Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Unitarian Universalism

  • Healing

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

    Reading

    The reading this morning is from a sermon by Theodore Parker, a sermon which almost split the Unitarians in the middle 19th C., by minimizing or denying the importance of the miracles of Jesus which are reported in the Christian scriptures. The sermon was called “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity,” and Parker wrote:

    “Let us look at this matter a little more closely. In actual Christianity — that is, in that portion of Christianity which is preached and believed — there seem to have been, ever since the time of its earthly founder, two elements, the one transient, the other permanent. The one is the thought, the folly, the uncertain wisdom, the theological notions, the impiety of man; the other, the eternal truth of God. These two bear perhaps the same relation to each other that the phenomena of outward nature, such as sunshine and cloud, growth, decay, and reproduction, bear to the great law of nature, which underlies and supports them all. As in that case, more attention is commonly paid to the particular phenomena than to the general law; so in this case, more is generally given to the Transient in Christianity than to the Permanent therein.”

    Sermon

    If you had read our church’s newsletter, or our church’s Web site, you would have seen that I gave my sermon topic for today as “Forgiveness.” No doubt some of you actually came here this morning to hear me preach on forgiveness; and no doubt some people stayed at home so they wouldn’t have to hear me preach on forgiveness. Well, I started to prepare a sermon on forgiveness, but I didn’t get very far before it turned into a different sermon. Yet even though this isn’t quite the sermon that was advertised, I hope it will do nonetheless. And some Sunday, I promise you that I will return to the topic of forgiveness.

    As I was preparing the sermon this week, I found myself thinking about something that happened late last winter, when I wound up at the beside of a man who was unconscious and who… but let me back up a little, and tell you a little bit about where I was late last winter.

    Last year, I was serving as the interim associate minister with the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois. They were a congregation of down-to-earth, no-nonsense Midwesterners without an ounce of pretension. And they have long been a congregation of radicals and skeptics. The Geneva Unitarians took the word “God” out of their congregational covenant in the 1880’s, with the result that the congregational church in Geneva broke off having shared worship services with them in the 1880’s because, said the Congregationalists, the Unitarians couldn’t be trusted to actually believe in God. Even more radical, the Geneva Unitarians had three women ministers before 1910. In other words, they were and are typical Midwestern Unitarian radicals who have had no truck with the supernatural for over a century.

    The current senior minister in Geneva is a woman named Lindsay Bates, a hard-headed New England Yankee who grew up in the Bridgewater Unitarian church. Like many of us New Englanders, Lindsay is plain-spoken to the point of being sharp-toungued. She does not tolerate sloppy thinking, and she’ll let you know when she thinks you’re not quite up to snuff. Which meant I liked her pretty well.

    I was surprised, therefore, to learn that Lindsay was a certified Reiki master. I admit that I know next to nothing about Reiki, except that it is a kind of system of healing based on the old Chinese concept of “ch’i,” or the energy flow within a person. (I’m sure some of you know quite a bit about Reiki, and will be able to tell us more during social hour.) I don’t know much about Reiki, but it didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of Lindsay’ Bates’s personality. There were some members of the congregation who were also Reiki practitioners; and, since it is a Unitarian Universalist congregation, there were also those who thought the whole Reiki thing was a crock of beans.

    Yet no matter what people thought of Reiki, there was this strong sense throughout the congregation that part of the business of the congregation was healing. Not just spiritual healing, or emotional healing, but physical healing as well. Lindsay was widely credited with one or two definite physical heaings (not that she’d make that claim herself). Now I realize that historically religions have been in the business of healing. But my sense has been that for the large part North American Unitarian Universalists feel that healing is a very small part of what we do in our congregations. Many of us don’t even pray, and we certainly don’t do anointing or laying-on-of-hands, or anything like that.

    The Geneva church, however, placed some stock in the healing powers available at that church; even the ones who didn’t believe in Reiki. And as I thought about it, even a skeptic like me could think of some good and reasonable explanations for the repots of healing: coincidence; the mind-body connection we’re learning about; the reported power of prayer; and so on. And I found myself becoming more attuned to the possibility that even Unitarian Universalist congregations might have something to do with healing. Maybe I had missed something in the past. I was willing to keep an open mind.

