Friends, I was delighted recently to preach at the Georgia Mountains Unitarian Universalist Church (GMUUC) in Dahlonega, Georgia, on ways to, faithfully and healthfully, engage in conflict. Rev. Charlotte Arsenault, and the wonderful leaders at GMUUC, have been exploring ways to engage in conflict reverently and with humility. Their good work led me to reflect on ways for all of us to engage in conflict.

We start with the importance of relationships…the ways we go deeper with one another, in spite of our differences, in spite of our strong and/or hurt feelings, in spite of the anxieties we carry, indicate the depth of our relatedness. The depth of our relatedness becomes the foundation for expressing ourselves, and it is the depth of our relationships which will serve us when we collectively face profound challenges. In our collective and individual lives – a challenge emerges, loss of job, illness, natural disasters, unsettling political discord, and even a profound change in self-understanding, which compels radical change in our relationships. With those challenges, it compels you, and the circles of community of which you take part, to face the challenge. Inevitably, not with dread, but with an awareness that when facing challenge it is often accompanied by conflicts. Conflicts, due to the packed layers of emotion and urgency which work through our family, congregational, and community systems like lightning rods of anxiety.

Well, how do we remain in loving community while weathering those direct hits of challenge and what tools will serve us as we navigate the challenge, while remaining thoughtfully connected? As Unitarian Universalists we embody a radical experiment in community, which does not seek for all to think alike, yet celebrates that we are each distinct, yet grounded in shared values. For me it is good news, that we don’t charge one another with absolutism – we do not expect a cookie cutter expression of faith and ideas, which translates as we are non-creedal. That lack of fundamentalism then serves us as a tool to engage in conflict, for we are allowed to change our minds and change who we are!

Another faith tool which serves our health, is that we are covenantal not creedal. That is one of our three core truths of Unitarian Universalism. Here is the second tool, and truth, and that which may feel like a heavy lift at times, and even provide an aerobic stretch, is that we practice pluralism. Wow, talk about inviting conflict! Living pluralistically means we can all be in and seek to create beloved community while having a wide range of beliefs, beliefs that may seem at times to be on either end of a polarity, yet, UU expressions of pluralism move beyond polarities, to ideas and bonds that illuminate and lean into our shared values.

We can, and do, differ on ways to approach building beloved community, which compels us to deeply listen to one another. Your community, all of our UU communities, would forever remain in a virtual round-a-bout of discord and division, if we simply lived in the places of our differences. Living covenantly and plurastically compels us to have shared practices of ways to embody beloved community.

When we share our personal narratives and reasons as to why we feel so strongly about a particular idea, it is then we are heard. Each narrative brought as an offering to a collective vision that is mutually created but that also serves as a clear grounding. Yet, it requires that we have shared practices of deep listening. Listening that is not framed, in your simply waiting to express your prior idea, or defense of the idea, but listening that is truly attuned to be fully present to hearing what another person is expressing.

That type of deep listening, and the practices of covenant and pluralism may sound rather naïve or idealistic, yet we are the co-religionists who carry forward the wisdom from our ancestors that that we need not “think alike to love alike” as our ancestor Francis David charged us, yet it is absolutely true.

We can differ in opinion, while sharing in a community that leaves room for care and courage, while seeking to be a community that esteems process as well as outcomes. 

Care and courage to lean into process will guide us to engage deeply, despite our differences.

Friends, the measure of a beloved community is not in the ideal of sustained harmony, where conflict and challenge do not occur, the measure of beloved community is how the values of love, care, and concern for one another guide and ground all of our intersecting feelings and convictions, in the midst of our growing pains.

I bet you’ve been wondering what our third truth of Unitarian Universalism is, (recalling that our first is that we are covenantal, not creedal, the second that we seek pluralism, and for our third, well, here is more good news, we are a Living Tradition.

We boldly and even humbly believe that prophecy is not sealed – that as we grow in our humanity in pursuit of wisdom and scientific advancements, that our understandings will therefore grow and change.

All of these reflections on engaging faithfully and healthfully in conflict call us to always be seeking some sort of collective education about those newer ideas, which will lead to our transformation.