“Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass—build the resilience by building the relationships.” —adrienne maree brown

Move at the speed of trust. After so many years of being a leader at UUCL, I’ve witnessed just how important this statement is to building an effective, impactful community. I have weathered times of trust, and times of very little trust at UUCL. Those were the hardest to withstand because wow, were they a bit stormy. Conflict intensifies, mistrust spreads like wildfire and we’re getting nothing important done. Often, the problem seemed to be that people were more determined to push their agenda forward than they were in building relationships and then figuring out how to work creatively together towards a shared goal.

But, when we view our faith community through a consumerist lens, instead of a relational lens, this can happen.

And sometimes this shows up in obvious ways, and sometimes it’s just our subtle default way of operating because we live in a consumerist culture. I guess the question, then, is how do we practice trust with the awareness that we want to step away from this way of being together?

Well, what is the speed of trust? Is it slower than we’d like? Probably, which is frustrating when there is so much work to be done in the world and we want to implement our ideas now! But what if we charge ahead with someone’s idea, put it into action but it fails and we don’t have a solid foundation of trusting relationships? I would venture to guess that we fall apart because we do not have the relationships that keep us resilient.

We must start with building the relationships. Then we will grow the community. Then we will impact the world outside of our walls. We will implement new ideas on a regular basis and some will work and some will not, but trust will hold us together. There will be conflict, but trust will be with us as we work it out. And trust will give us the confidence we need to be more and more like the ways we want the world to be.

Honestly, I think we do a pretty good job these days at building relationships and practicing trust at UUCL. But we do need to stay on top of it, remind ourselves why we are really there, and make adjustments.

Let us turn to our value of interdependence to help ground us in the practice of trust: We honor the interdependent web of all existence. We covenant to cherish Earth and all beings by creating and nurturing relationships of care and respect. With humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life, and we work to repair harm and damaged relationships.

I look forward to practicing trust with all of you this month and beyond!

Heather