    One Sunday afternoon in late winter, we got two pastoral calls – crises, really – that needed the immediate attention of the ministers. A long-time member of the congregation died suddenly (but not unexpectedly), and it made the most sense that Lindsay, as the minister who had been there 28 years, should visit that family. And a man in the congregation had been in a terrible car accident, was in the Intensive Care Unit or ICU at a nearby hospital, having just come out of surgery. I’d spent some time doing volunteer chaplaincy in a hospital, so I went of the visit him.

    I arrived at the hospital to find the family in shock. Only his wife had been allowed in to see him yet. She came out to get her children, and invited me to go with them into the ICU. He was still unconscious, completely unresponsive, and he looked pretty bad. His doctor came to talk with his wife; the doctor was pretty non-committal: He’d probably recover (probably!), he’d likely have some cognitive impairment, there was a good chance he’d wind up in a wheelchair or he’d probably need crutches or a cane for the rest of his life. All the nurse would say was that they had the best ICU around. It’s always very worrying to me when the doctors and nurses remain so noncommittal.

    After the doctor left, I talked with the family. They wanted to pray (one never knows with Unitarian Universalists, because some of us don’t do that kind of prayer, or don’t pray at all). We gathered around the bed, they held his hands, and we did some praying together.

    Then I thought it might be a good idea to do a little praying for healing – not something I ordinarily would do, but it was a part of that congregation’s culture. So I had his wife take his hand, and I took his hand, and we prayed in silence for a while — I emptied my mind of all thoughts, and just focused on healing.

    And that was that. From then on, what I did was pretty conventional pastoral care and counseling. Much of pastoral counseling involves what are known in the trade as “active listening” and “presence.” Back in the 1950’s, psychologist Carl Rogers did research at the University of Chicago demonstrating that listening and just being present contribute to mental and emotional health, and the pastoral care and counseling I do is a kind of healing that draws from the research of Rogers and others. So that’s what I did, and after two hours at the hospital with this family, I went home.

    When I got home, though, I wondered: when it comes to healing, what did my religion actually provide? I borrowed a few healing techniques from psychologists, true. And I thought then, as I have often thought: our liberal faith can claim to provide some relief from spiritual distress in times of accident, crisis, or illness; and that little bit is enough. There exist religious traditions which offer the certainty of healing –- physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual healing. We Unitarian Universalists do not deal in such certainties. We offer a “faith without certainty,” in the words of theologian Paul Rasor. We do not claim to have religious certainty of any kind; we know that we are limited beings and that we cannot ever know for sure about the mysteries of life and death, or of sickness and health. While you may feel that our religious uncertainty is not as comforting as you would like, I try to remember this: knowing that we are uncertain about many things is better by far than a certainty that doesn’t work in the end; consider what it would be like to pray to your God in the certainty that you will be healed, only to find your prayers don’t work; you pray for a loved one to recover and he or she doesn’t.

    Religious certainty can back-fire, and I would rather accept the uncertainties that must come with my limited understanding as a limited being. I don’t want to pray that Lazarus is going to rise from the dead because odds are pretty good that when Lazarus is dead he’s going to stay dead.

    At the same time, there is more than one kind of religious healing. We don’t have to ask for people to rise from the dead. We don’t have to ask for the cure of uncurable illness. There is the healing that comes after grief. If someone close to you dies, it is possible to become so burdened by the weight of grief that you are smothered by it and literally die of grief. I’ve seen it happen: one member of a couples dies, and the other, though in perfect health at first, dies within a year or two. Or if someone close to you dies, it is also possible to deny your grief, to the point where something inside you becomes frozen and you can never fully love again. Hatred and anger can consume us, when we find it impossible to forgive, leading to physical disease.

    For all these: — grief, hatred, anger, and so on –- religion can provide healing. But this seems different than physical healing. Yes, I know body an mind are connected, are truly one, but I also know that a supernatural miraculous healing of physical illness requires a suspension of the generally accepted natural laws. I don’t need to believe in supernatural miracles of healing. But I do know that within ourselves we human beings to have the ability to heal ourselves; and perhaps to heal others. We get sick and somehow our immune system fights off the disease and we are well again; that is a true miracle. We get sick, and a doctor or nurse helps us to heal, sometimes with medical procedures and sometimes with just a good bedside manner; that’s a true miracle. We suffer from a broken heart, grieving over lost love, but with time we can heal and love again: another miracle.

