What Promises Shall Be Made?
Pinkie promise.
Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.
That’s a piecrust promise.
Do you solemnly swear…?
Do you…? I do.
We make promises throughout our lives, to friends, family members, therapists, judges, spouses, neighbors, just about everyone with whom we enter relationships. Some of those promises are explicit and some are tacit but no less real.
On the day my daughter’s adoption was finalized the district court judge asked me, under oath, to acknowledge that she and I have the same rights and responsibilities toward and from one another as parents and children who become family through biological means rather than in a courtroom: food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, familial love and support, inheritance. I think about that moment in court often–not because there was any confusion in my mind and heart then or since about what it meant to become Lucia’s mother, but because, to my knowledge, no one who attends the birth of an infant who will be raised by biological parents asks those parents to swear an oath of duty and care and inheritance. The expectation of those promises is there, but is tacit rather than explicit the way it is in an adoption hearing.
Tacit promises are sometimes as ironclad as solemnly sworn courtroom promises, and sometimes they are piecrust promises–easily made and easily broken. (That’s a centuries old formulation, by the way, not first written for Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers.) It is sometimes true, as well, unfortunately, that solemnly sworn promises may be easily broken. Still, on balance, there is benefit to explicit promises, so that all parties know what they are offering and what they can expect to receive. So they can hold themselves and one another accountable.
When we make promises as kids we sometimes call them pinky promises, and seal them by crossing our hearts. When we make promises during a wedding ceremony we call them vows. When we make promises in a court of law we call it swearing–or affirming–under oath. And when we talk about promises in a religious context, we call them covenants. Today we are beginning to create a new, explicit covenant as members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah.
I’m asked sometimes, and perhaps you are, too, if we–Unitarian Universalists and this church specifically– don’t have a creed, if we believe all sorts of different things about God or don’t believe in God at all, if our theologies range from humanist to non-trinitarian Christianity, with some pagans and Jews and Buddhists in the mix, if we’re all this and then some, what holds us together as a denomination, as a congregation. In asking the question, the questioner is unwittingly echoing the ancient prophet’s question: Can two walk together except they be agreed?
Often I reply that we are held together by our approach to matters of faith and the spirit, by our common belief that there are many paths to the truth, that we each must ultimately find our way, and that it is wiser, safer, more fruitful to find our own ways in the company of others finding their own ways.
That’s an OK answer but over the years I’ve come to realize that the deeper, truer answer is this: we are held together by our agreement–too often tacit–to take our individual journeys alongside one another. That’s different from simply believing it’s a good idea to do it together. Because even if we believe it is wiser, safer, more fruitful to seek our own spiritual path alongside others doing the same, we could still choose to go it alone because it’s more convenient to read and study on our own schedule, more ‘spiritual’ to pray or meditate on the water or in the mountains or forest. Lots of people do choose that more solitary, individualistic path, some with great satisfaction. Agreeing to walk together is important, because without a covenant between and among members of the congregation, some who choose to begin their seeking as a member of a community for all the right reasons would even then leave the congregation when the experience of community becomes complicated, or when disagreements arise–theological but also financial or aesthetic or practical. And since the congregation really only exists as a congregation–an intentionally gathered group of individuals–the congregation is harmed by too easy departures, just as the persons leaving may have been harmed by the precipitating disagreement. Without the covenant, the explicit agreement to walk together, there is no possibility of repair, reconciliation, new revelation for all parties.
This may be the first time some of you have heard about a congregational covenant–either at all or in the context of this church. Others of you can probably still recite the covenant this congregation used to speak together each week: Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law; this is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another. Written by James Vila Blake in 1894, that covenant has been part of weekly worship in many Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist congregations over the years.
Some fewer of you may remember that just over 25 years ago this church adopted a covenant:
“We, the members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah, covenant to affirm and uphold the UU Principles and Purposes by building a faith community based on trust, embracing diversity, and supporting each other in our ongoing spiritual explorations in an environment that fosters love, respect and understanding. We will willingly give of our resources to maintain and expand our church and its activities, We will endeavor to set a positive example for the children through our thoughts, words, actions, and instruction, while cherishing them as unique individuals. And we will inspire each other to take action to implement love and justice for all people, respecting the interdependent web of all life on earth.”
In the words of one of our past presidents, Jozef Bicerano, “[That] covenant was not treated as a living document. It was put aside and forgotten.” During his term as president Martha Weaver, another past president, brought the forgotten covenant to Jozef’s attention, and with board approval a task force was appointed to shepherd the congregation through a fresh covenanting process. Unfortunately, the middle of a global pandemic that shifted most church activities on-line, followed by a period of ministerial transition, proved inhospitable to completion of the work.
