Covenant’s Amazing Grace

by David Lane November 9, 2025

It was a Saturday afternoon. I was pushing a grocery cart at Kroger‘s on my way to bread or bananas. And suddenly at the far end of the aisle Beryl  Lawson came into view, also pushing a grocery cart.

When she saw me, she  started to wave her arms furiously, to get my attention. So for the moment putting all thought of shopping aside, I rushed to see what was going on. A really good discount? A preview of the service upcoming the following day at HUU? A seizure or a stroke? What could be so serious or important that an immediate conference was needed right there in front of the meat department with God and much of Harrisonburg watching? 

Her burning question was just this: Was I ready now to have her make me an HUU identification tag — just like the one I’m wearing this morning 28 years later.

What a strange way to induct new members into HUU I thought, for wasn’t that what she was doing? I’d already been attending HUU regularly for the last year and most of the people who had those name tags had certainly been attending far far longer than I had. So it appeared to me that those name tags had something to do with joining the congregation.

But no. I learned later that what made you a member wasn’t some sort of dog tag. It was a book. A membership or covenant book that you had to sign. Rather like the ship’s articles  that sailors used to sign in order to join a crew.

In 1998 I did finally sign the HUU covenant book. And it’s my journey story AFTER  signing that book that is the actual subject of my talk this morning. Not the abstract meaning of covenant, but instead, what covenant has meant practically and personally for me during my last quarter century as an HUU member.

I’m going to try to do this by telling three brief stories, stories that show what covenant allowed me as a member to experience at three different times since I “signed the book”.  (In case, anyone is concerned about my use of the word “grace” in this talk, please know that what I’m referring to is the unearned favor of the universe as manifested in an unexpected bestowal of blessings.  If you prefer to use the word “serendipity” that’s fine with me).

Story Number One: A Gentle, Angry People

Grayson and I flew to Salt Lake City in 1999 to take part in  our first UU General Assembly. This annual denominational conference drew some 5000 that year from all across the North America. It was extraordinary! Never before had I experienced worship on that scale  or felt the impact of so many voices joined together in song.

But as a gay man, one song we sang at that GA I will never forget. That opening night, with arms linked together, and just 400 miles from Laramie, Wyoming, where Matthew Shepherd had been so cruelly murdered the previous year, we sang in his honor Holly Near’s  haunting anthem, ”We Are A Gentle Angry People.”

Sung by young and old, black and white, straight and gay, men and women, I heard in that song what Inherent Worth meant to these UUs. Affirmation that included me on this scale I’d never before experienced. And after this, how could I not affirm my identity and fellowship with these people?  After that, being UU meant for me, being in covenant with all such folk whose first principle was every person’s Inherent Worth.

(Dee and Corey: STLT, #170, v5)

Story Number Two:  The Fire of Commitment

My second story focuses on just our local HUU community as it was in May 2012.  A community then experiencing deep grief, the incalculable loss of a friend, mentor, and community builder – Bernie Mathes.  I was asked to speak at her memorial service.  It was held in a huge auditorium on the JMU campus since more than 300 folks were expected to attend.  The best I could do on that occasion was to quote and comment on her own words.  Here they are:

I was organizing the children of the congregation to participate in a fairly traditional Christmas pageant, recruiting angels and shepherds and wise men.  When asked which part he’d like, Jordan replied, “I want to be God.”  In my frazzled state, with dyed pillowcases to be made into costumes at my side, I replied, There is no God in this story.”

Our Children’s RE Director raised her eyebrows, so I added, “ Of course, God is part of the story, but there is no costume for God.”

Yes, this was the Bernie I’d come to know.  Not so much “frazzled” as fully and continuously invested in building Beloved Community, in our very midst, 24/7.

For just that one Christmas pageant, her do-list included

• Making the costumes

• Revising the script,

• Finding the props

• Rehearsing the children

• And directing the actual performance

But this pageant was only one of her many HUU commitments.  Where did she find space in her life for the others? For

• Facilitating services

• Pitch hitting at the piano

• Chairing a committee

• Organizing concerts

• Welcoming visitors

• Developing agendas

• Recruiting volunteers

• Inaugurating a Ministry Team

• Organizing HUU’s 20^th Anniversary Celebration

Yes, “fully and continuously committed” to building our HUU community, she was both an example and a mentor, someone I would never have known if covenant hadn’t brought the two of us together.  And as she did the work of religious community, what she demonstrated was not a particular theology.  She never shared with me her motives or deepest convictions.  Instead, she let her committed actions speak for themselves.  And what they showed me was that those actions (not beliefs, not abstractions, not concepts) were actually the glue, the mortar, the bonds that hold religious community together.

