Before pandemic, before Trump, there was an illusion of Americans together. With Trump sowing discord, inflaming the body politic, with Covid-19 inflaming the body and claiming more than 610,000 lives in the US, shutting schools, businesses, places of worship, we experienced Americans apart. With vaccinations boosting immune systems, we are cautiously moving toward one another again, guided by science, weighing health threats from variants and unvaccinated. How will we be together again?
American identity was forged on the rights of individuals.
Pandemic shows us how individuals rely on and need one another and community.
This is our core UU spiritual practice: balancing inherent worth and dignity with our responsibility to interdependence, the web of Life itself.
We do this by creating spiritual communities of deepening relationships with one another, that support us as individuals in community, to envision and co-create programs, ministries and projects that respond to the needs of our time.
This is a time of turning for Unitarian Universalism, of growing beyond our individualistic tendencies. Life needs us to become more skillful in living our principles together in relationship, not as beautiful intentions/abstractions. This is a time for growing our emotional awareness. This is what shapes our spiritual community. Ours is a tradition of covenant, promises for how we will be together. May we all deepen our self-awareness of the behaviors and commitments we need from one another in order to grow together, love and cry together, listen and learn together, be changed, transformed together: Together, Apart, Together – for the benefit of all beings.
Rev. Mary
