of that Love which flows
in and around us with the promise
that we are not required to choose power
over care and mercy,
or politics over justice.

I choose Love.
I choose to tell the truth as
I can, and attend to others’
with a humble heart.
I choose, as the prophet invited,
to live as if the reign of God,
of justice and liberation,
is among us now.
The sun's return reminds me
each year to reaffirm my commitment.

I choose, through it all,
to retain my humanity.

~CB Beal

IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF WE GAVE GUIDANCE BASED ON DATA?
“…most infections probably come from people who are not currently experiencing symptoms.”

Dr Lawler says it better than I can. Highly recommend you spend the 12 minutes on the !inked v!deo in comments.
All words on the attached image follow:

Speaker. O.—Doctor James Lawler, MD, MPH. University of Nebraska Medical Centers’, Global Center for Health Security.

“Today we're going to step into an alternate. Alternate universe and imagine what would happen if we gave guidance based on data.”

“So 13% of people in this study experienced long C&VID. The majority of those were female. And that's been seen in many studies. Females tend to have more diagnosed or self-referenced long C&VID than males. And what you see here is in those persons who had been identified with long C&VID across the board all of these cognitive symptoms. Are much higher in those patients with longer post C&VID conditions.”

“We’ve seen a pattern in national guidance around C&vid that’s really driven more by political pressure and magical thinking than it is by true data and the interest of the public health. This is a pattern because it’s pretty easy to see going all the way back to May of 2021.”

“Know that people with C&VID-19 continue to shed virus and present a transmission risk to others for an extended period of time - on average for seven to 10 days.”

“…most infections probably come from people who are not currently experiencing symptoms.”

C&VID is a feminist issue
C&VID is a justice issue
C&VID is an ethical issue
C&VID is a religious issue

Hello, Good People!

This page is mostly a placeholder now. In the absence of my willingness to pay the platform to show these posts to anyone they mostly just languish, lonely.

The most up-to-date material is going to be on my personal profile.
I drop things here occasionally so folks who come to see what I'm about when they're looking for a consultant or educator have a starting place.  And because you never know when an algorithm will change .

Find me more regularly on Facebook at CB Beal
Http://tinyurl.com/4wubncc3

Tonight is the longest night. If your church is holding a Blue Christmas/Longest night service in memory of those we have lost, and challenges we have faced, there are ways we can be together that will also ensure that it does not become an event that we remember sadly next year.

Image description: 
This is an image of angel wings flying toward a star in the dark, over a mountain range at night. The words Blue Christmas appear.
The test reads: Don’t let the Blue Christmas service of healing and hope deliver illness instead. Wear high quality respirator masks, open doors and windows, use HEPA quality filtration.




Hello, good people!

Don’t Believe Everything You Think is a helpful tool for Preemptive Radical Inclusion. We most often talk of it when talking about how we have internalized cultural misinformation, bias, marginalization, and oppression.

But it also includes what we think about ourselves.

This is a time of year in the northern hemisphere when there is little sun, much weather, and holidays full of compulsory family time, or conversely, the loss of not being able to be with the family we want. Reflecting on the presence and absence of family can lead us to reflect on our history. Who we are, and from whom we came.

This might be accompanied by grief and reminders of how our family was or was not present and healthy in our lives.

This is a time when old messages, put in our psyches and sense of self by people who may have been intentionally evil or may not have known better, arise as if they have a life of their own.

I call them the lying liars, those who put these negative thoughts about my worth or competence into the very core of my being.

Some of the lying liars were the ones who lied to us about our worth, our value, our strength, and our capacity.

Other lying liars told us how much better we were because we were white and/or men and/or straight and/or Christian and/or able-bodied and/or …
Other lying liars told us how we were unworthy because we were women and/or femmes and/or q***r and/or trans and/or BIPOC and/or...
Other lying liars told us we were unworthy because we were bad, failures, unable to fit ourselves into their mold and follow their instructions for control. Those lying liars assessed goodness according to compliance and competence by obedience. They were wrong.

There is little limit to what the lying liars might have implanted in our minds.

But we can interrogate them, those thoughts, and check out if they're true.

The first move to determining if a thought or idea is true is to figure out where the idea came from.

Did it come from those we have now been able to identify as lying liars? If so, they are automatically full of reasonable doubt. We can assume they are wrong and make them prove they are right instead of the other way around.

Did these old messages of shame or unworthiness (ours or others) come from those who thought they had our best interest at heart and did the best they could but who passed on mistaken and harmful ideas and beliefs which they had inherited from their own lying liars? We need to extend our curiosity and limit the power of those thoughts. We can assume they might be wrong and explore other possibilities.

One of the core lies is the lie of individualism, the idea that we must pull ourselves up by our bootstraps even if the boots are worn and the straps are broken. Getting healthier and whole does not have to be self-care as a solo experience, but we can care for one another in community. We share and repair bootstraps.

Truth be told, I don’t think we can become whole without community care. Individualism itself reinforces the old lies by limiting our access to new messages, access to meaningful, honest, vulnerable, supportive relationships with others.

We can support one another and hold up what is good, strong, and beautiful in one another and replace the words and ideas of those lying liars with love and accurate reflection. This can come from those who know and love us and have our best interest at heart now. We can replace the words of the lying liars that lead us to make our own mistakes and cause our own accidental harm with a more accurate representation of reality, of how the world works, how it can work when we join together and collaborate. We replace those words by the practice of becoming more whole while helping others be more whole as well.

Seemed like the lying liars couldn't stop squelching your goodness. But you can stop letting them live in your head unchallenged. As quickly as you reach out to a child or beloved to tell them that the harmful idea they have about themselves is not true, let others reach to you.

We can choose to help one another, love one another, lift our individual and collective goodness, replace false thoughts with curiosity and positive reflections. Then we will discover new truth, and then develop wisdom.

We can apply this tool of Preemptive Radical Inclusion to ourselves, too. We do not have to believe everything we think about other people, making space for them to be themselves, authentic; and we also don’t have to believe everything we think about ourselves. We can seek out and uncover our inherent worthiness.

We can claim a benediction, a blessing, as our birthright, to
love your people, and let them love you.

***
CB Beal (me) has been writing and teaching using the framework of Preemptive Radical Inclusion for over a decade. Would you like to read more about this here? Let me know.

Do you have ideas about how we can engage the lying liars in our heads in a way that grants grace for growth and takes the power out of old, lying, shaming messages to begin to replace them with messages about the wholeness of your heart and capacity to do good? I would love to read them here.

As always, respectful conversation. My Facebook posts are like my living room. We engage one another with kindness and curiosity, seeking to bear witness, not to win points. And on posts like this one, we are careful, if we name harm, not to describe it in detail so that we don’t cause further harm to others.

Love, me

(edit of OP from 2017)