by Louise Wilkinson
As you know, the Right Relations Committee has been working for the last year and a half to help embed a covenant of caring and intentional relationship-building and deepening into all of our interactions at East Shore. Right Relations emphasizes practicing openness and trust-building to grow our souls so that we are ever more capable of practicing love!
Even though we are all working on treating each other kindly, conflict happens. And that’s GOOD! Because that is how we grow and learn. Others challenge us, and we learn to challenge ourselves. Someone said, “we don’t deal with other people, we deal with ourselves dealing with other people.”
The Right Relations Facilitation Team was formally launched during our Sunday service on September 16. Each individual on the team has been trained to offer what we call
“conflict coaching.” This approach is one that empowers each of us to sort out and make decisions about our conflicts – with some guidance. This approach helps us each develop our skill to use conflict to learn about ourselves, and to create even deeper and more authentic relationships.
The coaches on this team are prepared to listen to you talk about conflicts that frustrate you – to help you get the good juice out of them. They’ll assist you in discovering the insights we can get when we are able to share openly and vulnerably with someone – someone who knows how to help us probe the inner depths of our reactions, our ways of making meaning of our interactions, and the possibilities for new ways of seeing and relating.
These coaches have been through hours of training, and hours of practice – and in the practice, they each brought their own conflicts and were pretty amazed at what could happen even in a half hour!
The coaches on your Right Relations Facilitation Team are Mary Anderson, Michelle Danley, Jose Garcia, Milly Mullarky, Mark Norelius, Dave Porter, Mike Radow, Peter Sugarman, Jennifer Sumner and Louise Wilkinson.
Each of us on this team commits to you our full presence and caring, our confidentiality, and our neutrality so that we can hear you as completely as possible and work with you to discover your own wisdom.
You can approach any of us with a request for conflict coaching and we will serve you ourselves if that seems right, or bring the request to the team to discern the best coach for you.
Thank you all for supporting this work in our congregation, and for loving each other enough to do the work of growing.