Saying Goodbye

 Dear PUUF friends,

As I get closer to my moving date, I want to express my gratitude to you for your love, your cooperation, your energy, your smiles and encouragement, your interest in my life and future, and also to make it clear(er) what our relationship will be from now on.

As of July 1, I will not be your minister; Rev. Mira will be your minister and I will be part of your history.  This is the way ministers and congregations have parted for a long time.  I have a professional duty to my colleague Rev. Mira to stand aside and let her create her own relationships within PUUF.

In a small community like ours, it's hard to let a close relationship change, but change it must.  I need to let go and so do you, to make it the best possible welcome to Rev. Mira when she starts with you in July.

This does not mean we don't care for each other any more.  It means, instead, that we care for each other in a new way:  I care very much that you form a relationship with Rev. Mira that fosters growth in PUUF and a new vision of what you can contribute to the community.  I know that you care very much for how the rest of my life goes, and I appreciate that caring.  You have given me a great deal of support and love over the past 10+ years and it has helped to make me strong enough to serve you to the best of my ability as I age. I am grateful for that support and love. It will carry me for the rest of my life.

Thank you for helping me with my move, which has proved to be more complicated and expensive than I expected.  Your willingness to help me pack and tote boxes and sort my mementos has been crucial in my preparation to make this change in my life.

I expect to return briefly to officiate Cliff LaMear's Celebration of Life in July, as Rev. Mira will not be available.  And Rev. Mira and I will sit down together in the next weeks to create a covenant of how our relationships with you and with each other can be most healthy and productive.  

My schedule for the move is that we will load the UHaul truck, with the help of volunteers and a couple of hired hands to help with the heavy lifting, this coming Friday. 

When the truck is full and ready to roll, Bob and Karin Webb will take it to their house overnight and bring it back to my Alderbrook home Saturday morning, from which we will leave for Vancouver and my new home.  

I am grateful to the volunteers (the Webbs, Dan Vernon, Ellen Norris, Veja Lahti, Laura Janes, and many other volunteers) who have offered their help in this long stretch of preparation.  Thank you all so much.

 

I love you.

Kit

 FROM BAPTIST PREACHER’S KID 

TO UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST MINISTER

Rev. Kit Ketcham,

June 4, 2023, 1^st Presbyterian church, Astoria

 

Nancy Cole invited me to speak with you today about Unitarian Universalism and, rather than dig out my old lecture notes from seminary and the multiple meetings with fellow interns during that four year stretch of my life, it made better sense to start at the beginning of MY understanding of American Baptist doctrine and the covenantal path of Unitarian Universalism.

I was born an American Baptist Preacher’s kid in the hospital in Chehalis; my Dad was the pastor of the Mossyrock Community church.  I was their first-born, or at least the first child to survive after two stillbirths.  My younger sister and brother were born in Portland hospitals, after our family moved from Mossyrock to Portland, where my Dad served the Calvary Baptist church on 42^nd and Holgate.

We Baptist kids, much like you Presbyterian (or Methodist or Lutheran or other denominations), received our early religious education in Sunday School classes where we learned Bible verses, listened to stories and parables and both Old and New Testament wisdom.  As we got older, we shared discussion about some of the principles of our Christian faith and about the early stories of Creation and Jesus’ life.

For me and my siblings, at least, it was a warm and loving experience.  Our parents were well-loved by the congregation and we were doted upon by members of our church and thought of it as a loving place.  We had no reason to argue with anything scriptural, even though we might question a miracle or two. If we did, we did so silently.

After 8 years in Portland, we moved east to the little town of Athena, in between Pendleton and Walla Walla.  I was nine when we moved, horse-crazy, smart-alecky, and a bit of a brainiac.  

We kids had never gone to public schools before Athena; our parents had been instrumental in starting up the Portland Christian Schools system, which, in addition to the normal academic lessons, was heavy on the Bible education as well.

After graduation from Athena grade school and McEwen high school, I went on to Linfield College, an American Baptist-supported 4 year college, a scholarship student by virtue of my Dad’s profession.

At Linfield, we were required to take certain religion classes, taught by professors whose knowledge and understanding were greater than that of the volunteers who taught Sunday School at the Athena Baptist Church.  I had come to wonder if the stories I had learned over time about such miracles as a virgin birth, water into wine, and resurrections had more to them than what I had learned from my SS teachers, whose knowledge had not come from advanced university studies.

