Practicing Right Relationships

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi

October 7, 2007

There's a story in the Talmud of a non-Jew asking Rabbi Hillel, "Can you summarize all of Judaism while standing on one foot?" And Hillel answered, "What you don’t like, don't do unto others. That's it. The rest is commentary. Now go study the commentary."

"What you don't like, don't do unto others." Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it. But we all know that not much is of lasting value in our lives if it isn't practiced, which is why Hillel doesn't stop with his summary statement but asks the man to "go study the commentary."

We were created to be in relationship. Nonetheless, we live in a culture that values individualism over relationship. The needs and preferences of the individual dominate; individuals see themselves as the final arbiters of what is good and true. When "my truth" out weighs "our relationship" we should not be surprised that there is a decrease in civility. Congregations contribute to this cultural depression by over focusing programs and attention on individual preferences and arguing about who is "right" rather than carefully discerning the community's calling.

Relationships happen so fast in our lives that they seem to be automatic and easy; we meet someone and things just happen. In reality, every relationship is constructed through a series of moments when choices are made. In my view, the greatest tragedy in life is not that we will all definitely die someday but that despite our deep yearnings to be connected to one another through life-giving relationships, we are always pushing each other away. We rely on human relationships to help us stave off loneliness and isolation, not to mention hunger and cold, yet we're lousy at forming and maintaining these vital relationships. We need people close, yet we keep them at arm's length. We desire love, yet we're always putting up barriers. We want to show people that we need them and that we care for them, yet we so often communicate indifference or even hostility. Herein lies our tragic dilemma: We long to be, yet it's so hard to be, together.

Now, when I say "together," I'm not just talking about primary, intimate relationships. I'm talking about all kinds of togetherness: Families and clans, churches and workplaces, community organizations and neighborhood groups. Forming community is always a struggle; it's never easy. I learned this lesson early in my family. I was well-loved as a child by my mother, my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. But there were also minor disagreements among family members, unresolved issues that kept people apart until it was too late. There were suicides in the family. As I look at my own family, what I perceive is a group of people who really loved each other, who really needed each other, and yet, tragically, failed to do just that. And I don't think my family is unique.

How do we learn to form healthy, loving relationships and communities? How do we stop shooting ourselves and those we love in the foot over and over again? How do we extricate ourselves from this tragic dilemma? How do we go about practicing right relationships?

I want to focus on five things this morning: "Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Covenant, and Love." (from the book Practicing Right Relationship by Mary K. Sellon & Daniel P. Smith)

Right relationship does not begin with the relationship or even with the other person with whom we want to be in relationship. It begins with us. Are we awake to where we are and what's going on around us? Are we aware of our attitudes, feelings, and emotions, and the deeper values, hopes, and fears that give rise to them? The foundational skill for developing and maintaining right relationships is self-awareness. Self awareness basically means what we are feeling in the moment and what's important to us.

For example, we might walk into a committee meeting thinking about the argument we had at home. During the meeting, someone makes a casual remark about something and we jump all over that person with a vehemence that surprises us and everybody else. Where did that come from? People wonder. Or, perhaps our mind has already jumped ahead to picking our kids from choir practice and we're praying that the meeting does not run late. And it does.

It is a common occurrence. Our body sits in a chair but our mind and heart drift somewhere else, pondering over the past or preparing for the future. And when our mind and heart are not present, we are not fully present as a participant in the group.

"Knowing thyself" is therefore, foundational to healthy and productive relationships. By knowing where we are, how we feel, what we value, and what we dream, we give ourselves the flexibility and freedom to interact consciously, creatively, and intentionally with other people.

If "self-awareness" enables us to know who we are - our gifts, our limitations, our hopes, dreams, and fears – "self management" allows us to stay true to our deepest values and highest aspirations, rather than be swayed by passing whims or fleeting fears. It helps us make choices regarding our perspectives, feelings, and actions that support our values, our dreams, and our understanding of our larger connections with others and the world.

Managing our perspectives and feelings does not mean ignoring, denying, or marginalizing them. It instead means recognizing and acknowledging perspectives and feelings so that choices can be made about what emotion to express and how to express it. In essence, self management puts us in a position to choose how to use our thoughts and feelings that are constantly swirling within us rather than be used and manipulated by them.

Self-awareness and self-management are important steps to take to function more effectively in community but they are only initial steps as we prepare to be with other people. In order to appreciate and interact authentically with others, we need to see who they truly are. Without the intentional work of getting to know a person, he/she remains the creation of our own imagination. Our relationship is then with our created projection and not a real person.

