“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
—Leonard Cohen
Covenants, as Unitarian Universalists understand them, aren’t laws: you don’t go to jail or get fined if you break them. Because we’re human, covenants will be broken again and again. An important part of being in community is recognizing when covenants are broken, and including paths for how to return to covenant, if possible.
However, it’s also important to recognize that sometimes a covenant can be so broken that someone can’t return to covenant, or that we may not be able to find the path to make that possible, and have to hold a stronger boundary for protection of community and affected individuals. While we strive to be like Rumi’s poem—Come, come, whoever you are, though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times, come yet again come—sometimes our human limitations can’t quite achieve this.
Think about our UU values statements, which are each a covenant—as in, “we covenant to do the work of Justice and Equity in community.” And we will fail again and again, and need to apologize, to do work of repair, and to recovenant. But sometimes someone is not able to recognize the harm done, to work toward repair, or to alter their course. And sometimes someone, or a group, is so harmed that they cannot allow the one who has broken covenant to reenter the circle. Covenant does not demand that everyone heal instantly and come back together. And covenant is not the same as forgiveness—it requires an ability for both parties to come back together, not just one person offering it to the other.
But the beauty of covenant is that it holds open the possibility of recovenant: of coming back together in this imperfect, broken world and recommitting to the future, held together by love, guided by the infinite, oriented towards justice, as individuals and community. With covenants, unlike laws, we recognize as Leonard Cohen said, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”