But I was a good kid, didn’t want to upset my parents, whose theology was conservative and unquestioning.  Their own religious education had been in small town Sunday Schools and, after my Dad felt called to the ministry, at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, not exactly your hotbed of liberality.

After college graduation, my first job was in the welfare office of WA state public assistance in Goldendale, where I served the families and old age recipients of WA’s public assistance program, as a caseworker in Klickitat and Skamania counties.  I enjoyed this job but I was appalled by the poverty and frustration I saw in the families I served.

My family had never been rich, far from it, on a preacher’s salary, but a paltry couple of hundred dollars to make it through a month with kids and no work in the timber industries because of logging accidents and the feast or famine income of a seasonal job.

After a year or so of living near my parents and driving into the tiny settlements in the Klickitat valley, I was wondering if this was all my life was going to be, shuttling from one sick family to another, dealing with grouchy WWII vets who were disabled and dependent on the monthly assistance check.  It was sad, solitary work, and I was not flourishing.

One day, combing through the daily mail, I chanced upon a flier addressed to my Dad, advertising a seminar in Yakima at the First Baptist Church, six  weekly sessions taught by a professor from Seattle on “The Life of Jesus”.  That was a course I had dearly loved at Linfield.  I was determined to go, even though it was winter, the Simcoe mountains and Satus Pass were treacherous in snowy weather, but my little Ford Falcon and I were raring to go.  To my parents’ credit, they did not try to dissuade me; they could tell I was languishing and I needed to do something different.

That course was life-changing, not so much because of the topic, but because of the discussion about things I’d always wondered about---Jesus’ courage, his knowledge of Jewish tradition and how his teachings challenged the tradition in many ways, the path he laid down for his followers was stunning---and I wanted to take it.

The clincher for me was at the final session, when a bigwig from the ABC brought with him to that session a young man who spoke to us about outreach programs in the American Baptist Home Mission Society:  Baptist Community Centers in cities all over America.  

That young man, Rev. Henry Hardy, talked with me after the session about the places where there were vacancies and needed program workers to carry out the humanitarian and spiritual work of the center.  I was hooked, not only on becoming a Home Missionary but also on the very appealing Rev. Hardy, who now has been a friend to me all my adult life and whom I credit with giving me the information I needed to change the trajectory of my life.

So I was commissioned as an American Baptist Home Missionary and arrived in Denver at the Christian Center there, in the inner city.  I loved this work, spending time with kids and parents of many races---Black, Asian, Latino---in preschool classes at the center, after-school activities for middle-schoolers, teen canteens on weekends for older kids, an employment counselor on the premises, a clothing closet for needy families. And a church service every Sunday morning for which I played the piano.

  My boss, the Rev. George Turner, was a Black man who had recently returned from the Civil Rights activities in Selma, Alabama.  This was 1966.  My Dad invited me to speak on one occasion when I had returned to Goldendale for a family Thanksgiving.  I spoke enthusiastically about the programming at the Denver Christian Center, and as inexperienced speakers will do, I ran out of things to say after 10 minutes or so.

So I opened it up to questions from the floor; most of those questions were about financial matters, the kinds of problems I would run into in those conditions, what did the Center need from the little Goldendale Baptist Church, that sort of thing. 

At the very end, one fellow in the back raised his hand, and asked me “How many souls have you saved for Christ?”  I stuttered and stammered with my answer, trying to relay the idea that our mission at the Center was humanitarian efforts to better people’s lives, not focused on heavenly salvation but on earthly survival.

As I left the sanctuary that day, wondering about his question and my answer, it occurred to me:  “I am not that kind of Christian; I’m not sure I ever was or ever will be.”  And I think about that moment yet today.  

After the Denver Christian Center became a United Way agency, I went back to school for teaching credentials and began a career as a junior high school Spanish teacher and, later, a guidance counselor, which, though secular, gave me the sense of moving in the right direction in a humanitarian field.

Marriage to a Unitarian Universalist man, whom I met at a Denver Young Democrats meeting, showed me a religious path I had been largely unaware of.  We attended church and protest rallies and I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of my Christian upbringing and the social justice work offered by the principles of Unitarian Universalism.

