Vow Power
Please stay with me in the blog as I share some of the more personal steps that moved me to write it. I understand that my faith may be not be yours and I respect that. This is not about religion. It is about something that taps into our spirituality of meaning and purpose. It is about the vows we make and the vow we may yet need to make.
As a Canadian, there have been many griefs in recent days. Some of them connect to my 34 years as an ordained minister. A great aboriginal Elder in my denomination, Bernice Saulteaux, passed from this life to next. Then ten people died and 18 were injured in a killing spree that devasted James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. My collaborator in bringing Trauma Informed Ministry to our ministry colleagues worked with one of those killed. And then HM Queen Elizabeth died. It was a week of diverse losses and complex grief.
In the days since I have gone back to a picture of Bernice over and over again. There is such beauty there, forged in choices for love, in the searing pain of injustice, in the winnowing of deep faith, in the courage to speak and act the meaning of gospel, and in the emerging wisdom she shared generously. In our faith tradition I trace that back to sacred vows made, challenged, and kept. Her life remains an enduring witness and I give thanks for it. https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/wolseley-sk/rev-dr-bernice-saulteaux-10919479?fbclid=IwAR2KhhTQL3-1GGQ4_C8wKAmfdgDncxYHbbMTx1Uxg5XBEunJNwXHETmmxMw
Vow Power.
Then I watch a news video of James Smith Cree Nation in a circle meeting of grief, its leader reaching out to his people, including the wife of one of the murderers. She shares her grief, saying her husband and her father died, and the leader holds her steady in his arms, even though his sister is dead in the killing spree. I listen to that video over and over, to see the mystery of their promises in community, and their determination in a jagged time of trauma’s power revealed, trying to keep their vows to each other, still. I am learning. https://fb.watch/ftMxmWFijn/
Vow Power.
And then the Queen, a frail tiny figure in the last picture taken two days before her death, but her sincere smile of joy filling the frame as she officially meets and welcomes the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I look at it over and over. I am old enough to know by heart her words from a long ago radio broadcast before I was even born “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service…” That vow got her up and out of her bed, her hand deeply bruised from the I.V. she left behind that morning. That vow got her into a kilt to do her job, with a genuine smile at the joy of reaching out with that same bruised hand to take and hold that of her new Prime Minister. She was still keeping her vow even as she had begun leaning into her last few days on this earth. She knew that her legacy would not be perfect, and in the end she would be carried by mercy, just like the rest of us. https://nypost.com/2022/09/08/final-photo-of-queen-elizabeth-serving-until-the-end/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
Vow Power.
I’ve taken many vows in my life, as well. Baptismal vows, First Public Profession of Faith vows, Parental Baptismal vows, Ordination vows. I return to them in weakness and strength and keep going. Like many of you, I also made marriage vows. I kept those marriage vows through thick and thin. I went back to them when that relationship was critically challenged by his mother, by his work, by his 7 years under a psychiatrist’s care, and at the end by the vast scope of his secret life of sexual and sexualized activities that he maintained, developed and protected over all else from his life before we married and until this very day.
Vows have power in my life to examine reality in terms of crisis and opportunity, dead ends and options, disempowerment and personal agency. And so, I am looking back at the marriage vows I was able to set aside in finally divorcing the man I did not know I had married, who used me and our family, who put us all at risk physically, psychologically, financially, vocationally, and socially.
But it’s not just that.
The power of marriage vows is that both people make them, and they must make them by declaring they are unencumbered by anything that would prevent them from keeping them. That is why the old tradition of “banns” are sometimes published for weeks before a wedding. That is why you must get a marriage license. That is why some officiants will ask in a wedding service if there is anyone present who knows any reason why these two people cannot take their marriage vows and be joined in marriage.
Someone hiding a secret life that will take priority over a partner or any family they create is illegally, immorally, and spiritually unfaithfully taking marriage vows. Vows are not about whether you “would like to” do something, or “hope you can do something”. They are about what you WILL do, sometimes without much effort at all, and other times in spite of what you would prefer to do.
So, in a marriage with someone who creates, develops, and protects a secret life you, dear friend, are in a vow covenant all by yourself. And that means it’s not a covenant at all. It’s just you making promises to someone “encumbered” by other self-serving loyalties and priorities taking precedence over what is pledged to you that day. Your vows, in other words, are critically different than his. Yours ask a great deal more of you and his ask very, very, very little at all. You just didn’t really know until dday.
Vow Power.
I remain inspirited by people who live into the vows they make in life, not perfectly, but in humility before the challenge of them, knowing that they fail, that harm may result, and that sincere regret and repair may be needed—and indeed may take a whole lifetime in the doing and being of those things without ever completing them after all, but maybe, just maybe getting close to it.
I believe in the direction of a whole life. I believe in the courage to keep going in the face of your own “falling shorts” empowered by the strange acceptance of your weakness and failings, even into the humbling possibility that others may see a reason for hope there for their own lives. But in this direction there is no room for keeping secret lives. There is no room for lying or false narratives. There is no room for blameshifting, gaslighting, denial, or diminishing truth. There is no room for pretending you did not or are not using people against their own best interests, including against the health and safety of their lives.
Vow Power.
Vow power understands and works with human frailty. It does not understand or work with personal preferences for immunity, ignorance, privilege, or control. The moral injury done to wives and partners of men incorrectly called sex addicts is a testimony to the misuse of vow power by those men and the treatment industry, both of whom trade on the integrity of our vows. IMO.
It's been quite a week in Canada. Wherever you are as you read this, I’m pretty sure your country and community has its own examples of Vow Power that add value in this world, and Vow Power that is used by others for lesser purposes. I am remembering that today is 9/11, so many years later. There, many stories of Vow Power reside.
Meanwhile, do not be ashamed of the vows you made and kept. Do not be ashamed of realizing he made false ones and you couldn’t tell that he did. Do not be ashamed of laying down your vows in a covenant promise that never was. Do not be ashamed to take up a vow to honor your life with self-respect, self-worth, self-love, and step into those vows going forward.
Vow Power. You will still need it.
What are the vows you have made in your life, for your life? Please let them teach and prove good and wonderful truths in this world. Let them undergird lives lived with integrity and purpose for healing in a world trying to keep its head above water. None of us will do it perfectly. But the direction of our lives will be clear and perhaps mercy at the end will carry us all into a greater Mystery.
With you,
Diane.