I received an email from the head of Love Rises, the knitting cooperative we began together in Ukraine three and a half years ago after the Russian invasion.
Over the past two years, we’ve worked side by side selling blankets and crocheted home goods—each one a symbol of hope.
Maryna, whose heroic efforts have helped hundreds of refugees and children, wrote the morning after fireworks lit up skies across the U.S.
She shared that following a horrific attack in Kyiv the night before, her team was finally able to get some sleep—and, remarkably, their spirits remain focused.
Then she thanked us for standing with those who are still fighting for freedom. She ended by reminding us that:
“We’ve been together through this." And she agrees with Dr. King that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
That quote attributed to MLK was first preached a hundred years before by an abolitionist named Rev. Theodore Parker. He was fanning the flames for justice that sparked during the civil rights movement a hundred years later. Rev. Parker’s vision about a long arc bending is true.
It doesn’t happen overnight or sometimes in two or three years. But while slavery was still the law, he preached freedom. His mantra would become a banner for freedom one hundred and ten years later.
All I want to say on these long hot summer days to is to keep on keeping on for years and years and believe there is a small bend.
Believing that love is the strongest force for change can help move the arc. Staying close to a community dedicated to love and justice can move the needle.
It may be the women in Ukraine continue to knit on the home front for freedom. It may be you doing your next small act with great love. It may be all of us doing all our small things with hope. But the bend in the arc will surely be impacted by a million things piling up until there is a slant change in the angle of the arc, whose trajectory then will forever be changed.
I looked up Rev. Parker’s exact quote, and it said:
-- Becca Stevens