I learned that UUism had begun to develop in the third century, after the Council of Nicaea, when one of the bishops in that conclave resisted the development of the Trinity as a way of understanding the Divine.

The priest Arius, in the 3^rd century, believed that Jesus was divine but not on the same level as God. He believed that Jesus' wisdom and teachings were more important than his death and resurrection. Arius believed that human beings could draw closer to God by following those teachings. As the Christian Church solidified and unified in the fourth century and adopted a Trinitarian theology, Arianism became the archetypal heresy for the orthodox.

And that’s where our first name comes from:  Unitarian---the belief that Jesus was a separate entity from God, that Jesus’ teachings were the way to live a Godly life, and many early Christians followed Arius as their theological leader.

But the Trinity was a solidifying theology for those bishops intent on creating an institution which would bring early Christians together under a common theology.  Unfortunately, this resulted in non-trinitarians being rejected as heretics and many were burned at the stake for their disbelief.  John Calvin was a theologian who condemned and witnessed many burnings of heretical non-trinitarians.

Universalist, our second name, comes from the also heretical belief that a loving God would not consign his wayward children to Hell.  

Christian universalism is a school of Christian theology focused around the doctrine of universal reconciliation – the view that all human beings will ultimately be saved and restored to a right relationship with God.  Many of these believers were also considered heretics and punished, often gruesomely.

Unitarian Universalism has Christian roots, but as you can tell, we have somewhat rebellious ideas about orthodox Christianity.

These days, UU congregations, like the Pacific UU Fellowship, are more than Christian.  We have Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, atheists, agnostics, Christians, Pagans, and none of the above, within our worshipping communities.

Obviously, it would be hard for us to specify that only One way of believing is the true faith, so over the years, we have moved beyond even non-traditional Christianity.  Instead of a doctrine, we have principles of Right Actions that we covenant to affirm and promote.

Let me read you two documents that are foundational for Unitarian Universalists.  The first is a list of our Seven Principles beginning with a statement of intent:

We, the Member Congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote the following values and ideals:

    1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

    2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

    3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

    4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

 

Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote these seven Principles, which we hold as strong values and moral guides. We live out these Principles within a “living tradition” of wisdom and spirituality, drawn from sources as diverse as science, poetry, scripture, and personal experience. 

 

These are the six sources our congregations affirm and promote: 

 

•   Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;

•   Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;

•   Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;

•   Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;

•   Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;

•   Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

 

I’ve mentioned that Unitarian Universalism is a “Living Tradition”, which means that we are continually aware of the need to examine our faith, to note where our priorities are or are not in synchronicity with our principles and reflect the wisdom of our sources.

To that end, we review our principles regularly to see if we need to add something, some action, some new understanding, to our statement of faith.  In addition, we review our sources to make sure we include the many streams of meaningful words and actions which guide our lives.

In recent years, we have been working on the issue of racism within our denomination and how it has affected our behavior toward the many People of Color inside and outside of our congregations; it has caused us to restate our values and assign actions to each, to help us develop our awareness of white supremacy and the damage done by our ignorant mistakes.

We respond to the call of love because it is our common theological core. 

It is what can and does motivate us and it illuminates our deepest commitments to each other.

We have many luminaries in our religious tradition, as do you Presbyterians 

and other denominations.  Here are a few names you may recognize and see the great variety of religious thinkers and social justice activists in our ranks:

John Quincy Adams, US president

Louisa May Alcott, children’s writer

Bela Bartok, composer

Beatrix Potter, children’s writer

Ee cummings, poet

Charles Dickens, author

Dorothea Dix, social reformer

Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and thinker

Edvard Grieg, composer

Sylvia Plath, poet

Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist

Christopher Reeve, actor (Superman!)

Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web

and Pete Seeger, musician and folk hero

 

         Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious tradition that was formed from the consolidation of two religious bodies:  Unitarianism and Universalism.  In America, the Univeralist Church of America was founded in 1793 and the American Unitarian Association in 1825.

         After consolidating in1961, these faiths became the new religion of Unitarian Universalism.  Since the merger of the two denominations in 1961, UUism has nurtured its Unitarian and Universalist heritages to provide a strong voice for social justice and liberal religion.