    That we heal at all is a kind of miracle; that we can promote healing in ourselves and in others is a miracle; these small miracles are enough, and help me be more understanding when the day inevitably comes when healing does not take place.

    Last February, I stood by the man in the ICU, and I was convinced it was going to be one of those situations where complete healing does not take place; I was ready for him to make only a partial recovery. I left the hospital feeling down, worried about him and his family.

    But he did recover. He recovered consciousness with all his cognitive faculties intact; after a couple of months he was able to walk without assistance, and has had essentially a complete physical recovery. His recovery is a kind of miracle.

    Did our little beside prayer help effect that recovery? Perhaps it helped, but of course it’s more complex than that. He was in excellent physical condition before the accident, and that always betters the odds for recovery and healing. He was immediately surrounded by love and support, and that must have helped. His entire extended family came as soon as they heard he had been hurt; the church provided the family with casseroles and child care and rides; and as a result of all that support his immediate family were able to devote their time and attention to helping his healing. I think that the presence of all that love from friends and family and church must have had positive effect. We do not heal completely on our own. Doctors and nurses and primary caregivers promote healing, sometimes by what they do and sometimes by their mere presence. That’s why we visit people in hospitals: just the presence of a friend or a family member can promote healing; you don’t even have to say or do anything besides sit there.

    I have come to believe that healing is one things that our Unitarian Universalist congregations can actually do pretty well. Now you and I know that churches don’t do everything well, and sometimes they can be frustrating places. You can wind up arguing and fighting with people at church, sometimes about minor matters. And you and I know that churches can be boring places at times. We come for that blast of inspiration but wind up with a dull sermon or music you don’t. Yet the core of what our congregation does well is it allows us to be with other people, to be present with other people. As when you visit someone in the hospital, healing can take place in churches just be present for one another; as we sit side by side with other people who care about truth and goodness. I’ve never been healed by sitting on a crowded subway car, so I know there’s something qualitatively different about sitting in a church: being in the presence of other people who are willing to be present for you, willing to sit near you while recognizing your human value and worth; recognizing that we heal each other, that we can be healed by each other.

    We can come to church to be healed and to heal others by our presence: when we are in grief or in joy; when we are dying or sheltering new life; when we are embarking on a new relationship or ending one that has gone wrong. We come to church for healing. And while being a Reiki master might help some people, you don’t need to be a Reiki master; nor do we need miracles or supernatural explanations. All we have to do is show up, and be present. We need the caring presence of others to begin to promote our own healing; we can join in the collective caring presence of the congregation to help others heal.

    That’s one of the main reasons to come to church: to heal ourselves; to help each other heal; that we may in turn begin to heal the world.

  • Ingathering water ceremony

    The following words were given by Rev. Dan Harper at the annual ingathering water ceremony. As usual, the text below is a reading text. Copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

    It has become the custom in many Unitarian Universalist congregations to hold an ingathering water ceremony each year at the close of summer.

    The water ceremony started in the 1970’s, when Lucile Shuck Longview, Carolyn McDade, and other strong feminists wondered about creating a worshipful ritual which would recognize the strength and power of women. They created a ceremony where women got together, each woman bringing a small amount of water to represent some part of her life; and then the waters from each woman were gathered into one communal bowl to symbolize that we are all connected, that we are all a part of life.

    Each person here this morning will have an opportunity to come forward, and add a small amount of water to this bowl. Perhaps you read the newsletter or the announcement in last Sunday’s order of service and brought water from some place that is important to you, or from some place you visited this summer. Or perhaps you brought a memory, or an idea of a place that is important to you, and you will use one of the small cups of water up here to symbolize water from some place that is important in your life, or from some place you visited this summer.

