I think a lot about covenant. It’s not just my job, it’s the center of my faith. Knowing, understanding, keeping, and wrestling with covenant is what makes me a faithful Unitarian Universalist. Staying in covenant– with people, with the planet, with myself– is a deep and important part of my spirituality because it enables me to nurture relationships. And relationships are all that there is, really. Healthy, engaged relationships are the path to hope, joy, and a life-sustaining peace.

I endeavor to be able to recognize when I have fallen out of alignment with the promises that I’ve made, just as much as I strive to find the joy in keeping my covenants. That’s why it’s important to read our covenants, find new meaning in them, and talk about them with one another. Our 8 Principles are a covenant. We have a congregational covenant. Our UUCL board has a covenant. Several of our committees and working teams have covenants. And, I wrote a covenant to the congregation in 2018 when I began in this position as your Spiritual Life Director. Perhaps it has been a while since I’ve visited it with you, so I am presenting it to you in its entirety today. In the following weeks, I will examine it closer, fleshing out what I think it looks like, or should look like now. I will probably rewrite it. And, you are invited into this examining and wrestling with me because this covenant means nothing without all of you.

A Covenant for New Beginnings

I covenant to listen to you and understand your perspective by asking questions.

I covenant to expect failure and success in order to find the way that works for us in the sacred and holy now.

I covenant to be forgiving.

I covenant to be curious about the many ways we can transform ourselves and our community.

I covenant to be patient and to find joy in the process of change.