The Threads That Bind Us Together

Why mutual care, equality, and liberty matter more than any banner we wave

Dear friends

I’ve been thinking about you this past week, and wondering how the practice of giving and receiving unfolded in your own lives. Did it feel natural, or did it stir something more complicated? Did it open space for connection, or did it reveal how much fear has been shaping the way you reach for one another?

However it showed up, I’d be glad to hear from you in the comments — your reflections, your hesitations, even the smallest moments that stayed with you. Practices like these often reveal more than we expect. Sometimes they open a window and let in fresh air, reminding us that trust is still possible. Other times they surface how much fear or weariness has taken root, and that, too, is important to notice.

I've been sitting with thoughts of why care for others is so important in such a time, and why our values should speak louder than our vision. What my thoughts keep returning to is this:

When an authoritarian leader says aloud at a televised event that he hates those who voted against him, he is not just revealing his own animosity. He is sending a message to the whole country: that nearly half the population is an enemy to be despised. In this case, forty–eight point three percent of the electorate. Seventy–five million people.

And so I wonder: where does that leave the marchers? The letter writers? The petition signers? Eleven million people on the streets would not shift such a man — they could be waved away as traitors. Seventy–five million could be dismissed as proof of how deep the supposed corruption runs. To him, these very numbers would be used to confirm the danger, rather than compel a response.

This is how authoritarianism works. It does not need to silence every voice — it only needs to persuade enough of the populace that the voices on the other side do not matter. That they are not neighbours with concerns, but enemies to be crushed. That their suffering is deserved. That their children’s safety is less urgent. That their hopes do not count.

If we meet that posture only with a vision, we may lose. By vision I mean the banners we raise about what the country should look like. Visions of restoring the middle class. Of bringing back jobs. Of securing the border. Of achieving universal healthcare. Each side carries its visions, and each believes their own is what the nation most needs.

These visions in themselves are not wrong, or unworthy. They are real hopes and needs — they matter. But visions, however stirring, cannot unite us when trust has already broken down. They are like maps drawn from different starting points — one charting north, another south — leaving each camp more certain the other is headed the wrong way. They tell 'the other side' that their way of life will be overruled, because what sounds like safety to one group sounds like loss to another. The volume rises. The distance widens.

Until we ourselves are rooted in the values we want our country to reflect, the visions we carry will only deepen the divide between us. Values are what keep us human to one another when our horizons look so different. They are what let us disagree without seeing enemies. They are the ground that makes dialogue possible at all.

Which means that if we are to resist this, we need to be asking a different question. Not how we make him see, but how we reach one another across the divide he is working so hard to deepen.

The Founding Fathers argued over structures, systems, and details, but beneath the disagreements, they recognised certain truths they believed should hold in any free society. They named liberty. They named equality. They named justice. They named the rights that every human being carries simply by being alive — rights not given by governments, but secured by them.

Those values were written into founding documents in words broad enough to outlast their authors. Words that rang true even when the men themselves failed to live by them. Words that enslaved people, women, and entire communities later held up to demand what had been denied.

Liberty

From the beginning, liberty was set at the centre of the American experiment. Not liberty as the licence of the strong to take what they wished, but liberty as freedom from arbitrary power. It was the conviction that no king, no ruler, no single authority should ever hold absolute sway over people’s lives.

Liberty is the space to breathe. The space to speak openly. To worship without fear. To choose a path that is yours. However differently we describe it, we know it matters. Across this country, people still cherish liberty — and know, deep down, that life without it is no life at all.

Equality

The words were written in 1776: all men are created equal. Imperfectly lived, contradicted by slavery and exclusion, but still planted as a seed. From that seed, generations drew strength. Abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights marchers — each insisted that equality must mean more, must reach further, must finally include all.

Equality is the recognition that no one is born to rule, and no one is born to serve. That each person carries inherent worth. And though we have stumbled and struggled to live by it, the conviction remains. Across every divide, most still believe that no life is lesser by birth.

Natural rights

Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. These were not framed as gifts of government, but as rights woven into human existence itself. The role of government was not to grant them, but to safeguard them. To secure what already belongs to every person by nature.

This belief has endured. It reminds us that there is something in each of us — untouchable, unalienable — that no regime can take away. However power shifts, the worth and dignity of human beings are not negotiable.

Justice

Justice was another foundation. It meant that laws must be fair. That power must be bound by principle. That corruption and cruelty could not be disguised as order. Justice was never meant to serve the strong alone, but to shield the vulnerable and to keep society in balance.

The hunger for justice runs deep. It is the longing for a world where effort is honoured, where wrongs are answered, where fairness is not an exception but the rule. That longing is still with us — steady, insistent, shared.

Self-government

At the heart of the republic was this conviction: governments draw their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Not from divine right. Not from family inheritance. But from the people themselves.

Self-government is the belief that ordinary people are capable of shaping their own common life. Through representation, through debate, through compromise, through vote. It is the conviction that power must answer to us — and that democracy is strong when we take our rightful place within it.

Checks on power

The founders were clear-eyed about human nature. They knew that people are fallible, ambitious, prone to self-interest. So they built limits into the system — not to weaken it, but to keep it honest.

Checks and balances were not just a mechanism. They were a value in themselves. A recognition that concentrated power cannot be trusted. A commitment to guard against domination, by dividing authority and requiring accountability. It was their way of saying: no one should be above the law.

Pluralism

Finally, there was pluralism, even in embryo. The recognition that people would not all believe alike, or live alike — and that liberty meant making room for difference. The First Amendment enshrined this in practice, protecting both freedom of religion and freedom from its establishment.

Pluralism is what allows us to live side by side without demanding uniformity. It is the value that makes space for difference, while reminding us that we are still one people. It is what lets “we the people” stretch wide enough to hold us all.

