My favorite professor, Dr. Clance, was fond of saying, “we must use our good brains and emotion.” She was encouraging us (students in clinical psychology) to pursue our education along two lines that, some would say, do not intersect. Those are the rigors of science-objectivity, a systematic approach, measurement, and the ability to reproduce results, as well as the highly personal phenomena of human experience and interaction. Intellectually, I understood her point. In practice, I found it difficult to apply what she was teaching me.
Her words reminded me then, and now of the fourth Unitarian-Universalist principle—A free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Truth and meaning.
Years later, a group at the Women’s Retreat at The Mountain shared an experience that was like a swim in the pool of meaning. We used our imaginations and connections with one another to take a short, phenomenological journey. As we spoke and shared observations, it became clear that some had tried to analyze the experience and others tried to avoid doing so. Some wanted to just ‘be’, others wanted to demonstrate the rational in their observations. Neither is right nor wrong but the need to promote or defend a point of view was distracting.
So, what did we do? We took a slight detour to talk about what we were doing. We made a few simple agreements and then proceeded. What we found was that insights and meaning were enhanced when ‘the truth’ was blended with feeling, insight, association and imagination. What felt like a detour to ‘fix’ something, turned out to be a valuable conversation and our time together afterwards was more rewarding.
As I reflect on the Covenant of Right Relations that we began to discuss last year, I’m reminded of Dr. Clance, the time at The Mountain and numerous other examples from my professional and personal life. I am grateful that we seek truth and meaning and that we do so together.
Best,
Constance Dierickx
Board President