“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.” Rumi
This poem has become in our tradition one of my favorite songs to sing. It invites and humbles. And it is at the core of covenant.
This month we are exploring “Covenants.” A covenant is simply a promise. In some churches or synagogues, the covenant is with God. That’s a vertical kind of covenant. But here in this church we have a horizontal covenant: It’s a promise to one another – that wherever our path may lead, we will walk them together. That’s what we say every Sunday. It’s not an easy way to be because we all sometimes break that covenant. And there are many different covenants. For example, the Board has a covenant with each other and me. Covenant Groups have covenants with each other about how they want to be in their small groups. And of course, we have a “Covenant of Health Relations.” The covenant is a commitment to ourselves to do the work of sustaining our Beloved Community.
And of course there are times that we break our promises, our covenants. But we have these documents to help us come back together, to remind ourselves of the promises we have made.
So whether you’ve broken your vows a thousand times, come, yet again, come. We will walk this path together.
Rev. Sian