What Are Your Commitments?
To Whom or What Are You Accountable?
These questions get right to the heart of covenant. A
covenant is a promise (or promises) freely and intentionally given, about how
you will be in relationship to yourself, another or others, or a community to
which you choose to belong.
A covenant is more than an expression of something we’d like
to do or some way we’d like to be. It expresses a deeply held intention and
commitment to embody values we hold dear, even when it’s challenging or
difficult.
Covenants with
Ourselves
It begins with the promises we make to ourselves. Our values
call us to care for ourselves as the worthy human beings we are, tending to our
minds, bodies, and spirits and fully expressing ourselves and our gifts in the
world.
One of two central commandments in many Christian traditions
is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Our Unitarian Universalist adaptation of
this covenant is the first of our UU principles: “We covenant to affirm and
promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” This includes
ourselves, for if we are unaware of our own worth and dignity, it is unlikely
that we will be able to affirm the worth and dignity of others, and if we fail
to treat ourselves as worthy, we are also unlikely to treat others as worthy.
It’s not always easy to recognize or promote our own worth
and dignity. We may be captives of conditioning that causes us to view and treat
ourselves with disdain, or to see tending ourselves as selfish. The promises we
make to ourselves may be a response to shame or self-loathing, instead of self-love,
and those that are rarely have the power to hold us. We may fall short of
fulfilling our promises to ourselves for many reasons, and since we’re often
the only person who’s aware of the promises we’ve made to ourselves, we have no
one else to hold us accountable.
Perhaps these words, adapted from UU Minister Mark
Belletini, might encourage and support you.
Go in peace.
Live simply, gently, at home in yourselves.
Act justly.
Speak justly.
Remember the depth of your own compassion.
Take care of yourselves as bodies,
for you are a good gift.
Crave peace for all people in the world,
beginning with yourselves,
and go as you go with the dream
of that peace alive in your heart.
Invitation to
Reflection
How might the world be different if each of us were truly convinced
of our own worth and dignity, and committed to treating ourselves that way?
What promises might you make to yourself? What might you say “no” to in order
to be able to say “yes” to those promises? Do you feel willing and able to do
that? Who or what might help you keep your covenant with yourself?
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Interpersonal Covenants
In his poem, “The Third Body,” Robert Bly describes a man
and woman, long together, with these words:
They obey a third body that they share in common.
They have promised to love that body.
It used to be that that couples entering into marriage vowed
“to love, honor, and obey.” Nowadays it’s rare (at least among UUs) to hear
that covenant uttered at a wedding, because people assume it means that the
person(s) making that vow are promising to obey their partner, thus promising a
sort of subservience to them. But perhaps the words indicate a promise to obey
a third thing – the relationship itself, and what that relationship needs and
requires of them. This is a challenging task, as those who would truly give
themselves to it find their freedom circumscribed – they find that they must say “no” to some things in order to say “yes”
to the relationship.
This is true not only of marriages, but of all relationships
where there is a mutual covenant. Friends who vow to love and support one
another may also find that keeping their promises to one another requires
intentionality and may necessitate saying “no” to other people or things.
Paradoxically, people who make and honor mutual covenants or
commitments of depth to another person or persons may find that honoring those
covenants promotes personal growth they might not have sought or experienced
through another means, if the commitment is grounded in healthy self-regard.
Most parents also make promises to their children. These
promises are unilateral rather than mutual, of course, but, like the covenants
mentioned above, they require sacrifices and have the potential to bring both
growth and joy.
Invitation to
Reflection
What mutual covenants have you had/do you have with other
people? What unilateral promises have you made to others? How have these
commitments influenced, shaped or changed you? What have you struggled with?
What have you appreciated?
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When Covenants Are
Broken
Covenants are always aspirational. They articulate our
honest best intentions. And we all know the pain of broken covenants, whether
we ourselves or someone else is responsible for the breach. Sometimes we become
aware that we are unable to honor our covenants, or experience the betrayal of
a covenant by another person.
When that happens, we may find in our covenants themselves
the means for reconciliation, which begins with returning to the core values
that undergird our promises. “Because I believe I am worthy, I forgive myself
for not sticking with my meditation, and recommit to resuming it today,” or
“Even though the easiest thing would be to walk away from this relationship
right now, I believe working through these difficulties is the best chance I
have to become the person I want to be,” or “I promised I’d love my child
forever, so even though I can’t support what ze is doing right now, I will not
withhold my love.”)
