AN INVITATION TO WRITE YOUR LIFE COVENANT
What is the Human Story You Would Stake Your Life On?
(Covenants will be shared with New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light and placed on our website, see final page for details of how to send)
We are living in an enormously transformational moment. While holding sorrow, loss, crisis and human and earth needs, we must answer a sacred call to transformation, or conversion. We have much time to be with Earth and her elements and to listen deeply in this moment. If we have been listening we may have heard messages like:
“You have been too busy for community.”
“You have been hogging resources and wasting precious natural gifts.”
“You are part of climate change crisis.”
“Do you really love your neighbors around the world? Have you been acting as though you do?”
“There is beauty all around you in the trees, water, sunshine. Do you really need so much stuff to be happy and fulfilled?”
Alongside of pandemic and crisis, we are also collectively living into Spring and the holy days which accompany it from many traditions and perspectives: Jewish and Christian in early April and Islamic later in April as we move into Ramadan. April is also the host to the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, and later on in May we celebrate the 5th
anniversary of Pope Francis’ teaching document, On Care of Our Common Home. Even later in the year, the 5th anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement will highlight the urgency of renewing commitments in this decade.
What does all this tell us? The Earth and our religious traditions are inviting us to listen anew in this time of coronavirus and climate emergency.
It is a time of the snake, shedding its skin to hold a larger body.
It is a time of Christian scripture, where we are told that we cannot put new wine into old wine-skins.
It is a time when the ancestors and The Great Spirit are guiding us to a deeper place with grace and virtue to live differently for the love of Mother Earth.
It is a time of the Jewish kavanah – a call to act or pray with intention, mindfulness, and purpose – not by rote.
We hold all of this, as we live into a new reality of a virus that shares similarities with and foreshadows disruptions of the climate crisis. Each of us is living in a difficult and yet grace filled moment that we must not squander. How will we live in Our Common Home as we move out of this time of sequestration in our small homes? Life cannot go back to “normal”, and neither can we.
We must grieve this fact and ask courageous questions of how to live anew. We must care for the most vulnerable who suffer the most from our economic and health crisis. We must discover what is ours to do and renew our commitments to Earth, to life, to one another.
It is a moment to rewrite our life covenant – the story of who we are and what we believe, the creed by which our lives are guided. As systems collapse how will we create a new vision of priorities and embody the different choices we know must in order to care for Our Common Home?
Writing Your Life Covenant
New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light invites you to take this time to reflect deeply and renew your commitments by writing your life covenant, story, or creed – whichever framing and language is most accessible to you. We hope to share these both broadly and in community. It might be helpful to read Larry Rasmussen’s piece, Understanding A Covenant and Creed
Here is an outline to guide you:
1. Prayerfully reflect upon these questions, and, if you like, share with others in your household, family or faith circle
– Why do you care to create a different future? Was there a particular moment, person, or place that ignited your heart in response to Earth’s suffering?
– What is the human story you would stake your life on and why?
– What Covenant would you write? We encourage you to include at least one embodied action in your commitment/covenant.
2. Write, paint, draw, create a song to express your thoughts. Take your time.
3. If you have written your covenant, distill the precious pearls from a string into 2-3 lines.
4. Share with NM IPL your covenant expression that engages these questions.
5. NM IPL will share some of the covenants, and possibly compile them as reminders of our collective commitment to move to a deeper transformational life together with the human family within Earth, our precious and irreplaceable Common Home.
Submit your covenant by(Thursday) April 30th to Carlos Navarro at carlos@nm-ipl.org