Mending
THE UU YEAR · FALL
* This is a living tradition. What follows is an introduction for UU nonpractitioners — the Hindu community's own voices and teachers remain the authority on Holi.
The Heart of It
May we right what's wrong and mend our paths, so we might reach Beloved Community.
Something breaks. A promise, a relationship, a trust we thought was solid. We feel it in our bodies before we name it. Mending is the UU season for sitting with that feeling honestly, and then doing the slow, sacred work of repair.
This isn't about guilt or shame. It's about the courage it takes to say "I caused harm," the generosity it takes to say "I forgive," and the faith it takes to believe that broken things can become whole again. Not the same as before, but whole in a new way.
Mending falls in late September, as the year turns and we settle back into the rhythms of congregational life. It asks us to look
inward before we look outward: Where have I fallen short of my own values? Where has my community fallen short of its covenant? And what would it take to begin again in love?
MENDING is a time for Unitarian Universalists to focus on forgiveness, atonement and work towards repairing relationships. It occurs within the individual, among community members, and stretches to the Sacred found in many forms. A natural outcome of this holy work is the focus on renewing right relations, supporting reparation efforts, and recommitting to covenants agreed to in congregations, small groups, and self.
MENDING is observed by some Unitarian Universalists in the second half of September. It is offered as a time to lift up the need for right relations, forgiveness, and the work necessary for reparations. Days with a similar or related focus include Yom Kippur, World Peace Day, Indigenous Peoples' Days, and Juneteenth (?).
MENDING lifts up our commitment to doing what is right, owning what needs to be fixed, and acknowledging the sacred importance of repair. As we each mend our personal relationships, so can members of the UU community renew covenants of right relations with one another.
Themes
Mending speaks to some of the deepest currents in UU life:
Our covenant tradition. UUs are bound not by creed but by covenant — promises we make to one another about how we'll be in community. Covenants only matter if we take them seriously enough to notice when we've broken them. Mending is the season for that noticing.
The work of repair. UU's third principle — acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth — isn't about tolerating everything. It's about the hard, ongoing work of staying in relationship even when it's uncomfortable. Mending connects to our commitments to justice and equity (second principle) by asking: what does repair look like, not just between individuals, but between communities? How do we move from talking about reparations to doing the work?
Generosity and grace. Forgiveness is an act of generosity — both giving it and receiving it. Mending reminds us that transformation (one of our six shared values) isn't abstract. It happens in the specific, vulnerable moment when someone says "I'm sorry" and someone else says "Let's try again."
Watch + Learn
https://a.co/d/0a8PL1o4
https://a.co/d/0ebgNBjt
https://uuabookstore.org/products/transforming-conflict
How It's Observed
There is no single fixed ritual for Mending the way there is for Water Communion or Flower Ceremony — and that's part of the point. Mending looks different depending on what needs repair.
In some congregations, Mending takes the form of a covenant renewal service: members revisit the promises they've made to one another and to the community, naming where they've succeeded and where they've fallen short. In others, it's more contemplative — a service built around readings on forgiveness, a period of silence, or a ritual of releasing what we're carrying.
What's consistent is the inward turn. Most of the UU year faces outward — toward justice, toward community, toward the wider world. Mending faces inward first. It says: before we can repair the world, we need to repair ourselves and our relationships.
- Focus on self-accountability, loving kindness, acceptance of one another and support for each other in improving our selves and the human condition. Experience the generosity of forgiving, and the gratitude and grace of being forgiven. (third principle, generosity)
- Heed the call for repair, and continue the work for reparations to those who have been harmed. Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations (transformation, second principle)
- Renew congregational, small group, and covenants to self, restore just procedures towards right relations (uu identity, covenant)
Ways to Engage
Songs
Following are a few options that work well in a Water Communion service, small group worship, or to listen to at home. For a more comprehensive selection, see the UUA list of Songbooks and Hymnals, and the UUA List of Music for Online Worship. Please respect copyrights and contact individual artists directly for their permission. Besides legal requirements, we ask that you help support the artists.
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STLT #1: A Prayer for This House
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#18 What Wonderous Love
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STLT#34: Though I May Speak with Bravest Fire
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STLT #188: Come, Come, Whoever You Are
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STLT #318: We Would Be One
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STLT #360: Here We Have Gathered
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STJ #1031: Filled with Loving Kindness
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STJ #1037: We Begin Again in Love
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STJ #1054: Let This Be a House of Peace
Mending Playlist
rituals for friends & family
Selections that could be used in small group worship or at home.
