Submission 250
Kara Stebbins
UU Fellowship of Madison County (Richmond, KY) 3726
What is your suggestion or idea?
Section C-2.2.f.
Transformation. Change. We need stability, but we also creatively adapt to with the changing world.
We covenant to collectively transform and both accept each other as we are and encourage each other to grow spiritually and ethically. Openness to change is fundamental to our Unitarian and Universalist heritages Living Tradition, never complete and never perfect.
Amended Value without editing marks:
Change. We need stability, but we also creatively adapt with the changing world.
We both accept each other as we are and encourage each other to grow spiritually and ethically. Openness to change is fundamental to our Living Tradition, never complete and never perfect.
What is the reason for your amendment idea?
We can tell from our negative reactions to the loss of our beloved Principles that we need both stability and change. We don’t want to be constantly transforming. We want to retain our identities. But we know change is inevitable – and we value it.
Our Fellowship suggests changing the title “Transformation” to “Change,” and then recognizing the need for “stability” in the first sentence. We also suggest editing the first sentence because we don’t just adapt TO the world, we also adapt the world TO us. So it may be more accurate to say we adapt WITH the world. That also seems more in line with an earlier word suggested for this Value, “Evolution.” Due to interdependence, there is co-evolution.
In the second sentence we inserted language from our Principles that emphasizes both stability and change: we BOTH accept each other as we are AND encourage each other to grow.
We suggest adding the UU phrase “Living Tradition,” – which after all encapsulates the reason we are even working on this Proposed Revision! We have a Tradition (stability), but it is Living (change).
We suggest removing the religious and repetitive word “covenant.”
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.