From Your Minister – September 2014
Podcast: Download (8.1MB)
Subscribe: More
One of the ways that we create spiritual or theological common ground is so simple it’s almost embarrassing: We agree to do so. We make a commitment to each other to create a space that is held in common. In religious language, these commitments are called covenants. In the Bible, covenants are between people and God.
Covenants, if they are to truly hold us, need to be large enough to contain the whole selves of the people who make them (including both what is holy and what is unholy). The place we are most likely to see covenants being created is at weddings. Two people commit to one another before their loved ones and what they name as holy. I have seen people make some pretty unlikely promises over the years—promises that are romantic and beautiful, but in my mind fairly unsustainable.
When I am the minister with couples who are writing their own vows, I am not willing to support commitments that I consider unsustainable. I once listened to draft vows from a man who wanted to promise to his beloved, “When you cry, I will wipe away your tears.” She thought it was lovely and beamed at him. “Take it out!” I snapped. “At least some of the time, she will be crying because of you, and will not want you anywhere near her with a handkerchief!”
I’m a big believer in making promises we can keep, so that we can be as good as our word. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to keep them, only that it’s possible. The primary wedding vow that we hear—for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health—is a covenant to not walk away, to stay in the conversation wherever it leads, understanding that it can and will get really hard.
I think we can make that same vow to one another in a spiritual community. I may not always like you, or even particularly care for what you have to say. But I can agree to stay in relationship with you and not walk away.
Now, of course there are limits to any covenant. Unitarian Universalists believe in ongoing revelation, and part of what that means is that relationships, as well as people, change. Sometimes we have to redefine our terms. No one should stay in a relationship with a person, a community or a God who is abusive, demeaning or bullying. So there are times when it is healthy and appropriate to walk away, to break a covenant, to say,Enough!
Knowing when to stay and when to go can be a challenge. One litmus test I’ve always used is to ask myself:
How much of the pain in this relationship is me? If I walked away from this covenant, how much suffering would I carry with me?
If I can see that I will still have the same struggles out of the relationship that I do in the relationship, I figure I might as well stay. “Wherever you go, there you are,” the saying goes.
I didn’t come by this wisdom easily. Decades ago, I ended a long-term relationship and chose a different one with someone radically different, someone who had none of the traits I had found so impossible in my earlier partner. A few years into the new relationship, I noticed that fights with my new partner strongly resembled the fights I had with my former partner. “How can that be?” I asked myself. “There’s only one thing that’s the same in both relationships and that’s…me!”
Humbling, to be sure, but very helpful too. Since then, I’ve been a big fan of staying put in relationships, communities and other covenanted relationships. Might as well dig in and learn.
So, I urge you to heed Janice Marie Johnson’s words and make an audacious covenant!
- From Your Minister - July 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - June 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - May 1, 2020
