The ninth tenet of our Congregational Covenant is: Enrich our community by freely sharing our strengths, our talents and our resources.
When I ponder the ninth tenet, I am struck by two things: the underlying significance of “community” for our congregation at SUUS and the purposeful act of “freely sharing” our gifts. As I mentioned in a previous reflection, our covenantal tenets, I believe, are organically intertwined – that is, the practice of any one necessarily influences our ability to do the others. Our Covenant emphasizes the importance of shared social and psychological behaviors that directly support and contribute to our faith community.
The great American community, of which SUUS is a part, owes its democratic architecture to the Constitution and Bill of Rights; interestingly, these historic documents never use the word “individual;” rather, the word “people” is used. The Preamble refers to “a more perfect union,” i.e., a community continually enriched by the contributions of all citizens, “We the People.” At SUUS, our Covenant represents a set of democratically evolved values and behaviors. Our ten tenets are never intended to enrich the individual without enriching the whole community. Now this doesn’t mean our community must be perfect in order to succeed. The community succeeds because its members try to live in covenant, to share aspirational principles, to remain willing to learn from one another, and to support each other in both times of joy and of sorrow.
To “freely share” personal strengths, talents and resources can sometimes be a challenge: The difficulty I think for many of us is that we often keep talents hidden, or don’t even characterize our special abilities as such, whether through modesty or ignorance. Additionally, “freely” giving of our personal assets must often be balanced against multiple demands on time and resources from family, work, and other community commitments. Indeed, human beings are complex creatures and usually not privy to a clearly defined process for achieving their goals, like, say, a smart machine. In the field of nanotechnology, for example, scientists attempt to create algorithms to influence and predict machine behavior based on biological patterns of organizing communities (whether ant colonies, bee hives, lion prides, and even human groups). While machines at this point can be programmed to do specific tasks very well, computer scientists are challenged to teach them how to learn, something at which we humans excel. Perhaps, our covenant may be seen as akin to a special algorithm, or recipe, that we promise to follow together in faith in order to create a more perfect SUUS.
In sum, for me, the ninth tenet acknowledges that community is the essence of human organization – our SUUS community is never static but is an evolving organism that flourishes as a result of its members’ diverse contributions. Thankfully, our Congregation’s strengths, talents and resources are indeed abundant and enriching, and, taken as a whole, awe-inspiring!
Paul Carmichael
Covenant Tenders Team