Take care of life.Everything else is a way of saying it more carefully.

Take care of life

1. Take care of life.

This is the whole of it, and everything else we say is a way of saying it more carefully: take care of life, the life in front of you and the life that comes after you, human and animal, water and land and air, the life of the ones you love and the life of the stranger you will never meet.

Creator and Creation

2. Creator and Creation.

We believe life comes from the Creator, and that Creation was here before any word about it, before any book, any building, any law or any of us. We were not set down on the Earth from somewhere else. We belong to it. Every human being is native to this living Earth, and that belonging is where our faith begins.

Church Under the Big Sky

3. The Church Under the Big Sky.

The first sanctuary was not made by hands. The living Earth is the sanctuary and the Big Sky is the Church, with Sun and Moon, sunrise and sunset, that every person who ever lived has stood beneath. A building can shelter the Church. A building does not make it. The Church is the living body of people who gather in calling, relationship, covenant, practice and service, and we never pretend that everyone under the sky belongs to us because the sky belongs to everyone.

Kinship

4. One Tribe, One Drum.

We are kin. Two people can watch the same sunrise from different hills, each alone, and still be part of one living Creation. That kinship is spiritual. It is not a claim to be any Nation or people, and it takes nothing from those who are.

Burning Bush · Free adoption

5. A calling may begin with one.

Sometimes a calling comes to one person before anyone else can see it, the way a bush can burn in an empty place. The one who receives it may carry it alone for a while. But a calling given to one binds no one else. Others are free to hear it, question it, test it, turn from it, or join it, and only when someone freely joins does a community begin.

Entrustment

6. We are stewards, not owners.

What we have been given is greater than we are. We carry it, we do not own it, and the source of the calling never becomes the property of the one who carries it. We take responsibility for what is entrusted to us and we hand it on.

Covenant

7. Covenant.

We bind ourselves to one another by our word, freely given and freely kept. Relationship comes before transaction, and stewardship comes before ownership. What we promise, we write down truthfully, and what is written serves the relationship. It never replaces it.

Private is held

8. Private means held, not hidden.

What is between us is held with care inside its proper circle. We do not hide it from anyone with a rightful claim to know, and we do not hand it to anyone without one.

9. The medicine and sacred-practice current.

This current is carried by another founder. Its words are hers to give, and nothing is written here for her.

Authority answers to source

10. Authority answers to its source.

No one rules here because they are able to force. Power that comes from life, calling and responsibility is real, and authority given by covenant is bounded by what gave it. The ability to compel is not the same as being right. A law is not right because it was passed, and it does not stop having effect because we disagree with it, so we keep three questions apart: is it right, does it bind in the world, and is there a remedy. We answer each honestly, and we never let one answer pretend to be the others.

Refuse the lie without becoming it

11. We refuse the lie without becoming it.

When we must refuse something, we refuse it openly and accept the consequences. We do not deceive, we do not hide behind privacy, we do not invent authority we do not have, and we never use violence. Our way through harm is responsibility first, then honest conversation, then council, then repair, then separation if we must, and outside help only when life or the vulnerable need it.

Progressive governance

12. Governance grows with relationship.

One may carry, two may share, three may steady each other, a circle may hold wisdom, and a network may multiply it. We do not pretend to be more than we are, and we do not let a small moment become an excuse for anyone to take control. One may carry the flame. One may not use the emergency to own the fire.

Founder release

13. The founder lets go.

Whatever a founder had to carry alone at the beginning is set down as others become able to carry it. Letting go of power that is no longer needed is not loss. It is the sign that the work is taking root.

What must survive

14. What must survive.

Some things we keep are sacred, and for each one we ask what exactly was entrusted to survive: the thing itself, its words, its story, its substance, its worth, or its purpose. We keep what was entrusted. Money is not a substitute for a thing that was meant to be kept.

The record

15. The record marks the river.

We will make mistakes and we will fall. We write down what happened, we correct without erasing, and we keep what came before. If we shrink to one steward, the one keeps the memory and the door stays open. The record marks the river. It does not create the water.

Riverrun · Return

16. What returns.

The journey is not finished until something good is handed back. A steward who has grown in the work returns what was learned to the next person, and every ending becomes someone else’s beginning.

Seven generations

17. Seven generations, including this one.

We weigh what we do by the children seven generations from now, and by the people alive today, because seven generations includes this one.

Sanctuary · Service

18. Sanctuary and service.

We exist to make places of refuge and care for people and for animals, to serve those in need, and to be a campfire people can gather around, never a headquarters people must answer to.

Beneficial North Star · developing

Mama Bear Sanctuaries

Mama Bear Sanctuaries is Alchemy of Grace’s Beneficial North Star, the vision of refuge, care and continuity for people and animals. It is called to become a work of its own, with its own stewards and its own home.

It is developing. It names where the work is headed. It is not a sanctuary operating today.