Proposal to rescue the UU Church from its ministers
through the development of covenant groups (draft)
(see “The Problem of Narcissism”)

During this decade the UUA membership has dropped by over 1500 members and 2 churches per year.  This year’s nation-wide effort, to shame all white members about White Superiority, will only increase the flight from the church.

 What I propose would be a radical departure from the current church efforts.  It seems to me that the current basic assumption of the church is that we Unitarian-Universalists the arrived ones.  We are the ones who have our act together; it’s is up to the rest of the world to live up to our expectations.
     (Gandhi: “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world –that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.  You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

The UU Motto: "It’s those other people we have to change.”  (And, there are so many of them!)

In common usage, most people seem to equate the word radical with the word extreme.  The root of the word actually refers to “getting down to the root”.  If you change a fundamental assumption, you may significantly alter everything above that assumption, everything based on it.  I agree with Gandhi when he said:  I must be the change I want to see in the world!

We all seem to be convinced that it is the others who need to change.  Cartoonist Walt Kelly said “We have seen the enemy and they are us!”

If I can’t learn to identify and fulfill my personal needs, how can I possibly be of any use to others?  Several times in the past when I have mentioned Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance, to a UU minister, they have responded with something like: “Oh! Emerson got it wrong.  We have to get away from self and learn to be service to others. ” Next such a narcissistic person will say is; “Oh, the way, I am one who is full of self-denial and dedicated to serving others.  I am what you should admire.”

I am convinced that, until we each have found personal peace, we can’t possibly understand how to help others find peace, or what it will take to achieve world peace.  Until we, individually and in groups, have learned to practice the art of making implicit truth explicit, we will know no peace.  Until we overcome any fear of the revelation of any truth, we will not know peace.  When we hold truth and caring as our highest values, we can know peace.  The word love has too many misuses, which is why I prefer to use the word care.  We must learn to value all truth and learn to care for everyone.  If I tell people that they must love everyone, they may hear something like; “You must idolize your enemies.”  They would not be receptive so such an idea.   If I say; “you must care about everyone, including those that you label as your enemies.” this leaves room for conversation.

I must learn to feel compassion for everyone, especially those whose ideas and actions I oppose and for those who oppose my ideas and actions.  If I put out hostility toward those, I will only justify and increase their fear.  The more fearful they become, the more irrational they will become, and the less chance there will be for any compromise.  We must put caring and truth as our highest values.

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Throughout history there have been individuals who would claim to be the only ones who could speak directly to God (caring and truth).  In the Catholic Church that was the Pope.  Gradually they conceded that some others might also speak directly to God (truth and caring), Cardinals and Bishops, maybe.  In the UU church we rely primarily on our ministers to be the ones who enlighten us.  We need to begin acting on the understanding that each and every member can learn to understand the fundamental principles of successful living (caring and truth) by understanding our own direct life experience. 

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If a minister, or anyone, doesn’t live up to my expectations, I have zero grounds for being angry at them.  It is totally unfair to expect a minister or anyone else to do for me that which I can only do for myself.  The process of learning to be at peace is fundamentally an inside job.

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Erroneous thinking in the UUA and MDUUC

Focusing on the image of a multiracial congregation is a serious error.  If we were focused on more fundamental issues they would have a more wide-spread appeal, we would draw a broader section of the community to our church.  In our quarterly adult education publication, there is often a picture of an African-American man reading a book.  I have never seen this man at our church.  I assume that his picture is used solely because his skin is dark, in the hope of suggest an image that we are in fact a multi-racial congregation.  We need to peruse essence not image.

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Focusing on anti- issues is always a very serious error.  Focusing on anti- issues, you can back yourself off many a cliff.  The UUA makes a central issue of being “Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression.”  We should always focus on and articulate the positive, constructive and health producing values that we want to pursue.  Being anti- oriented is an effort to create the narcissistic image that: “We are the good people.”
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Most members of churches come to church because they need to belong to a community where they feel safe.  The first duty of the church should be to assist the members to find the feeling of peace and safety.  Most of the ministers seem to be oriented primarily toward their narcissistic mission of saving the nation and the world.  There are probably less than 15% of the congregation members who stays actively involved in this narcissistic pursuit.  Most of the rest of the congregation comes to church for that once-a-week feeling of being part of a community.  These 1500+ people who are leaving the church each year are probably doing so because they feel that the church no longer meets their personal needs.  They have lost faith in the UU church’s ability to help them meet their needs.

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A covenant group is one in which the participants agree to learn how to live a life disciplined by sound principles of a successful, rewarding live.  In a UU covenant group, each member would make their own list of what they conceive to be the valid principles of successful living.  They would then keep a journal of their experiences living consistent with those principles and when they have acted contrary to these principles.  In each case they would journal about what happened, what was the outcome and what they felt.