CLF Learning Fellow Katherine Hofmann asks us today:
Do you have family covenants, any sort of internal agreements that help your family unit? How do you restore covenant with each other? How do you renegotiate and change those agreements?
Making A Living
Earlier in life, I said many times, ‘If I didn’t have to spend so much time making a living, I’d spend it helping people.’ When I made that statement it never occurred to me that a prison sentence would meet that objective. So for the past two decades, I’ve helped fellow inmates in myriad ways—from writing letters to their families to explaining how to find the area of a circle so they could pass GED tests, to, sometimes, just listening to what they have to say. -John, a member of CLF incarcerated in Oklahoma who died in 2020
What would you dedicated your life to if you didn’t have to spend so much time making a living?
Teaching Relationships
“Why do we, as a society, make almost no effort to teach, not just the fundamentals of human relationship, but the more advanced skills related to: what do we do when we screw up? How are we present to one another across deeply held differences? What should we do in the midst of volatile conflict? How do we ‘show up’ in meaningful ways for the diversity that we claim to value and constantly stumble over?” -Manish Mishra-Marzetti
What is something fundamental to building healthy relationships that you wish you knew more about?
Vertical Dimension
When I was in seminary, we were taught that covenants involved not only the horizontal dimension–between and among people–but what was called the “vertical” dimension–between people and God. Perhaps that language is unnecessarily hierarchical or theist for you, though. We are asked somehow to involve the sacred, the holy, in the promises we make.
What is the sacred dimension of your covenant?
Covenants and Promises
We use the language of promise to talk about covenant, but in reality they are subtly different from one another. CLF Learning Fellow Donté Hilliard asks us, “How do you understand the difference between covenant and a promise?”