With the approval of last year’s board of trustees I asked Paul Johnson, Danielle Alexander and Tish Hamilton to join me on a new Covenant Task Force. In just a moment I’m going to ask you to think about what we promise to one another as members of this congregation. The task force will sort and assemble your thoughts, draft one or more potential covenants, present them to the congregation in a town hall-type meeting sometime before the holidays, and then further refine and draft a single proposed covenant for adoption at a congregational meeting–probably our annual meeting in June. But before we get to that work, it is important for you to understand why we are undertaking this internal work at this point in time, when many of us feel a desperate call to attend to external issues and crises of the current moment–what might be said to be calls to stop harm and heal the world rather than navel gaze.
The work we begin today represents the desire of the past two boards to take up the unfinished work from 2021–because when leaders make commitments and then leave the work undone (even when times are extraordinary as they were in 2021), trust in leaders, past, current and future wanes. This covenanting work will also provide an important foundation for the ongoing work of our Health Congregation Team. The HCT–Dan Flaherty, Rexanna Lester, Jane Hoffman and Jacqueline Smallwood–was appointed by the 2023-2024 board, and has been meeting regularly in the months since then, educating themselves and the board, and creating a process and set of resources through which our congregation may strengthen our endeavor to walk together together creatively, collaboratively and with the assumption of our best good will toward one another and with the best interest of the entire congregational enterprise at heart. On September 21st, the HCT will share the pulpit with me, formally launching the initiative they have been so diligently working toward. Without an explicitly stated and universally understood agreement about why we gather as a congregation and how we shall walk together, without a covenant, when disagreements or interpersonal conflicts arise–of all the types I mentioned before (theological, financial or aesthetic or practical)–we have no basis on which to call ourselves back into right relationship.
As I said, the HCT has been engaged in research and program development, utilizing materials from both within and beyond the Unitarian Universalist Association, and they will tell you much, much more about it in three weeks, and for several weeks after that. So for the time being, I’m going to ask you to sit with your questions and curiosity about that, and turn your thoughts back to promises.
On the Sundays we recognize new members we say some nice words:
"New Members: We promise to support this church with our gifts of time, talent and treasure as we welcome the gifts of relationship, acceptance and justice that will hold us fast in the inevitable times of storm, challenge and joy.
All: May these words and acts of welcome renew our dedication and commitment to live in healthy community with one another. May we go forward with greater resolve to offer our gifts and talents in order to realize our vision for this church and its larger ministry. Amen."
But these words aren’t a formal covenant, we only say them one or maybe two Sundays a year, and lovely as they are, they don’t really get to the heart of what it means to live in healthy community with one another, to walk together rather than walking away through the week in and week out mundaneity and sacredness of life, even and especially in times when the world beyond our doors cries so loudly for our attention. A covenant helps us keep our house in order, and anchored here we equip ourselves to take up our part in tending to the world.
I have all sorts of ideas about what makes a good covenant, what kind of language, gravitas vs ephemera, groundedness vs abstract, length or brevity, what matters have staying power and what matters are fleeting (or, to use the language of 19th century Unitarian preacher Theodore Parker “the permanent and the transient”), but I’m only the minister. You are the congregation–here before me and here after me. So, please, over the next several minutes, tell me, tell us, on the cards provided in your order of service:
what is it you think you promise this congregation through your participation in it?
What is it you think the congregation promises you?
What is it you think we should promise one another?
If you are worshiping via YouTube this morning, please email your promises to minister@uusavannah.org. If you’re here in the sanctuary, you can leave your cards in the pew when you leave. I’ll collect them later. Please take part in this exercise whether you’ve signed our membership book or not. Everyone who gathers with us–once or every week over decades–brings expectations and promises. The Covenant Task Force needs all of them to inform the next stage of its work. If you have thoughts later in the week, or next week, please send them to me then. David will provide some writing music, and I’ll call us back together with our chime in 4 or 5 minutes.
[writing]
Now retired Unitarian Universalist minister Victoria Safford has written that through the actions that grow out of our promises we “give our word. We send it out and it carries our integrity, our fidelity, our faithfulness, our truth. Our word is still ours, but it calls back to us from the heart of another person, or a circle of people, within which it now dwells. Such a commitment does not predict the future or set it in stone. It makes a certain kind of future possible.”
Thank you for your generous participation in this morning’s start at crafting our covenant of explicit promises and for your participation in the steps yet to come, as together we make a certain kind of future possible. Amen.
