What Have You Done for Me Lately?

We serve those who are not otherwise served, eg. incarcerated UU Pagans, those without congregations, and others.

We seek to create right-relationship and to actively live covenant in our membership, chapters, and wider community. We provide consulting and conflict resolution assistance. We listen to and partner with groups historically referred to as “pagan”, but who do not embrace the term, such as indigenous spiritual traditions, especially among UUs, and seek out those who are denied a voice.

We share resources: curriculum, liturgy, fundraising ideas, etc. among our members.

We exist to nurture the gift of love and the values of UU Pagans and Earth-centered UUs into flower in the world. We foster broadening theological diversity in our congregations, chapters, and communities.

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That’s a lot! Let’s dig a little deeper.

CUUPS is an organization with chapters throughout the continent and members throughout the world. Our membership is primarily in the USA. We are a member community of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). That means, that like the congregations and other communities who are members, we ARE the UUA. We expect services from the staff of the organization and we pay dues to support their work. We are in a relationship with all the other congregations and communities of the UUA.

Being a Covenanting Community means we make sacred promises. People who  become nuns or monks (this happens in Buddhist and Christian traditions) and those who get married, make covenantal promises. These are promises witnessed by individuals, and organizations and made to something greater: the community,  history, our sacred universe… We do the work of the Covenant of UU Pagans because of our love for our community, with an eye to our legacy, and growing from our connectedness to the universe.

We have a missional focus. That means that we have a mission to be of service, to make the universe a better place, and bring our vision into reality. The good work of the mission and vision team in creating a vision for CUUPS guides us. The nearly 100% acclamation by the membership of that vision affirms its importance. So, since members and friends of CUUPS are the body and hands and breath and soul of CUUPS, your dollars, your time, and your talent, are what move the mission forward.

We are committed to creating more justice. As an organization we approach that in more than one way, but because we are a large organization, our voice is important and (as our vision instructs us to live our values and act on our causes) we speak out. This year we have been doing important work focused on racial justice . That will continue to be important. We are glad that the conversation is happening and that we can be a constructive part of it. Our love of the sacred universe and our understanding of our selves as part of nature leads us to be a part of Commit2Respond, the current UU effort to transform our relationship to the planet and bring justice to our relationships around the environment and the human beings affected by it. Our affirmation that our bodies and our expressions of love are sacred lead us to work on building Consent Culture. You can see our public statements on this blog and on our website and Facebook page.

Our vision leads us to serve those who are not already served. Those we support range from UU Pagans without a local UU congregation or those experiencing isolation due to their religious beliefs, to UU Pagans who are incarcerated and without access to spiritual support, to UUs just exploring Earth-Centered Spirituality and in need of guidance along that path. For instance, over the last 3 years we developed reading packets and resources for incarcerated UU Pagans. These resources are now delivered to them regularly through the Church of the Larger Fellowship (UU).

Another way of looking at living in covenant is that we seek to build respectful, mutually supportive community. Many call that living in right-relationship. There is no rulebook for living in right-relationship so we return to the principles, values, communities, and practices UU Pagans have revered in our history. We don’t shy away from conflict, but we do wish to move through it toward better relationships. As an organization we are a network of members, friends, chapters, congregations, board, leaders, and the broader communities in which we exist. All of these relationships need tending. Our board president has conflict resolution training and the board candidate for ministerial relations will be explicitly tending our relationships with our community’s current and future lay and ordained religious leaders.

One category of communities close to us has historically experienced colonizing, oppression, mis-naming, and erasure: those who often are lumped in with “pagans” by the mainstream culture but who do not choose that name for themselves. Namely, indigenous spiritual traditions. We have a particular responsibility to hear their stories and be in right relationship with them. We are in discussion with some individuals who are members of those communities and also UUs about perhaps publishing a book about earth-relating traditions in dialog together and/or presenting a panel at the next UU General Assembly.

We cannot do the work of serving others, building relationships, and creating justice without nurturing our own communities and our individual souls. We need our rituals, our worship, our teaching, our quest for knowledge, our community building and one-on-one connections to be deepened and enlivened.  We know that for every member or chapter struggling to build a skill or find a resource, another member or chapter has some answers. We have distributed CDs of liturgy from the Boulder Colorado CUUPS chapter and are about out of them. We rely on chapters and members to submit liturgy, curriculum, best practices, and ideas to share with others. Our board candidate for development has many years working as a professional doing fundraising which she will share with the membership. Her chapter has done interesting projects to generate interest and income. We are excited to get a discussion going on Facebook and to share the great ideas with our chapters. Our board member for liturgy and curriculum is connected with the UUA’s Worship Web and Kat Liu’s wizdUUm.net and is reaching out to Religious Education professionals and others for curriculum.

All of these efforts are in service to the broader vision. We exist to nurture the gift of love and the values of UU Pagans and Earth-centered UUs into flower in the world. We foster broadening theological diversity in our congregations, chapters, and communities. As Peter Dybing pointed out in a recent post on this blog, in many ways CUUPS represents the future of the liberal religious movement we call Unitarian Universalism. As we deepen our skills and resources, broaden our relationships, and act for justice we are creating the vision of the world enlivened by Pagan and Earth-centered wisdom. What a great project to be a part of!