FROM THE MINISTERS

Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson, Co-Senior Minister

Trust is a risk.

Some years ago, I was doing some volunteer work with a group of Unitarian Universalists, and near the start of our time together, we had a discussion about covenant—about the promises we were going to make to ourselves and each other about how we were going to be together. This might be a familiar conversation to you, if you’ve participated in a Journey Circle or taught or attended a Religious Exploration class. If whatever it is we’re setting out to do matters, then it is always worth the time to establish what we can and should expect from each other.

This particular conversation for this particular covenant began with the expectation that we would trust one another. There were nods around the table and there seemed to be a general sense that this was a good and obvious expectation. We were about to move on to the next point, when someone wisely spoke up and said something like, “Trust takes work; I can’t just act like it’s there when we haven’t done the work of building it together. And I don’t want to be given trust I haven’t earned. I want to be able to trust each of you, and I want to be trustworthy for each of you. But I don’t want us to pretend that just putting one line on paper does all of that, all at once.”

That challenge sparked a rich, deep conversation about what each of us really needed in order to be able to trust the other people in the room and the group itself. One voice moved us out of the familiar, practiced groove of setting down the words of a covenant and into the difficult work of actually living out a covenantal relationship.

And ironically—or, perhaps, fittingly—speaking up like that was, itself, an act of trust. It’s a vulnerable thing to ask for what you need, especially when what you need means letting go of the easy, familiar way and doing something hard.

Throughout this month, we will be exploring the spiritual them of Trust and Vulnerability, particularly the way in which risking the one helps to make the other more possible, in a virtuous cycle. In a world where loss and trauma are all-too real, trusting others and being vulnerable with them does not come easily for many of us. Yet, communities like ours rely on trust to sustain our network of relationships. And, the moments of vulnerability that trust helps to call out of us are the same moments where growth and a deeper self-understanding become possible. ◊