Community is where covenant matters

Welcome to week two of Thirty Days of Love 2017. We hope you find these resources and reflections of use to the work you do from your congregation to your community and beyond.

Click here for the downloadable companion worksheet on covenants and movements. Once you’ve done that, consider checking out a video from our Organizing on the Side of Love online course on spirituality and sustainability you can find here. Lastly, in case you missed it check out the Thirty Days of Love 2017: All Ages Activity Calendar by Rev. Marisol Caballero.

The thing about covenants is that we don't enter into them because they are easy. One way we know we have entered a covenant is that it is a promise made in a sacred way, and that it is not always easy to keep. In the time we live in, the things we promise in a sacred way will not invite simple answers or solutions. 

We all have different experiences with giving our word. We have different experiences keeping our word. Giving our word to each other, and keeping our word, matters a lot right now. 

Because, when surrounded by lies and inconsistency, we have to be able to figure out how we give each other our word, and keep that word. Who is watching us for our integrity? That depth of integrity that does not allow us to just tell ourselves what we want to hear? Our children and our families. Our co-workers. Our neighbors. The folks in our congregations. In community is where our covenant really matters.

Do what we say we are going to do. The depth of our relationships lie in keeping our word, breaking it, restoring it with integrity. To have the humility to take responsibility for how we may create harm and taking action to repair the harm done. Otherwise, we are just people, supposedly in spiritual community with each other, wandering around refusing to meet each other's eyes. When we live and work in covenant with our community, we nourish, fortify and support our individual and collective visions of the future.

What we have covenanted to one another, to our communities, to our children, to the people who have come before and come after--should be worthy of them. Of the struggles they have had, the lives they deserve to live, the future that we will require in order to survive and thrive.

The covenant is what keeps us stretching our courage wider, our patience further, our commitment longer. When we build relationships inside of covenant, they can go to a different kind of depth--beyond just being polite and careful. Beyond doing only what we are expected to do, and no more. If we are to break the isolation that this moment is pushing us towards, it will be (in part) because we set out to be people of integrity, and we keep our word.

Last week The Rev. Peter Morales and Hon. Thomas Andrews called upon friends of faith and conscience to commit to translating their values into action. You can add your name or congregation to the commitment. Will you join me?

We have much to do together in these times ahead. 

In faith and solidarity,

Caitlin Breedlove

Campaign Director, Standing on the Side of Love

Side With Love