Tag: human-rights

Too Quick to Covenant

.Reading time 7 minutes.

“Should we create a covenant?”  These are familiar words to Unitarian Universalists.  I’ve found that in UU circles covenants are as common as coffee and dounts.  Bless our bleeding, left leaning hearts, it seems that UUs more than any group are always determined to be in “right relationship” with one another, and we frequently begin any kind of process or group exercise with a “covenant.”  Although I admire this eagerness to have level playing fields and understand how this can be a useful tool for helping groups stay on point, the specific use of the word “covenant” is a bit of a hot button to me.  As I delve deeper into understanding faith traditions and magnify that understanding in the lens of our modern world, I caution us all not to miss the point of true covenant or how the assumptions built into social covenants can actually harm us.

The covenants that most people are familiar with are those from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament.  The covenants entered into between God and Noah, God and Abraham, the Mosaic covenant, the covenant beween Jonathan and David and the Covenant of Christ are those which inform much of our modern interpretation of the word in Judeo-Christian culture.  I do not have the scholarly or linguistic heft to venture into a sufficiently deep explanation here of each of these examples, but suffice it to say that these are solemn agreements with God that assume two important absolutes: a) that one believes in God; b) that one believes in a God that believes in them.  Again, this is a much longer conversation…

I believe, however, it is useful to explore how in modern relationships, we take for granted a certain culture of covenant that has its own built in assumptions.  One of the basic definitions of a covenant is as an agreement.  It is first and foremost an agreement that two parties will fulfill certain obligations to one another.  One could call a covenant a “contract” of sorts.  One key difference however, is that a covenant is entered into between people or entities, or groups who know one another and hold a common goal or purpose, whereas a contract is generally between people who only have that agreement as their primary means of relationship.  A covenant serves to bind or enhance an already existing relationship.

The Biblical agreements that I mentioned before are definitely not just contracts. Often involving blood commitment, God (for those who believe and/or follow Abrahamic scripture) surely “knows” mankind.  God “knows” Noah, Abraham and Moses.  David and Jonathan “know” one another intimately and because of that intimacy, enter into their covenant.  The Covenant of God made through Christ, giving his Son for the forgiveness of man’s sin is one made based entirely on God’s omniscience, Jesus’ knowledge of his predestined mission and the acknowledgement man is willing to make in recognizing Christ as savior.  There is a lot of “knowing” going on here.

In today’s environment of deep political and social divide, it could be argued that we are in need of a covenant.  We are in need of an agreement that obliges us to protect one another and serve a common good.  Of course, we already have many agreements that are intended to do this, from the US Constitution to the Kyoto Protocol to NAFTA…and certainly the Judeo-Christian  covenants I point to should serve the purpose of making our world safe and nurturing.  We put on a good show in treating these agreements like covenants.  We see entire governments shaping the course of history based on some of these agreements.  We watch people protest for their rights based on their spiritual covenants.  But in a world that stumbles along on fractured social relationships…fractured by inequities and ignorance and fear and broad assumptions…even these solemn agreements with God become merely contracts that are too easily broken.

We all know what assumptions make….

The conservative LGBTQI hating Christian assumes that the world should want to function in their paradigm of truth.  The rich American capitalist assumes that everyone wants success in the way they see it.  Likewise, some of the the best ultra liberal Unitarian Universalists assume that the most damaging force to people of color is white privilege. These are just examples.  The point is that “right relationship” cannot happen until you are actually IN relationship with the other party. How well do you know me?  How well do I know you?  How deeply do our communities of trust actually engage one another in today’s world? Are we willing to sublimate our personal desires, agendas, guilt, etc. to acknowledge the world as it is seen through the eyes of others long enough to offer them the respect and love that would allow us to enter into a true covenant of human dignity?  A covenant is not a contract, so much as it is a commitment.  It is a commitment to be not just in right relationship, but to be in genuine relationship with one another.

Pardon the mixed cliches here…love your neighbor, but do not suffer fools.  If your neighbor is not willing to genuinely know you, and you are not willing to genuinely know your neighbor, you never stand the chance of embracing the true covenant of peace.

Bounce

.Reading time 10 minutes.

Resilience.  This is a term that is new to me in the context of my current job.  I work for a non profit organization that is focused on equity.  All day long, I am surrounded by a brilliant and diverse team of analysts, coordinators, managers, associates, assistants and directors who are deeply engaged in asking questions of our government and our society that will lead to better outcomes for people who are poor and or disenfranchised.  My understanding, from a totally non policy-wonk standpoint is that “resilience” is the built in capacity for someone or a system to overcome or survive adversity.  When we talk of New Orleans after Katrina, we speak of resilience; or the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Japan or Indonesia…again the question of resilience.  This also goes from the macro to the micro level, when we look at human beings in poor neighborhoods or unhealthy situations…we ask the question of why some people not only survive, but manage to thrive while others become mired in patterns of un-success.