These values — liberty, equality, natural rights, justice, self-government, checks on power, pluralism — are not abstractions on parchment. They are living truths. They are what allow us to recognise one another across every line of division. They are what remind us that we are still bound by something deeper than politics, and still capable of meeting one another on common ground.

Practising care for one another moves those living truths into flesh and blood. It becomes their embodiment.

When we offer care, we are protecting liberty. Not in the abstract, but in the most immediate way: we give another person room to breathe, room to be themselves without fear. Liberty is not only about laws and courts; it is also about the daily assurance that someone will stand beside you, that you will not be left alone or silenced. Care widens that space. It says: you are free to be here, just as you are.

When we receive care, we affirm equality. We acknowledge that worth is not measured by wealth or status or strength, but by being human. To accept care is to say: I am not above you, and I am not beneath you. We are equals in our need, equals in our capacity to give and to receive. Every time we allow ourselves to be touched by another’s kindness, we are strengthening the truth that no life is lesser.

To care for someone is to recognise their natural rights. The right to life. The right to safety. The right to dignity. These are not privileges handed down by governments, but truths woven into every human being. When we feed the hungry, shelter the vulnerable, or stand up for those unseen, we are not bestowing gifts. We are acknowledging rights that already belong to them. Care becomes the way we protect what cannot be legislated away.

To act with care is to practise justice — not as a theory, but as a relationship. Justice is fairness made visible: the simple act of refusing to let someone else carry their burden alone. When we step in with compassion, we are repairing imbalance. We are insisting that wrongs will not stand unanswered, that fairness is not a distant ideal but something we make real, here and now, in the ways we choose to show up for each other.

In choosing care over indifference, we strengthen self-government. Democracy is not only ballots and institutions; it is a way of living together. It depends on citizens who recognise their responsibility to one another, who see themselves as connected and bound. Every time we offer care, we renew that bond. We say: we are capable of shaping our life in common, because we are capable of caring for the people who share it with us.

Care is itself a check on power. Authoritarianism thrives on isolation, on convincing people that community does not exist and that only the strong survive. Care resists that lie. It keeps community alive at the smallest scale, where domination cannot so easily reach. Each act of care — quiet, steady, human — becomes a form of accountability. It says: power cannot decide everything, because here, in this space, we choose compassion instead.

And care is the essence of pluralism. It is what allows us to live side by side without demanding uniformity. To care for someone is to acknowledge that they are not the same as you — and that difference does not make them less deserving. Care says: even if we do not agree, even if we do not live alike, our lives are still entangled. Your wellbeing touches mine, and mine touches yours. Care is what keeps “we the people” wide enough to hold us all.

Care is not separate from our values, it is their everyday expression. The act of giving and receiving is how we keep liberty, equality, justice, and all the rest from becoming hollow words. It is what makes them visible in the world.

Which brings us back round to anchored hope.

Hope can be fragile. Untethered, it drifts with every headline, rising and falling with each turn of the news cycle. But anchored hope is different. Anchored hope is steady because it is held in something deeper than circumstance. It draws its strength from values that do not shift with political winds.

When we anchor our hope in shared values we are not only steadying ourselves; we are creating ground strong enough to hold one another. That kind of ground makes unity possible — not the shallow unity of everyone agreeing, but the deeper unity of people remembering what they share, even while they differ.

History shows us what becomes possible when that kind of unity takes root.

In the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, it was not a single vision that carried people forward, but the shared conviction that equality and justice were not concessions to be granted in due time. Ordinary men and women anchored themselves in those values, even when it meant facing dogs and fire hoses — even when jail cells awaited them. Anchored hope kept them singing as they marched. And in time, it shifted the conscience of a nation.

In Eastern Europe, authoritarian governments told their people they were powerless and alone. In Poland in 1980, when the Solidarity movement first gathered in the Gdańsk shipyards, it seemed impossible that workers could challenge a communist regime. Yet they anchored themselves in the belief that human dignity and freedom belonged to them. Across the Baltic states in 1989, nearly two million people joined hands to form a human chain stretching over four hundred miles through Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. None of these people could have known the outcome — but they were anchored in the belief that no power could erase their identity or their rights. Within a few years, regimes that seemed immovable collapsed.

In South Africa, apartheid had stood for nearly half a century. It was built to divide — by race, by class, by fear. For decades it seemed untouchable. Yet through the 1980s and into the early 90s, people of every background anchored themselves in the simple claim that no human being is lesser. Churches, unions, students, communities stood together, and in 1994, the apartheid system gave way to multiracial democracy.

Authoritarianism thrives on division, but it falters when people remember their common ground. And our common ground is not built from visions that pull us apart, but from values that call us back to one another. That is where anchored hope lives — not in a promised outcome, but in the daily practice of orienting towards our values, together.

So as we step into the week ahead, perhaps we can carry this with us: hope is not a feeling we wait for, it is a practice we return to. Each time we act with care, each time we choose to see the humanity in another, we are anchoring hope more deeply. And when we do this together, the ground beneath us grows steadier.

The forces that would divide us can feel immense, but they are not stronger than the quiet work of people who remember what we share. We have walked this path before — as a nation and as a world — and we can walk it again. Because history has shown us that when people hold fast to that common ground, even the hardest walls can give way.

With steadiness, with care, and with hope that holds fast

— Lori

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📌 I’m currently on our much-needed annual break.

Although I’m still sharing these posts on Sunday, during the time I’m away I aim to take a proper rest from social media, so I don’t plan on replying to messages or comments until I return. I hope you’ll understand. I’ll be back on Monday, 1 September — rested, recharged, and full of new ideas for the road ahead.

I'm really looking forward to personally catching-up with you again, then.