Book Review: Be the Change

[Ed.'s note: Shick will be presenting a workshop at the 2009 General Assembly, at which he will be discussing this book. Saturday, June 27, 3:30-4:45 p.m., Salt Palace Ballroom ABCD, workshop number 4037.]

"Every human being naturally possesses the power to initiate and sustain positive change," writes Stephen Shick, former director of U.S. programs for UUSC, in the introduction to his new book, Be the Change.

Be the Change offers a mixture of poems, meditations, prayers, and litanies meant to sustain the inner and outer journey of the peacemaker, the spiritual and worldly life of the activist.

With "Distant Return," Shick uses lines from Pablo Neruda's "Isla Negra" — "Here, I will be discovered and lost; / Here I will, perhaps, be stone and silence" — to reflect on the inevitability of mortality and the lasting gifts of active protest:

With "The Meaning of Suffering," Shick lifts up the voice and life's struggle of Dianna Ortiz, an American nun turned activist who was illegally imprisoned and tortured in 1989 by the Guatemalan government. Ortiz went on to found the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC), a UUSC partner and the only organization in the United States founded by and for people who have experienced torture. Shick's meditation concludes with the recognition that at some moments, "Speaking truth can be the most powerful way to give meaning to our suffering."

Opened with a foreword by Rev. Dr. William F. Schulz on the dynamics of "rescue" in social justice work and what it means to be a "rescuer," Be the Change gives readers much to ponder.