Eastrose Leaders

2007 Letter from the President, Michael Schilmoeller
The Meaning of Covenant

I know that many of us at Eastrose feel as though this Fellowship is an extended family. I confess, I've always thought of this as a bit of a byproduct of my membership. I'm developing an appreciation of how central it is to my membership and spirituality.

We all have other groups that we belong to and causes that we contribute to. These nurture us; these provide a means for expressing our concern for our fellow human beings and for our environment. Some of them enrich us intellectually or provide recreation. They are important. I think, however, a church is a very different community.

A church provides a community with whom you share core values. Your birth family doesn't necessarily do that, in my experience. Certainly, the political, environmental, and professional groups I belong to do not.

Each of us has individual friends who share our values and with whom we feel safe being who we really are. They are also important. As my parents have learned, however, close friends can move on either physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Moreover, if we want to act on our core values to make change in the larger world, our church community can provide support and leverage that individual friends cannot.

When I attended General Assembly, I heard a definition of Unitarian Universalism that resonated deeply for me. Unitarian Universalism, a speaker suggested, is a liberal religious faith based on convenant, rather than creed. That is, we are concerned not with what each other believe but with how we are with one another. We are a community where members feel safe to be authentic about themselves and their values. We have an unspoken covenant to hold ourselves and our relationships with fellow members to the highest standards of trust and respect. I think this is core to my new-found appreciation of Eastrose. What a precious treasure you are.

Michael