Walking Together: Celebrating Our Voluntary Association
Karen Gustafson
October 5, 2002
In the front of our hymnals, on the cover of our order of service, in many places posted in our places of meeting, on cards and other literature describing our Unitarian Universalist tradition we see the words:
"We the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and the society at large;
The goal of world community with peace liberty and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part.
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations"
What fine ideas…In fact many of them are universal ideals that might be claimed by many other faith traditions. Who, one might ask, doesn’t believe in that? Suppose we were to change just one statement. Suppose this statement were to read:
"The Unitarian Universalist leadership defines a Unitarian Universalist as
one who believes in :
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and the society at large;
The goal of world community with peace liberty and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part."
Certainly the content of the principles themselves forms an important set of
understandings of what guides our behavior as Unitarian Universalists. But the way they are framed by the initial statement is equally important.
The leadership of our association of congregations does not define who is a
Unitarian Universalist or what we believe in. This is why we will never hear
"The Unitarian Universalist leadership defines a Unitarian Universalist as
one who believes in even the principles.
It certainly is no accident then, that the statement of our principles does, in
fact begin:
"We the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:"
This is a statement not only about the values and principles that guide our
lives as individuals, it is also a statement of how our congregations are governed and about how our congregations function in relation to one another . Ours is, in spite of our emphasis upon individual spiritual journeys and a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, a congregational tradition.
A 1997 report by the Unitarian Universalist Association says,
"Being part of a religious community is a personal commitment that reflects
the theological vision- namely, a sense of the fundamental interdependent or
covenental, nature of existence. Being in community, then, is not coincidental
to being a Unitarian Universalist, but intrinsic and inescapable. The religious
community is the vital matrix of the members’ diverse personal ministries.
In turn, its members reshape the community."
Not to be crass, but what does that mean and who cares, anyway? Well, I like to think that understanding that meaning and caring about it is, at the core of who we are as a faith tradition. Lets try to unpack it:
"Being part of a religious community is a personal commitment."
Take a moment and think of today as your first exposure to Unitarian Universalist religious community. Maybe this IS your first exposure to UU community. What do you know about what it might mean to be part of this religious community? We have heard words of welcome and thanksgiving and so you know that our intention is that all feel welcomed and that we are grateful for the gift life.
Sacred things have been alluded to, some in oblique non-specific ways. We have not prayed to any particular incarnation of the divine but rather have tried to create spaces and ways for the divine which you experience to enter in to this space or be accessed through prayer or meditation or music. You have heard the concerns of those present; we have joined our voices in singing and engaged in responsive reading. We have collected an offering which is both a literal and a symbolic indication that what we do here requires material support. You have heard music, heart felt and performed with care to touch what cannot be touched with words alone. You have seen our children and so you might assume that we value families and offer religious education.
Each person who comes here, whether for the first time or the thousandth, has a personal purpose for being here. Each is seeking something: friendship, connection, religious education for your children ; comfort; counsel; enlightenment; intellectual stimulation ; spiritual transcendence; moral guidance; an opening to social responsibility or public discourse or action. If you find what you are seeking or sense it promise in what you see or hear, you will return.
But without a body of people who have made a personal commitment beyond the fulfillment of their immediate needs, there would be no community to receive the seeker.
The blessing of an established community is that , at its best, it holds in
balance the needy and the needed. We expect newcomers and visitors to receive the gracious welcome of our beloved community. And because we are a congregational tradition we are eager for visitors and newcomers to join us. Because, as the earlier statement suggests, "Being part of a religious community is a personal commitment that reflects the theological vision- namely, a sense of the fundamental interdependent or covenental, nature of existence."
This means that at center of our UU tradition is an understanding that, not
only are our congregations made up of the needy and the needed, who agree to care for one another as needs change, but that this is the nature of all of
life, that we are interdependent, that we are not in a system in which there
are leaders and followers.
Being in community, then, is not coincidental to being a Unitarian Universalist, but intrinsic and inescapable. The religious community is the vital matrix of the members’ diverse personal ministries. In turn, its members reshape the community.
The other aspect of our congregational tradition is that not only are we interdependent with our congregations but that our congregations are interdependent as well.
We don’t have a pope or bishops or any kind of hierarchy. Our model of governance goes back three and a half centuries to the Massachusetts Bay Colony , when the New England Puritans laid down the law over against the religious oppression they experienced in the old world. Three of the significant aspects of the Cambridge Platform that we use in our governance today were that congregations had the right to own their own property, to select their own ministers and to engage in free association with other congregations. Built into this was an understanding that the religious community is bigger than a single congregation.
This week-end we have been joined by people from Virginia and Ashland, Bemidji and Thunder Bay and Brainard . We have exchanged energy and ideas and resources. This has been a celebration of our free association, an acknowledgment of our interdependence.
So why is this important?
Well here’s the deal. Unitarian Universalism is not a religious tradition in
which God is outside of the interdependent web of existence of which we are
all a part. We do not exist to help anyone to transcend the complexities of
this human life. We are here to help each other to embrace and to celebrate
and to endure and to expand our connections with one another and all of life.
Implicit in our way of being religious community, of governing ourselves, is
the assumption that God is most present in the whole greater than the sum of our connections and does not live or move or contribute to life without our
participation as individuals, as contributors to the whole, as interconnected
congregations committed to supporting one another.
Our individual journeys and the needs and desires that bring us here are important. But whether they are met immediately or over time, this congregation will cease to meet anyone’s needs and then cease to exist unless we understand and embrace fully this reality .
"Being part of a religious community is a personal commitment that reflects
the theological vision- namely, a sense of the fundamental interdependent or
covenental, nature of existence. Being in community, then, is not coincidental
to being a Unitarian Universalist, but intrinsic and inescapable. The religious
community is the vital matrix of the members’ diverse personal ministries.
In turn, its members reshape the community"
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth
Promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person