COVENANT GROUP LESSON 3 – FEBRUARY, 2009

LOVE AND THE INHERENT WORTH AND DIGNITY OF EVERY PERSON

Adapted from the Channing Church, Newport RI and First Unitarian Society in Newton, MA

Chalice:  “We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all persons.”  Imperfect as we are, this principle calls us into right relationship with others.  It calls for profound respect, even when we differ with the views or behavior of another.  It calls for gentleness and forgiveness and the understanding that redemption is just a decision away.  It calls us to leave the safety of our suburbs and stand against hunger and hopelessness in our urban streets.  Our first principle remains a touchstone out of our remarkable tradition, a covenant of relationship that supports the other principles and orients us remarkably when we lose our way.

Marilyn Sewell, UU minister     

Check-in:

Reading:  It is when we are joined most closely, walking on the beach in the summer sun or reading on the porch in the autumn, preparing a meal in the kitchen on a winter afternoon, or in the garden on spring mornings turning the earth together.  In just these moments of intense connection and joy and love, I can not help but feel a twinge of apprehension and pain knowing that some uncalled for interruption, some small disagreement, a little accident of fate will pull us apart.  They are so close, so intertwined these experiences of joy and sorrow, of love and pain.  And similarly, no matter the petulance, the storms of anger, the harsh silence that can fall between us,  I am in some part of my being buoyed up, even cheered by the knowledge that smiles and the sly touch of love will soon come, inescapable and certain, blinding and overwhelming in its power.

Rebecca Parker

Life Questions

• Do you believe this principle applies to all people?  What groups or types of people do you have trouble applying this principle?
• What are some of the risks you take when you love another person?
• Is it possible to love another without risk and vulnerability?

Closing ritual:

May the light around us guide our footsteps, and hold us fast to the best and most righteous that we seek.  May the darkness around us nurture our dreams, and give us rest so that we may give ourselves to the work of our world.  Let us seek to remember the wholeness of our lives, the weaving of light and shadow in this great and astonishing dance in which we move.

Kathleen McTigue

Check-out:

QUOTES FOR LESSON 3 – LOVE AND THE INHERENT WORTH AND DIGNITY OF EVERY  PERSON

To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.

Anne-Sophie Swetchine

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances:  if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

Carl Jung

Love is not enough.  It must be the foundation, the cornerstone – but not the complete structure.  It is much too pliable, too yielding.

Bette Davis

One’s first love is always perfect until one meets one’s second love.

Elizabeth Aston

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

H. L. Mencken

Passion makes the world go round.  Love just makes it a safer place.

Ice T.

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.

Charles M. Schulz

There is always some madness in love.  But there is also always some reason in madness.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Love is everything it’s cracked up to be…It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

Erica Jong