THE COVENANT
In my mind’s eye I see Timothy McVeigh continuing into Kansas, after leaving Oklahoma, and finally arriving ‘Home’ to a “4-14, Mission Accomplished” banner. Not that I celebrated his achievement, but after Waco, and the shootout in Idaho with Randy Weaver, I felt that many Americans had lost faith, joined a militia or other vigilante group, started quoting ‘posse commitatus’ legalities, and were supportive of violent actions in protest. As a disciple of Ghandi, I felt that humankind had grown beyond use of force to settle conflict, and felt covered by the Covenant of the League of Nations. Also, being realists, and appreciating that WWII has established itself as a fact, a renewal of the Covenant in the United Nations Preamble had been a given. The militia movement seemed to me a response to the failure of WW III to materialize, and the belligerent among us needed an outlet.
Later, a Walker cousin, Harley Lappin, as warden of the Federal Penitentiary at Ft. Wayne, supervised the execution of McVeigh as a normal reaction to his crime, in accordance with the covenant. Aside from the fact that the target, the Morrow Building, was populated heavily with African-Americans, it seemed that the militia movement no longer had its once bright shiny luster.
9-11 proved us wrong. Not only had we executed the responsible bomber, but we had trained enemies to use violence attack our cities, and it had come home to roost. The new bombers were suicide bombers, which escalated the terror level. Almost imperceptibly, the covenant shifted from the threat from an internal to an external terrorist attack to our basic sense of security. Those who had been scorned for their militia activities were suddenly welcomed as societies' first defenders. But, in the process, the Golden Rule, “Do not do unto others what you would have them do unto you,” was scrapped in favor of the earlier Law of Moses, “An eye, for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
The Israelites carried with them, for hundreds of years, the "Ark of the Covenant," ostensibly the Covenant renewed by Joshua, that Adam had had with God, at one time, as well as the 10 Commandments brought down from Mt. Horeb by Moses, and possibly the first five books of the Old Testament. Later, some have us believe, that Jesus Christ was the beneficiary of a covenant Jeremiah negotiated with the Supreme Being.
Again, the Scots people became Covenanters, first in 1637 then in the Solemn League and Covenant of 1645 when they supported the English Parliament in its dispute with Charles I, and from which Charles subsequently surrendered. Basically these later acts were designed to oppose attempts by the Church of England to bring them under hierarchical discipline.
Rev. Bruce Clary, a Unitarian-Univeralist minister, now in Dedham, MA, but on 19 July 1995. who was pastor of the East Shore Church of that denomination, wrote a document which was published in the Cleveland newspaper, which connected the Oklahoma City bombing with the covenant proposed for the American Colonies by Governor Winthrop back in 1630 or so. We reproduce that paper here.>>>>>>
Enough with contracts; U.S. needs a covenant. Instead of talking about a Contract with American, let's talk about a Covenant with America.
In these current times of great trial and tribulation, of national suffering and sorrow, more than ever the American people need to re-establish bonds in a covenant of the sort our forebears made and which the
Pilgrim Governor John Winthrop drafted at this nation's very beginnings.
In 1630, Winthrop spoke of establishing the American dream in terms of a covenant, saying:
"We must be knit together in this work as one. We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body,"
This is a covenant which speaks of inclusiveness, of unity, of great sympathy among all citizens whether poor or rich, of all persuasions, of all classes and races, religious faiths and political opinions. More than this, it is a covenant that affirms the understanding that when one suffers all suffer, when one is in need all are in need. It affirms a commu¬nity of people who hold the no¬tion that all are equal as persons of unique worth and dignity It is time we spoke in terms of this kind of covenant with America, a covenant with our sisters and brothers, with the abused and downtrodden, with meek and the poor, with those who are heavy-laden with anxiety, fear and grief. It is time we opened our hands and hearts to all whom the Declaration of Independence, drafted almost a century and a half later, declared as being endowed by their Creator with iNalienable rights, rights which no contract of any kind could diminish or take away.
We are given to speaking mostly in terms of contracts; contracts with our employers, insurance contracts, contracts with our attorneys, business contracts, contracts with our credit card companies. Even a Contract With America.
A covenant is different. The difference here is in relationships, the nature and quality and depth of relationships— our relationships with nature, with people, with communities, with that spirit which we claim as the ground of our various faiths. A covenant, unlike a contract, hon¬ors relationships, not retribution.
A covenant, unlike a contract, celebrates community and not accumulation or exchange of goods. A covenant reveals relationship and honors our interdependence, our shared humanity, the simple fact that we are members of one human family. Covenants speak of secure promises we make with one another and of values.
All of us were affected, and therefore covenanted in at least some way, with the bombing in Oklahoma City. Years ago I served as the minister of First Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City, located just six blocks from the bombing site. Yet even from that seemingly safe distance, the bomb shattered the windows of that church and blew out its great sanctuary doors.
Of course, I feel a personal closeness with those in Oklahoma City. I walked the very street where now there is a crater of blood and debris. I feel a personal closeness with those in that church who are the families of two among the missing. And I feel a closeness with those in our Ohio communities and those elsewhere who have relatives missing or dead as a result of that horrendous crime and whose lives now are altered forever.
We must realize that it was a tragedy that befell not just one American community, but all America. We must realize that a crime of this proportion geometrically affects many others, not just those who perished but those who were their friends, relatives, business associates, fellow Americans striving to live freely and safely.
I don't know, but I suspect that whoever perpetrated the crime was driven by his own agenda and that it was exclusive of the common good, no matter the reason or justification. It is evil and it is insane to bomb children, or to make threats of violence against the innocent at all. And it is about time we said that.
It is about time we said that violence has no place in a free democracy. And it is about time we realized that the roots of violence flourish and grow in the rhetoric of divisiveness, of racism and classes, even in the rhetoric of so-called "just" causes if those causes would have us believe their ends justify any means.
It is about time we denounce the polices of hatred and elitism, the tactics of self-appointed guardians of moral and patriotic opinion and behavior, and appeal instead to what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." It is time we ceased the rhetoric, the denunciations, the harsh and hard ultimatums, the threats, the voices of anger and violence.
It is time we listened. It is time to listen to the voices of reason, of goodwill, of faith in the good of all. It is time we listened to the voices of sympathy and un¬derstanding and of hope. Most of all it is time we listened to those who, are suffering, who are grieving and that we listened to the cries of the children who are the victims of that terrible evil which visited Oklahoma City.
Let us make a covenant with them
and with all who advance peaceableness,
with all who should never happen again in:
a free society, with all who truly hold to
the American dream, "always having before
our eyes our community as members of
the same body," in a nation of freedom and
justice enduring for all the world to see.
posted by James E. Opfell @ 8:08 PM
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