[Oe List ...] Summary of the Spiritual Covenant by Lerner

[KarenBueno at aol.com]

My aging brain cannot remember if I have sent this on or not.  Lerner is so 
wordy, it is hard to decide to read all he says, so I wrote this summary:

THE SPIRITUAL COVENANT WITH AMERICA
Adapted from P. 229ff of The Left Hand of God by Michael Lerner
 
1. Covenant with American Families
All families deserve a living wage, full employment, affordable high-quality 
child care, affordable health care, access to excellent education, starting 
with preschool, and flexible work schedules.  They need a culture that nurthures 
the spiritual and emotional underpinnings of family live that honors 
nurturing, love, gentleness, and kindness, that rejects the physical and emotional 
abuse of children, and that provides equal respect to both women and men.
2. Covenant of Personal Responsibility
Each of us individually has personal responsibility for the choices we make.  
Each of us will resist the easy excuse of blaming our problems on others.
3. Covenant of Social Responsibility
We will break through the social disconnection that traps people in 
loneliness and alienation, and we will resist the cynical realism that ignores that 
which is most deeply human.  We will seek to eliminate poverty, protect the 
rights of seniors, the young, and all those at risk of being left behind.  We will 
not allow discrimination in any form, and we will reduce the gap between rich 
and poor, both in our own country and around the world.
4. Covenant for Values-Based Education
We support education that fosters children’s capacities to be loving and 
caring human beings and helps students grow into responsible, ethically and 
ecologically attuned adults.  We will teach our highest values: generosity and 
compassion, kindness and responsibility, respect and caring for others, joyous 
celebration, awe and wonder in response to the grandeur and beauty of the 
universe, gratitude and humility, intellectual curiosity and love of learning, 
emotional and spiritual intelligence and a powerful commitment to freedom, justice 
nonviolence and peace.  
5. Covenant for Health Care
We will give ourselves the same health care that the president and Congress 
receive; a single-payer system that allows us to choose our doctors, hospitals 
and treatments and that gives our doctors the freedom to worry about us, 
unconstrained by bureaucrats who llimit our care in order to enhance the 
profitability of insurance companies or health care providers.
6. Covenant of Environmental Stewardship
We will preserve and protect the earth and seek to reverse the damage done 
through ignorance and irresponsibility.  We will halt the reckless wasting of 
the world’s resources.  
7. Covenant for Building a Safer World
We value safety and security, but reliance on military and unilateral 
strength interventions does not make the world more secure.  We will replace the 
globalization of selfishness with a spirit of caring and responsibility not only 
for America but for the entire planet.  We will build strong international 
institutions and an international nonviolent force that can intervene to protect 
populations from genocide or oppression.
8. Covenant to Separate Church and State and Science
We seek to keep religion out of government and government out of religion, 
and both out of science.  Holding the values we seek does not commit one to a 
belief in a supreme being or to any particular religious or spiritual path.
(Summarized by Karen Bueno)
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