(Dee and Corey: STJ, #1028 v2)

Story Number Three: Gather the Spirit

5000 voices singing in harmony in Salt Lake City.  One soul passionately committed to religious community in Harrisonburg.  Both were unexpected gifts I would never have encountered if I had not joined HUU when I did.  They were serendipities perhaps or just grace as I understand it, remarkable blessings bestowed by chance.

But my ‘third and last story shows grace differently – as something that can result not from chance but from design.  This is the story of covenant groups at HUU which began as far back as 2009.

At our congregational retreat that year, the need for new ways to be in community with each other figured prominently in the discussions, new ways to connect with each other using the language of the heart as well as the mind.  Responding to those discussions, our board invited folks to join a task force to explore possibilities and make recommendations.  Three of us did: Sarah Cheverton, Merle Wenger, and yours truly.  And for a year we googled and read, debated and discussed.  And mid-way during that time, we decided finally to be a covenant group ourselves to test what we were learning concretely and practically.

This experiment truly surprised me:

• When we agreed not to interrupt, we listened differently because we had to.

• When we agreed to speak from our own experience, we found ourselves no longer privileged unequally by what we’d read and by how we’d been educated.

• When the possibility of argument and debate was removed from the process of interaction, we began to see that contention could undermine real connection by shutting down anyone not highly verbal or not comfortable with the cut and thrust of intellectual discussion.

In short, this was a different kind of discussion than I’d ever experienced.  It was discussion in which every participant’s contribution could be valued, just as every participant’s lived experience could be as well.  It was more than just discussion.  It was Beloved Community on a small, intimate scale.  It was everyone’s Inherent Worth now made audible and visible.

And it was this new application of covenant to small group ministry that Sarah, Merle, and I took back to the HUU board and ultimately to the congregation as a whole.  It was a plan for deepening and broadening respect, connection, and concern.  And in just a dozen years, more than half of HUU members have become participants.  Even during the Pandemic, our covenant groups continued to meet regularly – helping to maintain connections that enabled HUU to survive undiminished and ready to grow.

As I see it, in no other intentional program or project at HUU has covenant’s amazing grace been so unexpected and clearly evident.

(Dee and Corey: STLT, #347 v1)

One last story (not mine): All We Kindred Pilgrim Souls

Just over 400 years ago, our pilgrim fathers and mothers crossed the Atlantic in a ship hardly much bigger than our HUU sanctuary.  On that voyage they risked everything they had for the sake of what they called “the free church.”  This was a church free from the meddling of bishops and the kings that appointed them.  And when they arrived, they immediately organized themselves with compacts and covenants to make sure their towns and parishes were bottom-up, grass-roots affairs, all of them independent and self-governing.

Clearly our New England forbearers understood the importance of life viewed as a spiritual journey.  For them the key question was whether to walk that journey alone or together with others, discovering for themselves as they went the ways of truth, the ways of love, and the ways of justice.  For this journey, they called their promises of mutual support their covenant.

And even after four centuries, here at HUU we still do the same.  We follow in their footsteps, joined by covenant just as they were and just as UUs everywhere continue to be.

Those first pilgrims had good reason to be thankful in the autumn of 1621 for the amazing grace of their survival.  And we at HUU have good reason to be thankful too, this year, right now.  During the last calendar year, 21 new members have chosen to covenant with us and join us on the journey –  in our sense-making, our care-giving, and our justice-seeking.  What amazing grace is that!

I want now to recognize these new members – first, naming those not able to be here this morning.

Next, I want to call on those new members who are here this morning to stand as they are able, so that we can greet and honor them with our applause.

Del Kimbler John Norment Karen Norment Ken Thrasher Andi Nelson Lawrence Harmon Wendy Wintermute Mwizenge Tembo Cody Davis-Meadows Diane Davis Meadows Diana Degner Elizabeth Self Kai Degner Gail L. Bauder Patricia Shelton Alexander Henry Jennifer Silva Ryan Silva Heather Joffe Nancy Bowen Benjamin Campbell