Reconciliation is not always possible or even desirable when
covenants have been broken. But even in the absence of reconciliation, there is
a possibility of healing, as Alice Walker notes in her beautiful poem, “Goodnight,
Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning,”[i]
about her mother’s final, civil words to her dead father. After her mother
utters the words of the title, Walker reflects:
It was then that I knew that the
healing
of all our wounds
is forgiveness
that permits a promise
of our return
at the end.
Invitation to
Reflection
What are your commitments to yourself and others? To whom or
what are you accountable? What role have promises or covenants played in your
life? How have you approached broken covenants?
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Covenants in
Unitarian Universalism and at OUUC
A
covenant is far better…for reminding the members of their mutual duty and
stirring them up to it. …there is something to be said for the word covenant.…It
emphasizes that the church is a community of mutual obligation, which involves
a sense of commitment. Even the freest of free churches needs that much
discipline if it is to last long enough to accomplish anything of value in this
world.
-Conrad
Wright, renowned scholar of Unitarian Universalist polity
Unitarian Universalism is a religious tradition whose
members are joined and bound not by shared beliefs, creeds or dogma, but by
covenant, by mutual agreements about the purposes for which they assemble and
mutual promises about the ways they will be in community with one another.
Member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist
Association have a covenant, comprised of our 7 principles (which articulate the
values we promise to affirm and promote), and six sources that undergird them.
Look for the covenant in the front of your hymnal this Sunday, or read it here.
The members of OUUC have a covenant with one another as
well. That covenant describes our shared values, and the ways we promise to act
on those values in our congregation. Look for it in your Order of Service this
Sunday, or read it here.
Invitation to
Reflection
To what degree are we aware of these covenants, these
promises we’re parties to? Do you personally hold yourselves accountable to
them? If so, how does that influence the way you live? What difference has it
made in your thinking, your behaviors, or your relationships? If you haven’t
been aware of them, or held yourself accountable to them in the past, could you
imagine doing so? How might it change your thinking, your behaviors, or your
relationships?
We welcome you to post your reflections, images, poetry, music, or other
responses on the bulletin board in the Commons, or on our soulmatters facebook
page. If
you’d consider sharing your reflections on our blog or in a Sunday service,
please let us know at soulmatters@ouuc.org.
[i]Alice
Walker, in Cries of the Spirit, ed. Marilyn Sewell (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1991) 114
Very soon,
our Religious Education classes will be resuming, with new and returning
volunteers forming intentional learning communities with new and returning
children and youth in our congregation.
Each and every class and age group will begin the year by creating a
classroom covenant.
The children
and youth will be active in the creation of their own covenants, proposing and
discussing ideas for what should go into those living documents that will hang
on the wall, but may come back down for discussion or revision, or for newly
joining class members to sign. What does
it mean to create a covenant in the classroom?
Sometimes it
is too easy to think of our classroom covenant as simply a behavior
contract. This approach manifests in a
list of “don’ts”: Don’t interrupt, don’t hurt people, etc. Sometimes a few “Do’s” get in there as well:
Do Listen, Do Participate. Of course,
some of this is necessary to establish a working community, whether that be a
family, a classroom, a marriage, a workplace, or a congregation. We need to agree on what behaviors are within
our group norms.
But a
covenant goes so much deeper than a simple list of rules, and that is why
covenanting is a truly spiritual practice.
A covenant is not a contract or a list of rules; a covenant is the
promises we make to one another and makes clear the perimeters of our right
relations. In other words, a covenant is
more like marriage vows than an employment contract. What do we promise to one another? What do those promises ask of you? How do we move back into right relationship
or back into covenant after a promise is broken (as they will be from time to
time)?
In the
classrooms at OUUC, this vision of covenant challenges us to move beyond the
Do’s and the Don’ts. It challenges us to
make promises such as: “We will listen to each other with open minds and
hearts”, or “We will respect that each person’s story is their own to tell”, or
the ever popular youth group promise to “step up, step back” (introverts speak
up, extroverts give them more space to do so).
To covenant
in this way asks us to stretch the way we are in the world, rather than
constraining it. It is more a spur to
growth, less a limit on freedom. And
thinking in these covenanting terms doesn’t stop at the classroom door. How can our families covenant with one
another? (Some ideas for doing this as a family here.) How can we each covenant with nature, or with
life? Can you covenant with
yourself? What promises would that
entail?
How would it
be to live your whole life in a sacred covenant with what you find most
holy? How would it be to live in
covenant with your own wholeness?
