Updates from the Covenant of Right Relations Team      

Our CRR team will make our proposed covenant available in early April. The following may be helpful in putting our work in context both as we ask the congregation to affirm our covenant at our Annual Meeting and as we move forward.

Joe Sullivan, Congregational Consultant to New England Region UUA, writes in the March Newsletter Spiritual Leadership Practices, Part 4: Choosing Mutuality – The Promise & Practice of Covenant:

“In yearning for a better world we too often neglect the ancient practice that is central to our UU faith – covenanting – the religious discipline intended to help us actualize and sustain our will to mutuality. Covenanting is our renewing practice of solemn promises of mutual support and commitment, of mutual fidelity to shared high purpose, and to something greater than ourselves. . . . Covenanting depends not on piousness or enforced consequences. Rather it depends upon humility, love, grace, trust, compassion, mercy. It is inherently forgiving, and when violated (more commonly by neglect than by misbehavior), it seeks restoration and renewal.

How do we really practice covenant? First and foremost we do so by showing up for one another in spirit and body. . . . We practice it in authentic mutual relationship with marginalized communities and willingness to follow their lead; and when, as Bryan Stevenson suggests, we “get proximate” to suffering.

We can tell the practice of covenant is truly alive when we see:

• people intentionally putting themselves in uncomfortable, vulnerable encounters, and staying at the table when the going is hard in order to forge or sustain relationship;
• ongoing faithful risking and tolerance for failure in the cause of advancing shared purpose;
• norms, traditions, and expectations intentionally altered in order to be truly welcoming to all, especially those marginalized in our communities.

When freely entered and actualized by the people, our Unitarian Universalist core religious practice of covenant is there to undergird expansive, life transforming mutuality. What if we committed to practicing covenant as if the wellbeing of our congregations, our faith, our lives and hopes depended upon it? They do.”