Crews, Confluence, and Covenant

I hope you have a crew. Actually, I know you have a crew, and I hope you know it, too.

Crews are a funny thing. They sound exclusive, like tightly drawn circles encompassing people that share a certain tattoo. Or like locked rooms that require a secret handshake to gain entrance. Crews and clubs can function this way, with the purpose of making insiders feel special.

Trouble surfaces when insiders only feel special when outsiders are maligned or worse. Sadly, crews and clubs at times embrace a worldview that sees “them” as a kind of threat to “us,” and this leads to all types of miserable behaviors. Christian nationalism and white supremacy are stark examples of this warped dynamic, where crews become more like cults. In such groups, people like GOP guru Paul Weyrich are applauded when they claim boldly that they “don’t want everybody to vote,” particularly people of color.

I surely do not hope you have a crew like that. I hope your crew helps you to stand strong when you encounter hateful prejudice like that of Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation, and who advised GOP leaders for decades.

I hope your crew is more like my daughter’s rowing team pictured above. Each member shoulders a portion of the work of lifting up something that, while precious, can be overwhelming for any one individual. Rowers strive for synchronicity or what they call a “set boat,” referring to the efficiency of collaboration and the wonder of a shared, graceful strength. And yet in the tightest of contests, even those that don’t yield victory, respect for one’s competitors is the norm, and collective learning and growth toward excellence are shared.

These lessons have never been intended to merely move a boat. Harmony, balance, and rhythm are “the three things that stay with you your whole life,” notes Daniel James Brown in breathtaking book, The Boys in the Boat. “Without them civilization is out of whack,” he adds. “And that’s why an oarsman, when he goes out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life. That’s what he gets from rowing.” When a teammate is diagnosed with leukemia, deep and binding dynamics make it possible for the race to continue through tears and angst.

I have been reminded in these past weeks of my membership in multiple crews and of the power of communities to sustain, heal, guide, and provide meaning. At the risk of pummeling the rowing metaphor, I have felt a great confluence of my respective crews, and it has been most welcome. “Confluence” refers to the place and time when two or more streams or rivers come together to flow with greater depth and complexity. Beyond water bodies, this applies equally to groups of things and people who gather from different places of origin, varied histories. Harmony, balance, and rhythm are only possible where diverse things meet and discern how to live well and with vastly more strength than homogenous populations.

One obvious example of a crew or community that holds me is the church that I serve as pastor here in Connecticut’s Northwest Corner. The image above shows members of our Green Team, which I was delighted to find on a recent morning adding mulch to our pollinator garden. Here are three folks from one among several teams, people guided by their love for the planet and their passion for helping pollinators, among other things. These teams bind together people of differing ages and backgrounds, and they all coalesce in spite of their varied missions to serve with love, supporting each other along the way.

This brings me to my third “C” word here: covenant. Crews and confluence join forces to point me toward the concept of covenantal love, a promise of compassion for the cosmos, driven by the sense that divinity pulses through all that exists. Covenants are related to contracts but so much deeper and better because love is the glue, not fear or punishment. Contracts are transactional and conditional, loaded with “if-then” statements. Covenants are transformative and unconditional, more like shared promises. Contracts run out or get ripped up. Covenants never end.

This photo shows delegates and clergy at last Sunday’s Spring Meeting of the Litchfield North Association, a regional gathering of churches that includes the church I serve. We drove from as far away as Massachusetts to worship, learn, vote, and affirm ourselves and each other as held in love, committed to justice and deepening faith as followers of Christ in this region. We are feisty New Englanders, independent and autonomous to a flaw, and our unique strengths are exponentially greater through our partnerships and collaborative service in covenant with each other and with God. We’re not perfect, and we serve a God who is perfect Love. On our best days these seemingly competing truths play with the harmony of a symphony.

I understand that we all have days when we feel isolated. The picture below shows the dark side of the Earth, one of my new favorite images. I can look at this and feel a sense of coldness, removed from the sun’s warmth. Then I look again, and I see dots of light across the face of the Earth, sparkles of activity in cities I have never seen, evidence of strangers who are also neighbors. There are no boundaries, no lines drawn by men, no true divisions. There is just our common home, an orb spotted with groups of folks who hope for peace and safety, food to eat and journeys to share.

I hope you know that this is your crew. I pray that you savor the beauty and strength of confluence as celebrating your uniqueness and that of others. And I wish you the peace of covenant, the assurance of committed love that has no condition and no end.