    One by one, we will pour water into the communal bowl. Each of us is an individual, each of us is important to this community: even if this is your first time here, this morning you are as important to this worshipping community as someone who has gone to this church all their lives. Our worshipping community is made up of the hopes and dreams and aspirations that each of us brings here this morning. We symbolize that by pouring a bit of water, a bit of who we are, into this bowl.

    And water connects us with the wider world as well. When it rains, the water tha falls on this church drains into the harbor just down the hill from where we sit, and flows into Buzzards Bay, and out into the stormy Atlantic Ocean: so rain becomes oceans, oceans become clouds, clouds become rain –– become us become the world. Water connects us with each other, and with the whole world.

    The original ingathering water ceremony was created in protest and in anger, and some of that remains as we gather together today. Bodies of water around the world are threatened by pollution and misuse. Our own New Bedford harbor is a Superfund site due to years of pollution with PCBs. Fresh water sources are getting contaminated, or overused. Water ties us to everything around us, and so this ceremony also represents a responsibility and a commitment for making the world a better place.

    If you would like to add water to the communal bowl, please come forward now, and line up over there (point to my right). One by one, walk up and put your water in the bowl. If you would like to tell us where your water came from, please say your name first, and speak clearly into the microphone. And please limit yourself to one or two sentences, so everyone can have an equal chance to speak –– and so we’re not here all afternoon.

    I’ll begin: My water comes from the Fox River in Geneva, Illinois, where I lived up until month ago. The Fox River is a quiet little Midwestern River currently suffering from a severe drought….

    *****

    So we have mixed water from different places, water of memories and thoughts and emotions. So we come together again as a worshipping community. Rivers and oceans run though us….

  • The Oath

    The sermon and story below delivered by Rev. Dan Harper to First Unitarian in New Bedford. As usual, the texts below are reading texts. The actual sermon and story as delievered contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon and story copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

    Story

    This is a story from the Islamic tradition. You probably already know that in order to be considered a Muslim — that is, someone who follows the religion of Islam — you must do five things. First, you must confess that there is no God but Allah whose prophet is Mohammed; second, you must pray five times a day; third, you must fast during the month of Ramadan; fourth, if you possibly can, you must make the journey to Mecca, the center of Islam; and fifth, you must give money to the poor. Our story today is about giving money to the poor. The Sufi master and dervish, Sheik Nasir el-Din Shah, told this story.

    *****

    Once there was a man who was very troubled in his mind. He faced such great troubles in his life that he could see no way out — oh, his problems were so great that I dare not tell you what they were. If you heard all his problems, you would be desperately sad for a month.

    And yet his troubles kept growing worse. It got so bad, his friends gave up on him, his servants moved out, he had no one to talk to but his cat. In desperation, the man swore that if he ever found a way out of his troubles, he would sell his house, and give all the money he gained from selling his house to the poor people who lived in his city.

    Soon thereafter, his troubles miraculously came to an end! Within two or three days, everything was fine once again. He sighed with relief. Once again, he could enjoy living in his beautiful house — and then he remembered. He had sworn that if he ever got out of his troubles, he would sell his beautiful house, and give all the money to the poor.

    He realized he did not want to sell his house. Why, if he sold his house, and gave away all that money, he would have so little money left, he would have to live in a much smaller house. That would be most unpleasant! But he swore he would sell his house. But there was no reason for him to give away so much money; far better that he keep the money for himself.

    So he told people they could buy his house for one piece of silver. However, his cat must continue to live in the house — everyone knows that cats don’t like to move — and the cat was such a valuable cat, he must sell it for no less than ten thousand pieces of silver.

    A rich merchant bought the house for one piece of silver, and also bought the cat for ten thousand pieces of silver. The man gave all the money he gained from the sale of his house to the poor — which was only one piece of silver. But the money from the sale of the cat — ten thousand pieces of silver — that money, the man kept.

    *****

    Sheik Nasir el-Din Shah did not say what happened to the man afterwards. But Sheik Nasir el-Din Shah did say that many people are just like the man who sold his house for one piece of silver. Many people resolve to do the right thing, but then they change things around in their minds to make it easier, and make it be to their advantage. Nasir el-Din Shah said that until we can stop doing this, we will not learn anything at all.