In a recent meeting to explore this word and its applications, understandings and questions, I was privileged to hear some incredible perspectives that related to everything from housing to health as well as our political structure and disaster relief.  This was a fabulous introduction for someone like me coming from a theological perspective, to the very specific way in which resilience is assessed in circles that deal with equity.

But what struck me about these very practical and tangible examples of resilience in a socio/economic related context, was how much this concept resonates with the spiritual and physical realm that is much less tangible and often regarded as totally impractical.

It is a proven fact that babies and children who are not touched do not thrive.  We must experience human touch to have a sense of safety in our world.  Without this, we have no boundaries and we are deprived of our most basic form of communication.  I would argue that above all the senses, our sense of touch is the most highly developed.  Within touch we are able to receive information about intention that can escape inflection in the sound of words, or expression in the faces we see, and so on.  I would imagine that this is one reason we have words in our language that come from this sense and apply directly to our emotions: feeling, holding, embracing, touching….But there is also touch that is not healthy and “bad” touch can do as much damage as no touch at all.  Children and people who are abused or deprived of agency in touch do not learn to trust the world around them or themselves.  It is a long road to recovery when someone has been taught that this basic interaction with the world around them is a constant threat.

I was recently reading the book The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When a Parent’s Love Rules Your Life and in it Dr. Patricia Love gives extensive detail on how parents who have inappropriate emotional relationships with their children, can do as much damage as those who have inappropriate physical relationships with them.  This is a perfect example of the bridge between the physical and the emotional aspects of touch.  In the book it is very clear that if a child is deprived of the unconditional love of the parent child relationship…if they are given a conditional relationship or are asked to “parent” their parents, they do not thrive in a balanced manner.  Likewise, if they are given too much contact (the emotional incest element) and asked to fill the role of surrogate “spouse” in a family relationship, they are equally damaged.  These structures, based on how we learn to touch one another physically and emotionally are what I see as a basic part of how we navigate our world.

In theological circles, we deal with the concept of resilience every single day.  Among other reasons, people come to religion to be sustained in times of trial, or to be “born again” or to find parts that are missing in their lives.  In short, spirituality is one of the most basic sources of human cultural resilience.  The church is often the first resource for communities in distress, whether that be emotional or physical; whether there is a tornado or a mass murder.  Churches, synagogues  mosques and temples are full when communities face disaster.  The reason for this is simple: unconditional love.  This is what we seek in religion, just as we seek this in our family relationships.  Christians speak of the unconditional love of Jesus that sustains and rebuilds them.  There is an assumption and security in how this love will always be present.  Like a child of the best parent, a believing Christian (and I would imagine any other devoutly religious person, or person with a solid belief structure) knows they will always be loved.

In Jim Wallis’ book Rediscovering Values on Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street, he talks a great deal about how religion and faith in community should be the moral bedrock for creating resilience in our culture.  He wrote the book at the height of the economic downturn and highlights both scripture and economic data to support the moral and ethical argument against big impersonal business and the robber baron mentality that brought our financial system to a collapse.  He points to personal moral obligations driven by both faith and conscience as a beacon to lead individuals and on a larger scale, business and even government toward equitable practices.  His formula has validity and we are seeing it now play out as communities are rediscovering small business and farmer’s markets and ways to make what is essentially “small town America” the hub of our culture.

I would take this all one step further.  Equity, that is balance throughout our economic and social structures, cannot exist unless we create an environment that is based in what is essentially unconditional love.  The “market” is not real; it is only a reflection of our relationships with each other.  If we have a financial system that is based on “I’ve got mine, who cares about you”, that is how we are relating to one another.  The market cannot “self correct”…we must correct it by entering into properly balanced relationship with one another.  We as individuals must understand that all of our actions do not exist in a vacuum. This goes for finances, for government, for local business, for education, for parenting and for how we relate to one another.  Young people graduating from college are burdened with lifetime debt before they have had the joy of properly earning a wage and feeling like a contributing part of their communities.  This is a classic example of how we are in an emotionally incestuous relationship with our society, where the “parent” (greater society) is asking them (recent grads) to provide parental stability when they have only just learned to walk; how can they succeed?  How can we succeed?

We will need to examine our cultural relationships.  Our most successful models are families/relationships with balance between parent/provider and child; an environment of unconditional love where we learn to trust and thrive; and a language of touch/interaction where we communicate a clear intention for mutual success.  These are important  foundations of our humanness and we must respect them on on levels of our existence.

Resources:

Jim Wallis’ books are available at Sojourners (http://sojo.net/)

Patricia Love’s books are available at her website (http://www.patlove.com/)