#BETTER IS COMING - Melvin Bray

We asked writer, educator, activist, and Emmy winner Melvin Bray, if the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the good, what is your prescription for change?

Melvin told us: I’ve been working on a manifesto for what I’m calling The BETTER Movement. What I’ve got so far is: Be BETTER!  Do more than try to feel better. Think and do better. Actually be the better you want to see in the world; don’t just want or wish or hope or dream. Disrupt and dismantle systems of oppression, especially if they privilege you. Inequity isn’t a look. We can be better than that! Feel free to deconstruct and reconstruct anything that falls short of the better you imagine possible. You get no extra points for being right about everything the first time. If you come up short, compost it! Plow it under and grow something better. And remember that we pass the aspiration for better along through our stories. So tell more beautiful, more just, more virtue-filled stories today. It’s simple: better stories, better world.

It still needs work, but you get the point!

BETTER seeks to answer the question: What if the world as it persists—with it’s racism, sexism, herterosexism, ableism, ecological disregard and so on—is exactly the world we storied into existence with the hostile faith stories we tell? The good news is that, if we storied our way into this mess, then we should be able to story our way out of it.