{"id":91,"date":"2009-03-07T13:46:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-07T18:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=91"},"modified":"2009-03-07T13:46:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-07T18:46:00","slug":"covenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=91","title":{"rendered":"Covenant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forgive the adolescent opening \u2013 with a definition, as the clich\u00e9 goes, from my Funk and Wagnall\u2019s. A covenant, in its varied interpretations, is essentially an agreement, a contract, a compact between two or more parties. Lynn\u2019s excellent homily of this past week examined, among other things the covenant<\/em> between God and his people to never again destroy the earth by flood, in response to, in retribution for the actions of its occupants \u2013 however reprehensible. The \u2018signature\u2019 on this document, if you will, is the \u2018bow\u2019 in the sky, reassuringly appearing, as the clouds clear and the sun peaks through again to settle that bit of anxiety that percolates up in the psyche of the literalists among us. Lynn goes on to point out that this particular contract is as much a pledge given by God with no attached condition \u2013 as it is an agreement between. . . Sounds a bit like Grace to me.<\/p>\n

As I attended to the rhythm of her text \u2013 as always<\/em> accompanies a good homily in my experience \u2013 the linkages began to click and whir (again as usually<\/em> accompanies) with the somewhat unexpected shunt to An Inconvenient Truth<\/em>, Al Gore\u2019s diatribe on the earth\u2019s (inevitable?) march toward global warming and all the attendant fallout. In particular, the graphic projections came to mind of what parts of the planet might look like 50 or 100 years hence. Namely that what is now heavily inhabited \u2018land\u2019 would have morphed into sea bottom. \u2018Free-associative thinking\u2019 being what it is, next stop was a recent Globe & Mail piece on computer modeled predictions of the disappearance of the Antarctic ice shelf with its kilometers-thick mass relentlessly dissolving and pumping up sea levels. And I started to wonder a bit about said covenant. <\/p>\n

Pledge or contract, these \u2018arrangements\u2019, at least in the human world, have both a need to be revisited and renewed from time to time \u2013 boasting a distinct shelf-life as it were. Granted, such mortal agreements generally have a term attached \u2013 but even those so-called open-ended deals (pension plans, pledges of undying love, you name it) seem to have a way of yellowing around the edges after a while and slipping into the nether world of \u2018that was then; this is now\u2019. And I began to speculate if global warming was not, in some way, Gods serving notice that the terms of his covenant were in need of \u2018renegotiation\u2019. Just that little tickler that \u201cI know what I said, but things have changed \u2013 and it\u2019s not pretty\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m all in favour of Grace. A pretty good deal: behave as you will, deny as you might, diminish for that four score and ten \u2013 and, with God\u2019s grace, all is forgiven. (In passing, for those of you who haven\u2019t seen the new Brideshead Revisited, there\u2019s a great scene wherein the dissenting dad, on his death bed, does a little gestural recant of his ill-spent ways and, presto, the family is reassured of his future, post-mortal coil existence, as it were. Good ol\u2019 Grace!) But being in favour of something and adopting it as the moral instruction manual for structuring one\u2019s life decisions are two pretty different issues. In my world, contracts are a two-way deal. It may feel like it\u2019s management piping the tune and we poor workers have no choice but to comply or else. But contracts are a binding agreement that obligates both<\/em> parties to fulfill certain conditions. I work for 40 hours; you pay me an agreed upon rate. I die prematurely; and you agree to continue to provide pension coverage for my surviving partner. And so on. And further, we typically have input into the terms and conditions that comprise the contract. Put more succinctly, there is a mutual responsibility <\/em>that attaches. No free (Grace-driven) lunches!<\/p>\n

So what of God\u2019s pledge? As Lynn indicated, the world is a much-changed place. Our capacity to wreak havoc and ruin is much-amplified from those days some 600 years BCE. And what\u2019s that (schmaltzy) line from Spiderman: \u201cWith great power comes great responsibility\u201d. So maybe it\u2019s time to start mutualizing things a bit \u2013 and to lean a little less heavily on the \u2018management\u2019 obligation to keep a finger in the dike or to turn off the celestial faucet before we hit the 40 day mark. Maybe it\u2019s time for the worker contingent to flesh out its side of the contract a bit more fully.<\/p>\n

A year of so ago Nicola had researched a unique spin on stewardship as part of her then involvement in that ministry, creatively coined Green Stewardship \u2013 and somewhat confusingly and distressingly, had the ideas marginalized as \u2018flavour of the month\u2019. Undaunted she continued to assemble reference material, much of it originating from Earth Ministry and distilled into a succinct manual of parishioner responsibility entitled: \u201cGreening Congregations Handbook\u201d. (The website for those interested in looking a bit further is www.earthministry.org<\/a>. ) In keeping with the stimulus for today\u2019s blog, reprinted in this handbook is a speech given by Bruce Babbitt, former Arizona governor and environmental activist, \u201cBetween the Flood and the Rainbow\u201d, which too is worth perusing \u2013 when speculating about our side of the deal<\/em> (online at http:\/\/www.fs.fed.us\/eco\/eco-watch\/ew951218.htm<\/a>. ) So next time the clouds break and the bow appears, enjoy the show. But I\u2019d wager that little tickle in the gut is as much one of felt responsibility as it is relief that the pledge is still good.<\/p>\n

David Howard<\/p>\n

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Forgive the adolescent opening \u2013 with a definition, as the clich\u00e9 goes, from my Funk and Wagnall\u2019s. A covenant, in its varied interpretations, is essentially an agreement, a contract, a compact between two or more parties. Lynn\u2019s excellent homily of this past week examined, among other things the covenant between God and his people to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}