The wisdom of this seems so simple and self-evident that it should go without saying, and yet in experience this step rarely occurs. When we do not take the time to get to know one another, right relationship simply does not happen. People may experience polite interaction but authentic and holy connection eludes them.

We need to practice holy curiosity about others and be willing to take the risk of stepping out of our own comfort zones to get to know someone beyond the surface, "Hello, how are you?" phase.

Why? I mean, why do we need to stretch to get to know one another? It’s because we have covenanted to learn how to love better.

Covenant is a simple yet powerful word. It means "to come together" as we are doing here in this sanctuary. Covenant, more specifically, means "to come together by making a promise," as when two people promise to love and care for one another. Covenant is brought into being by grace and sustained by practice.

When I meet with couples to provide premarital counseling, I tell them that marriage is a covenant, not a contract. A contract is an agreement between two parties whereas a covenant is an agreement between those parties and their God. Or, their highest values, principles, or ideals.

Covenants crop up in other places. Schools and classrooms have covenants that are taped up on walls. You know, "no shouting, no hitting, no spitting, no gum, etc." Families have covenants or ground rules for how people will treat each other. Ministers have covenants with their congregations and their boards. Millie and I have a covenant about how we will work together to support each other's ministry as well as nurture UUC's ministry.

And then, we have covenant groups which are small groups of 7-10 people that meet on a monthly basis to develop strong personal relationships, to gain a deeper understanding of Unitarian Universalism, and to engage in service together. Covenant groups are relational. They are about the people who are in the groups, and they are about exploring life issues through the designated focus and within a religious context.

What holds the group together is the "covenant" that they intentionally (and of their own free will) create to be in right relationship with each other. The questions they ponder in the process of developing a covenant are, "What promises must we make to one another in order to have a relationship of love and integrity? What commitments should we make now, so that our relationship will survive the tough times down the road?" In their meetings, they put their covenant into practice by how they relate to one another and thus, bring community into being.

But a covenant is not just about being well-behaved. That's the least of it. Ideally, when the covenant is done, it will represent our vision of how human beings in right relationship are to be with one another. It will represent our best collective answer to this tragic dilemma that we face: Of how we can be together when it's so darn hard. Covenanting is our quintessential process of creating and nurturing right relationship in community. When we covenant, we recall our past and envision the future so that we can redeem the present.

The covenant is about figuring out how we're going to do what we've said that we want to do as a congregation, which is to help every member discover the source of love in their life, and have the ability to act on that love in ever-expanding circles.

That brings me to the last item on the list - love. It's all about love. Not the mushy, hallmark variety but the more gritty kind that is harder to learn and much, much harder to practice. It is about that kind of love that "will not let us go." It's that love that keeps calling us back into relationship even when our feelings have been hurt or our heart has been broken. It's that love that enables us to be compassionate and forgiving of those who break the covenant, unintentionally or willfully. It is that love that teaches us that we are capable of loving even those who drive us batty.

I am sure you know the story of the wise rabbi who helped a group of monks who had fallen out of right relationship in a monastery by letting them know that one of them was the messiah. This led the monks to treat each other with respect and learn to love again.

And that is our task here at UUC - to learn to love better again and again. And over the past eight years, we've made more progress in that area than what I would've dared to dream back when I first started.

But there's more work to do because learning to love is a process not an end result. More of an ongoing struggle. And it takes self-awareness and self-management. It takes social awareness. And maybe even a covenant. But if you have gotten to that stage of a relationship, beyond the honeymoon phase so to speak, you also know that the harder the struggle, the richer and more rewarding the love.

That's the vision that nurtures us at UUC. It's the vision of a community that is maturing in its ability to love its own. It's the vision of a community that has strengthened its capacity to love the world. It is the vision of living out with love and compassion, with hope and joy, the perils and promise of being in community together.

So, let's practice right relationships. "What you don't like, don't do unto others. That's it; the rest is commentary. Now go study the commentary."

BENEDICTION - Rebecca Parker

Let us covenant with one another:

to keep faith with the source of life

knowing that we are not our own.

Let us covenant with one another:

to keep faith with the community of resistance

never to forget that life can be saved

from that which threatens it.

And, let us covenant with one another:

to seek an ever deeper awareness

of that which springs up inwardly in us.

Even when our hearts are broken

by our own failure or the failure of others cutting into our lives,

Even when we have done all we can

And life is still broken,

there is a Universal Love that has never broken faith with us

and never will.

This is the ground of our hope,

and the reason we can be bold in seeking to fulfill the promise.

REFERENCES:

Walter P. Herz, editor, Redeeming Time: Endowing Your Church With the Power of Covenant

Mary Sellon & Daniel Smith, Practicing Right Relationship

Frederick Muir, A Heretic's Faith