Ancient wisdom offers a powerful way to understand how our congregations and our association really work as a microcosm of the universe. Indra’s Net is a metaphor used in Hindu and Buddhist wisdom stories, described as both a tool which tricked opponents into sustaining human goodness, and a starry expanse teaching us how we’re all interconnected and re-created from each other. The net is described as an infinite web of jewels, each one reflecting all the others. This beautiful image captures how our lives connect and influence each other every day.
Recognizing our interconnectedness can transform the way we approach the charms and challenges that our religious community offers. These invisible connections are part of our daily lives and interactions. Each person’s actions create ripple effects throughout our entire community. Imagine a vast net stretching infinitely in all directions through space. At each intersection hangs a perfectly clear jewel, brilliant and multifaceted. This web includes everything: the physical world, our thoughts, feelings, deeds, and awareness. Each jewel represents every being, every moment, and every particle of existence.
As the Lifespan Faith Engagement team considered how to share our focus and goals for this year with you, we thought this was a fitting metaphor that challenges our typical way of seeing the world as separate, isolated units. Indra’s Net instead reveals a reality where boundaries dissolve and connection becomes the fundamental truth. Even when we feel alone, we are connected to the vast web of other UU religious professionals, congregations, and communities of support. Each of us is growing in our understanding of collective responsibility and shared purpose.
As you do in your congregations, the UUA’s Lifespan Faith Engagement office is reflecting our connections to you and other UUA teams as we thoughtfully develop gifts for our shared community wellbeing. As a group of religious educators, we aim to improve our religious network.
One of our goals this year is to build trust with religious educators and congregations through several means. Firstly, by improving the accessibility and effectiveness of our communications through our newsletter and website, as well as by sharing what resources and other support are in development (coming soon). We’re also creating new means to honor your input and feedback through surveys, Meet the Moment wave cohorts, and Threshold Conversations. We will continue to facilitate and contribute to spaces where religious education leaders and youth and emerging adults can discuss, learn and share tools and wisdom for connection, meaning making, and growth. Our plan is to integrate all of this into a shared vision for a new UU lifespan faith development curricula series by the end of this church year.
Our constant mission is to equip and train congregations for lifespan UU faith engagement. We do this through continuing to develop and update curricula and resources for Our Whole Lives sexuality education, Mosaic anti-racism education, Common Read, Deeper Joy, and Whole Church RE. We are also hosting and creating new trainings for leaders, facilitators, and advisors for religious education, OWL, and youth and emerging adult ministries. LFE continues to support community formation, identity development, mentorship, and pastoral care for marginalized identity groups who have less support in traditional congregational settings. We’re also working to integrate youth safety policies and guidelines into the mainstream safety work within the UUA.
Though each of us on the LFE team brings our own gifts to this work, this shared endeavor is made possible through congregational giving — both monetary and relational. As congregational leaders, the questions, concerns, practical wisdom, time, and skills you bring into our association strengthen our shared web. The ancient wisdom of Indra’s Net reveals something beautiful about how we’re all interconnected. Our web of relationships is simultaneously extremely delicate and incredibly strong. We’re embracing our role this season as educators who are jewels in our treasured Unitarian Universalist network.