Author: Michael Tino

CLF Learning Fellow Donté Hilliard asks us:

Do we sometimes confuse our personal expectations with communal covenant? Tell us about an experience you have had of this.

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?

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?

“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?

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?