         Our scripture readings for today are representative, for me, of the Jesus Path I chose to walk long ago.  Jesus states the Greatest Commandment in his answer to a questioner who asked  “Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.   On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  It is the bedrock of my spiritual life.   

Micah’s statement in verse 8 of chapter 6 is “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? 

Over the years, as the King James Version has been retranslated time and again, written in more inclusive language and reflecting more of the diversity of Christian belief, I have modified my own religious language.

I do not think of God, anymore, as a Being; I think of God as a power, the power of the universe, the power of Love, the power of natural laws which control and guide our lives.  If I strive to work WITH the powers of the universe, of Love, natural law, I will be doing the will of the Power beyond Human Power, which many call God. 

I cherish many of the remnants of my earlier faith---the old hymns, the scriptures which are still meaningful, the rituals of prayer, of communion, of faithfulness to a creed or covenant that helps me shape my behavior.  But I have let go of the difficult admonition “saving souls for Christ”.  I give love instead, to all who come into my life, the best I can.

Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.

BENEDICTION:  

Our worship service, our time of shaping worth together is ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place. Let us go in peace, thinking about what shapes our lives, what guides us in the hard steps of human living?  May we have the strength and will to follow our spiritual guides into a new place of spiritual and personal growth.  Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

 

 

We Laugh, We Cry: the role of the Holy Fool in Unitarian Universalism

     Had a hard time entering the text of the sermon, so am posting this link to the recording of the service:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-tFUveBfFs&ab_channel=PacificUUFellowship

Covenant, not Creed

 COVENANT, NOT CREED

March 12, 2023

PUUF, Rev. Kit Ketcham

 

How many of you grew up in a religious environment where you recited a set of statements that you were expected to believe, things about God and Jesus, salvation, and other weighty expectations, particularly if you were a little kid at the time, growing up in a Christian household.

Do you remember the names of any of the various creeds that you learned or recited in a church service?  Creeds are statements of theological belief and they can be pretty demanding.

Take the Apostles Creed, for example, which is often included in traditional church services:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
      and born of the virgin Mary.
      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
      was crucified, died, and was buried;
      he descended to hell.
      The third day he rose again from the dead.
      He ascended to heaven
      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
      From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
      the holy catholic* church,       

      the communion of saints,
      the forgiveness of sins,
      the resurrection of the body,
      and the life everlasting. Amen.

This fairly typical Protestant creed sets out the beliefs that traditional Christians espouse and commit themselves to.  More progressive Christian churches do not recite the Apostles creed in services, but it still stands as representative of many Christians’ core beliefs, whether they are taken literally or not.

As a Baptist preacher’s kid, I didn’t quote any such creed in church.  However, it was made abundantly clear that God ruled, Jesus was God’s son and therefore the true Son of God and also God.  The Holy Ghost was mainly a mystery to us kids.

Creeds lay out the most important beliefs of a religious faith and they differ somewhat, depending on the faith’s sense of importance for each statement.  To state in public a Creed that says the things that the Apostles Creed stands for is quite a commitment to an ancient theology that has given way to science and its denial of the possibility of a physical resurrection, virgin births, and other of the tenets of faith that conservative Christians cling to.

Our Baptist set of beliefs was not set in stone, like the Apostle’s Creed seems to be.  But it was pretty clear that there were certain beliefs we HAD to subscribe to or go to hell.  And that was pretty scary!

Unitarian Universalists don’t have creeds.  Oh, we tend to hold similar values, like democracy, equality, justice, and we state these and other values in our documents of faith.  Interestingly, there’s nothing in our values and sources that state that if you want to be a UU, you have to toe the line with everyone else.

It's been said that UU’s can believe anything they want, and I suppose that’s true on a very limited level, but it doesn’t matter.  What does matter to us UUs is how we behave toward each other and our fellow beings in the world.  In other words, how do we live out our values and honor our sources?

A creed is a hard thing to hold everybody to; everyone who has had a different experience than the typical creed professes, or has different needs from their religious experience, or just plain doesn’t believe in non-provable statements about such things as resurrection and other miracles---they aren’t going to be very happy with a creed that everyone is expected to agree to, at least in public.

My cat and I have been arguing lately, late at night and early in the morning, about our household creed.  My statement of faith about nighttime behavior is that I will sleep 6 hours or so uninterrupted by the cat’s needs for food or companionship or whatever it is that a cat needs at 1 a.m.  