    This is a hard story to listen to. Even today, we know we should give money away, but instead we go and spend that money at the mall. I know this is something I have a problem with — how about you?

    Source: Tales of the Dervishes, Idries Shah, Dutton, 1967.

    Readings

    from the final chapter of “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau

    “…if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

    from the Koran, 49.11-12

    “Believers, avoid immoderate suspicion, for in some cases suspicion is a crime. Do not spy on one another, nor backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Surely you would loathe it….”

    Sermon

    Earlier, we heard a story about a man who sold his house — and who also sold his cat. I was trying to figure out how many dollars that cat was worth. The man sold the cat for ten thousand pieces of silver, and if each piece of silver weighed one ounce, at recent market prices for silver that cat was worth seventy thousand three hundred and fifty dollars. The house, on the other hand, was worth seven dollars and four cents (rounding up to the nearest dollar) — which also means the man’s promise was worth essentially nothing.

    What are promises worth? What does it mean to make a promise? I’ve been thinking about promises this week, because right after this worship service the voting members of this congregation will decide whether or not to call me as the settled minister here. If this congregation — if you — decide to call me, we will be making promises to each other. So we have to figure out what our promises are worth, and what it means to make promises to each other, and how to live up to our promises.

    We start by recognizing that Unitarian Universalist congregations are based on promises. We do not have a creed or a doctrine — you do not have to believe certain things in order to be a part of this congregation, as is true with many Christian congregations. We do not have a set of laws or religious rules that you have to follow to be a part of this congregation — as is the case with many Jewish congregations. Instead, Unitarian Universalist congregations make promises. The technical term for the promises we make to each other is “covenant.”

    Rebecca Parker, currently the president of one our Unitarian Universalist theological schools, traces our modern idea of covenants goes back more than four hundred and fifty years. She writes:

    “In 1550, Robert Browne, inspired by the Reformation, drew on the Biblical image of promise making between God and people to propose a revolution in church life. Churches should come into being, he said, as a covenant among persons. Not through common assent to a doctrine, or through sacraments administered by priests hierarchically arrayed and apostolically descended. Instead, people should join themselves by a mutual agreement to walk together, to keep [Jesus’s] commandments, to choose their ministers and teachers, to put forth and debate questions to learn the truth, and to welcome the voice of protest, complaint, and dissent.”

    That’s where we get our idea of covenant. You may have noticed that we still like to ask questions and debate the answers. And we still join ourselves together by mutual agreement to walk together, to choose our ministers and teachers, and to keep the commandments to love others as we love ourselves.

    A good number of Unitarian Universalist congregations have written covenants explicitly stating the promises the people of the congregation make to one another. The first church covenant written here in New England was written in Salem in 1629, the oldest church founded on the soil of New England, which is still a Unitarian church (and coincidentally, the church where my parents got married). The original covenant of the Salem church said this:

    “We Covenant with the Lord and one with an other; and doe bynd our selves in the presence of God, to walke together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to reveale himself unto us in his Blessed word of truth.”

    The Salem church still uses a version of this covenant today, and they say it together each week during their worship service. In this covenant, the congregation makes promises about how they will treat each other: they promise to bind themselves together, and walk together in the “ways of God”; they make promises about searching for truth by figuring out together how God is pleased to reveal Godsself. This may not be a covenant you would like to be a part of, but that’s part of the point — you know exactly what the Salem Unitarian church stands for.

    Not every Unitarian Universalist congregation has such a clear covenant that everyone says together each week during the worship service. As you probably noticed, we have an affirmation and a doxology, but we do not say a covenant together.

    Yet if you read the Annual Report of this congregation, you will see that on page 6, your Board Chair, Evelyn Gifun, writes, “We need to have… a congregational covenant that will express how we will interact with each other so that we can all feel valued and respected.” Thus at least one person in this congregation senses the need for an explicit covenant.

