To what and to whom are you committed?
This month we focus our attention on Commitment. I suppose if we put this in children’s language we would ask:
What promises do you make?
For me commitment is firmly linked with responsibility. I seem to have had a heavy dose of that in my life from an early age. Mostly, it has served me well, though stress is often responsibility’s close companion.
Soul Matters, a UU religious professionals consortium, is the source of our Religious Education/Exploration lessons for children and youth. Each month we explore a new theme and March is dedicated to Commitment. We have four Sundays to do a deep dive. They take us to curiosity, change, conscience, and compassion.
Curiosity is the first. The commitment to asking questions. I’ve never thought about commitment that way. What a great practice! Francis David, our Transylvanian forbearer and one of our Unitarian founders died in prison for the crime of innovation, of being curious about the Scriptures. So, this commitment is truly part of our DNA. Curiosity has consequences, so the cat learned. Yet we are here today because David wouldn’t be silenced. Let’s get and stay curious.
Then there is the commitment to being open to change—to have our minds changed; the promise to keep an open mind. Wow, so we have to be humble and admit that we might not have all the answers. If we keep an open mind we open ourselves to the exciting possibility of change and growth!
The commitment to individual conscience and the value of each person. Sound familiar? Maybe because it is similar to our 5th UU Principle, “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.” So, a commitment to search our conscience for what is right and true and then to act on it. That’s healthy for us and for our wider community.
Our final March lesson will be on the Commitment to caring or, compassion. This lesson extends our commitments by asking us to put our caring into action. It asks us to, “Commit to treating the struggles of others as our own.”
Has thinking about commitment in these ways changed your way of thinking about it?
Curiously yours,
Rev. Judy, Director of Religious Education