Submission 246
Kara Stebbins
UU Fellowship of Madison County (Richmond, KY) 3726
What is your suggestion or idea?
C-2.2.b.
Interdependence. We honor acknowledge the interdependent web of all existence. We covenant to cherish Earth and all beings by creating and nurturing relationships of care and respect. With humility and reverence, we acknowledge recognize our place in the great web of life, and we work to protect all beings and to repair harm and damaged relationships.
What is the reason for your amendment idea?
Unless we “acknowledge” something, we will never be able to “honor” or “cherish”
it. In fact for some of us, the
spiritual practice of noticing and acknowledging interdependence is what
grounds us each day. We suggest the
Value statement should use the verb “acknowledge,” then use the verb “cherish”
in the Covenant statement. In order to
not repeat the word “acknowledge” in the Covenant statement, we suggest using
the word “recognize” in its place.
We suggest
removing the word “covenant.” We agree
the word covenant belongs in the document since ours is a covenantal
religion. But we don’t want to repeat
the word over and over again – it has the ring of a creed. We think that the verbs we are adding are
enough to help us feel more active.
We also suggest
changing the last phrase of the Covenant in order to address some members’ concern
that the focus is too much on human “relationships,” not enough on “all beings.”
Have you discussed this idea with your congregation or other UUs?
Our Fellowship had a democratic approach to the Amendment process. While a straw poll indicated a slim majority would prefer to keep Article II as it is, the other votes indicated we should try to come up with Amendments that could conceivably change some “no” votes to “yes.” We began writing this Amendment in response to input from the Fellowship during two Sunday Services. We later word-smithed a suggested Amendment with our weekly zoom group. Finally, the full Fellowship had an opportunity to review this written Amendment. No objections were voiced.