Her statement of faith about nighttime behavior is that she is a creature who sleeps a lot in the daytime and needs to do a little par-kour exercise at night so that she can have her regular time at the litterbox, which she needs to have cleaned out asap. And if the par-kour court is off limits, she will let off that unreleased energy in a series of loud vocalizations.

You can easily see that our creeds don’t match up.  We have different needs, different preferences, different styles of living.  We’d have to find different roommates.  We don’t need a household creed; we need a covenant so that we can live as compatibly as possible together, because we love each other and we meet each other’s needs in many ways.

When I first came into the ministry, in 1999, serving a small spin-off congregation in Portland, we were pretty much creed-based:  that is, many congregations had a certain bent toward humanism only as a creed.  If you weren’t a humanist, you couldn’t be a UU.  That was unstated, of course, but there was a definite preference for humanism as the one true faith.

This little congregation seemed welcoming to me, and my honeymoon year with them was full of appreciation and enthusiasm.  By year two, there were clearly cracks in the veneer though I didn’t know exactly what to do about them.   

Early in year three, I was invited to have coffee with the board president, where he presented me with a letter signed by eleven congregants listing all the things I had done wrong (so far), generally centering on my too-Christian, non-intellectual sermons, my failure to provide adequate pastoral care to a non-member whose daughter was one of the signatories, plus assorted other complaints.  I was a big mistake, in their opinion, and they wanted me gone.  

I learned that this group of eleven had formed a special email list just between them, in which they exchanged their opinions, egged each other on, criticized my presence at board meetings and committee meetings, and were making plans to complain to the UUA about my shortcomings.

I was taken aback.  Some of the eleven signers were women and men whom I particularly liked and had considered allies.  Yet they were talking behind my back, rather than coming to me directly to work things out.

It almost felt like a junior high school gang of kids bullying a kid they didn’t like.  Fortunately, I had taught junior high kids and had counseled them through their own disputes for 25 years.  I had herded cats before and I knew a thing or two.  

I called upon the services of our district executive, a woman I found supportive and knowledgeable, read her the letter, and asked for her thoughts.  She listened, told me of the background of this contentious little group-- which was rather murky--, assured me that she thought I was doing fine, and told me that help was available through the district.  

She organized a congregational meeting to hear the complaints from all sides, in a group.  Both detractors and supporters AND I had a chance to participate in this round table discussion.  It was orderly, honest, revealing of old wounds on both sides, and we came through it.

I had a choice, at that point.  I could resign and look elsewhere for a job, or I could face what had happened and work through it.  I have been a 12-step aficionada for many years, dealing with alcoholism in my husband, and I knew that some of the things this group was saying I had done were true.

At the time we had no way established of solving conflicts other than to gripe to each other, gossip in the parking lot, criticize others’ behavior while feeling self-righteous, and letting things simmer rather than facing them head on, or even acknowledging the pain we were causing ourselves and each other.

So on Thanksgiving Sunday that year, I made amends, as completely as I could, acknowledging the rookie mistakes I’d made, and asking for their help in bringing us all back together.  That was not an easy year, but during that year, several of the signers of the critical letter had come to me asking my forgiveness for their treatment of me.  And I apologized directly for ways I learned I had hurt people myself.

As it turned out, I left at the end of my fourth year with them, but we were on better terms, several of the dissidents had quit, and the atmosphere was less strained. 

  But there was still anger, particularly among the folks who were my supporters.  They were angry that I had been hurt, angry that I had (in their opinions) been chased out by the dissidents, angry with themselves for not speaking up sooner.

This little congregation was still in pain and, to judge from reports by those in the know, they are still hurting and have had up and down luck with subsequent ministers.

If I had known then what I know now, what would I do?  First of all, even though I was eager to be in Portland, I would have asked the search committee and individual members “how do you resolve disagreements?”

“What do you need most from me?” “Is it okay here for me to be a UU Christian?” and that sort of thing.  I would have asked for us to create a covenant, rather than accept people, particularly a new minister, on the basis of how humanistic they were.

         I would have asked that the covenant provide pathways for dealing with dissent, with the new minister and with their fellow members, so that all felt welcome in the congregation.  And I would have asked that the covenant provide promises of good will and commitment to those promises.

