Practicing Community Care in Our Congregations – from the UUA

We know there are and will continue to be significant emotional and economic hardships. This is a global public health emergency and we all will need more support in different ways. Working from home with kids and partners and roommates; figuring out the technical aspects of moving our spiritual and community work online; worrying over loved ones who may be sick; navigating the uncertainty of this time – this is exceedingly hard. It’s important to ask what is most essential and have permission to let other things go.

Centering community care means recognizing these realities and embracing practices that will hold us in these most difficult moments. As much as we are able – and ability will vary – it matters that we respond to this moment with greater generosity, being more generous with our time, attention, resources and compassion.

It is disappointing to see responses to this pandemic that are rooted in fear, racism, scarcity, and individualism. To center community care in our response means living out of the knowledge of our interdependence, that we are only as strong as our neighbors.

For those who are able, strong financial support for your congregation right now and for pastoral discretionary and local community mutual aid funds will make a real and measurable difference in people’s lives – your own included! Our mission has never been more important – to be sources of pastoral care, spiritual resiliency, and prophetic imagination.

As Unitarian Universalists, we know that salvation is not individual. A theology of interdependence and mutuality reminds us that as we care for ourselves, we must also ensure the health and well-being of the most vulnerable.

This pandemic brings into sharp relief the systemic issues undermining the overall health of our country and planet. Millions of people were already grappling with the housing crisis, poverty, food insecurity, inadequate health care, mass incarceration and immigrant detention, and the climate crisis. We were already ill as a society when this pandemic hit. And it means the impacts are that much worse.

There really is no script for this time. And yet, our fundamental values as UUs, to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all, to promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations, and to honor and care for the interdependent web of which we are a part; these haven’t changed. They are guides.

Every one of our congregations is filled with generous, talented, resourceful and resilient people. And these gifts are so needed right now. This is an opportunity to be creative, to come together in leader-full ways to tend to the deep spiritual and pastoral needs of this time. Remember you are not alone. The work you are doing is important. Your congregation makes a difference. We are ALL in this together and love will guide us.

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray,
UUA President