    I have discovered over the years that most Unitarian Universalist congregations do have covenants, either explicit or implicit. You just have to poke around and generally you will uncover one. I went poking around in the church office, and found a card titled “Application for membership,” which says this:

    “The First Unitarian Church in New Bedford:

    “– Assumes that members will strive toward high ethical and moral standards in their personal lives and in the community;

    “– Leaves members free to formulate their religious beliefs according to their individual needs, conscience, and degree of maturity;

    “– Works for the understanding and promotion of a religion of love, assuming a spirit of cooperation and tolerance toward other religious groups;

    “– Cooperates and contributes to the Unitarian Universalist Association, but is not controlled by any denominational authority nor committed to any system of theological belief;

    “I hereby make application for membership, promising to make a reasonable effort to attend and support this church and the ideals for which it stands.”

    This may be an application for membership, but to me it sounds like a covenant. This little card tells us what the church stands for, and asks us if we are willing to promise to uphold what the church stands for. Like most covenants, it asks us to stand by the other people in the church, and at the same time it asks us to align ourselves with something higher than ourselves. It tells us that there is no creed or doctrine we have to believe in, and it tells us that there is no higher authority than ourselves. It tells us that we are free to question and debate religion over the course of our lives. Perhaps most importantly, it tells us ours is a religion which grows out of love, flowering in a spirit of cooperation.

    Because it is an application for membership, it perhaps doesn’t quite sound like a covenant. But if I said this —

    “We, the members and friends of First Untiarian of New Bedford, strive toward high ethical and moral standards in our personal lives and in the community;

    “We leave ourselves free to formulate our religious beliefs according to our individual needs, conscience, and degree of maturity;

    “We work for the understanding and promotion of a religion of love, assuming a spirit of cooperation and tolerance towards other religious groups;

    “We cooperate with and contribute to the Unitarian Universalist Association, but we are not controlled by any denominational authority; nor are we committed to any system of theological belief;

    “And we promise to attend and support this church and this ideals for which it stands.”

    If I put it that way, it begins to sound more like a covenant. You may disagree that this represents a covenant. Yet even so, I still believe this congregation already has some kind of a covenant — covenants are a part of who we are as religious liberals, as Unitarian Universalists — and that we need to let the light of day shine on that covenant, whatever it may be, so that it may grow, and blossom, and set fruit.

    Covenants are crucially important: Evelyn Gifun says so in her annual report; and the second reading this morning tells what can happen if we don’t make covenantal promises to value and respect one anotehr. The author of the Koran says to “avoid immoderate suspicion… do not spy on one another, nor backbite one another.” That is what we try to avoid with a covenant — we make promises to one another so we don’t have to always suspect one another, so we don’t have to waste time spying on one another, so we can stop backbiting.

    Fazlur Rahman, a liberal Islamic theologian, says this passage of the Koran grows out of the firm belief that all human beings are essentially equal. And — this passage tells us that we human beings all too often forget value and respect each other — all too often, we treat each other badly, we are suspicious of each other, we engage in backbiting.

    Backbiting destroys the promises we make to each other, just as the man in the story destroyed his promise by selling his cat for far too much money. Did you ever think of the literal meaning of “backbiting”? I love how the Koran puts it: “Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Surely you would loathe it.” Yuck! Cannibalism! You bet I would loathe it! And, boy, does that image help remind me to keep the covenantal promise of radical human equality.

    If you call me as your settled minister, we will be making such promises to one another. Above all, we will promise to value each other and respect each other. Above all, we will promise to devote ourselves to something larger than ourselves, devote ourselves to this and other ideals.

    Furthermore, in this congregation we will promise to strive towards high ethical and moral standards in our personal lives, and in the community — that’s all of us, you and me. We will promise to leave each other free to develop our religious beliefs according to need, conscience, and level of maturity. We will promise to work for the understanding and promotion of a religion of love. We will promise to contribute to and cooperate with the larger Unitarian Universalist movement, but we will assume primary authority over ourselves. We will promise to avoid the limits of any one system of theological belief; and to attend church; and to support this church, and support the ideals for which this church stands.

    If we advance confidently in the direction of this, our dream, we will meet with success as yet undreamed of — we will put old things behind us, to find that our old covenant will be expanded, interpreted in our favor with yet more liberality. There will be the universal in what we do; with our covenant, with our promises to each other, we grow, and touch the eternal oneness of all life, and it yields to our touch, itself changing and growing. If we keep our promises truly, the universe changes for the better.