         A new minister comes in not knowing much about the congregation.  And the congregation knows little about the minister.  Maybe the minister comes on too strong, doesn’t seem to listen well, and makes wrong assumptions about the congregation.

         A congregation is often set in its own ways, which are unfamiliar to the minister and may seem inappropriate or non-productive to the minister.

         To quote my colleague Rev. Paul Langston-Daley: “ In small congregations I’ve served, I have said something like this:  We are not centered on a creed.  We are centered on covenant and always have been, as a denomination, and we are in covenant with other UU congregations.

         “Covenant gives us guardrails, to help us manage conflict and disruptive behavior and sets explicit expectations about how we will be together.”

         In our Sunday service, we offer a Gathering Affirmation.  We say together “Love is the spirit of this Fellowship and service is its prayer.  This is our Great Covenant, to dwell together in peace, to seek truth in love, and to help one another.”

         The thing about our Great Covenant, is that it is an action promise, not just pretty words.  If Love is the spirit of this Fellowship, how do we show it, not only to our members but also to others.  If Service is our prayer, how are we serving?  We promise to dwell together in peace; how do we manage disagreements?  We promise to seek truth in love; how do we welcome the many diverse threads of truth under our roof?  And we promise to help one another; how are we doing that?

         I’d like to ask you to give me a parting gift, the assurance that you will do all you can to be in covenant with Rev. Mira.  I would like to ask you to develop, with Rev. Mira, a covenant of right relations.  It would be a wonderful thing for me to know that this Fellowship, which I love so much and have worked so hard for, had taken steps to create a process that promises that disputes and tough decisions will be worked through in a loving and kindly way, that so that Mira and following ministers will not have to endure without recourse the kind of treatment I had when I was in my first ministry.

         As Rev. Paul said: “Covenant gives us guardrails, to help us manage conflict and disruptive behavior and sets explicit expectations about how we will be together.”

         I plan to talk with Rev. Mira and encourage her to work with you on a covenant between you and her and between you and your fellowship members.  I can guarantee you it will be worth it.  New people coming in will know right off the bat how this congregation fulfills its Great Covenant.

         Just as a sample, I’d like to share with you the Covenant of Right Relations that the Whidbey Island folks and I created when I was there years ago.

         It’s pretty simple and it has worked over and over again to deal with disputes.  It came out of a painful situation in the congregation’s past when a former member polarized the group with accusations and misbehavior.  Here it is:

Love is the spirit of this congregation and service is its practice. This is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to seek truth in love, and to help one another.

•   We warmly welcome all.

•   We speak with honesty, respect, and kindness.

•   We listen compassionately.

•   We express gratitude for the service of others.

•   We honor and support one another in our life journeys, in times of joy, need and struggle.

•   We embrace our diversity and the opportunity to share our different perspectives.

•   We address our disagreements directly and openly and see conflict through to an authentic resolution.

•   We serve our spiritual community with generosity and joy, honoring our commitments.

•   We strive to keep these promises, but when we fall short, we forgive ourselves and others, and begin again in love.

I hope you’ll consider it.  I would be very proud to know that you have created such a meaningful document to use in times of dissent or disagreement after I’ve moved away.

You’re probably wanting to know how my cat and I are doing in creating our own covenant of right relations.  We’ve been working on it for about a week now, trying to figure out a nighttime process that respects both of our personal needs, my need for sleep and her need to feel loved.  And I think we’re making progress. I found myself getting so mad when she’d yowl that I couldn’t sleep.  And she felt scared when I got mad.  

Cats live by different rules than humans and sometimes the human needs to give more than the cat----because we understand how it feels to be scared of someone else’s behavior.  The cat, on the other hand, responds to the kindness the human shows.    And both of us are happy.

Let’s pause for a time of silence reflection and prayer.

BENEDICTION

As Laura extinguishes the chalice flame, here is our benediction:

Our worship service, our time of shaping worth together, is ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place.  Let us go in peace, remembering that how we are together as a group matters, that when we have disagreements or angry moments, we can solve these problems in a positive way, respecting one another’s differences and loving each other beyond those differences.  May we find peace together, find truth in love, and find help for our pain.  Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

 

CLOSING CIRCLE