Wall of Vows

Instructions: Articulating Your Vow

As you think about how you would articulate your Great Vow, it’ll be helpful to reflect on your sources of vow. There are three sources: inherited, reactive, and inspired.

Inherited Vow. What is your inherited vow? As you were growing up, what were you given to understand by your parents or primary caretakers was the primary function of a life? They may never have articulated it to you, but if you had to now articulate what your parents’ great vows were, what were they?

Reactive Vow. What experiences of wrong or harm have shaped you? Sometimes people who become doctors had a formative experience with illness or death -- or people who become lawyers experienced injustice in their childhood or youth. Or maybe unpleasant experiences with your parents or other significant adults imbued with a clarity about the kind of person you wanted NOT to be. What reactions in your life have shaped your sense of the purpose of your life?

Inspired Vow. We pick up inspired vows – often in adolescence or early adulthood – when we learn about someone we admire. We aspire to be like them. Martin Luther King Jr’s vow of nonviolence came from an inspired vow – inspired by the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Athletes often draw inspiration from a particular athlete they admire. Who are your heroes?

Discerning Your Vow. To bring out your vow -- to consciously articulate and thereby strengthen it as the orientation of your life -- it helps to explore those three sources of vow: the inherited, reactive, and inspired. Then reflect on how to bring this sources together into one overall Great Vow of your life. You may Email your Great Vow to me at minister - at - cucwp - dot - org. OR: Add your vow as a Comment below.

Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation's
Wall of Vows

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I vow to live with compassion and integrity.

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Make the time to care for yourself, to be kind to all others, and to protect the planet. -Jacy

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I vow to push forward in love.

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I vow to live soulfully, and to give back.

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My great vow is to give of myself through caring, nonjudgmental listening, my empathy and sympathy, my friendship to all those who are struggling in life with things like sickness, death, relationships, daily life for an immigrant etc.

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To give everyone the care I give to my family. To hold my beliefs lightly and change them as circumstances change.

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To be present in loving awareness.

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I vow to be mindful of both self care and care for others.

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I vow to know, to know not-knowing, to not know;
To learn to be what is new, to arrive fresh, to arrive in love, to endear;
To stumble with, to embrace, to grapple;
To companion, to befriend, to love, to love, to love;
To attend (to serve, to wait);
To notice, to bear witness, to never let creation play to an empty house;
To be the motion of stillness -- and the stillness of motion;
To yield, and yield, and yield, and budge not an inch;
To receive all the pain of the world -- and all the joy;
To rest in the peace of defeat -- restless in triumph;
To live until I die -- and die, and die, and die until I live.

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I vow to love and to learn.

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Accept all beings as my teachers

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I vow to recognize, cultivate and nurture community

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See the Magic in everything.

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CARE

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Aging gracefully
With Compassion, Frugality, and Joy

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Inherited: education has a way live to my adult live life free of economic uncertainty and potential hardship; don’t let others squelch my talents
Reactive: to be free of emotional instability
Heroes: political and cultural leaders who fought for fairness and equality, e.g., JFK, RFK, MLK, Gene McCarthy, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan

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Inherited - Be selflessly loyal to one's family
Reactive - Be open minded, no matter how challenging
Inspired - Learn to be happy with less

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I vow to live soulfully and use my gifts to give back.

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I want to be a home my children can--and seek to--visit throughout their lives.

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To give and receive love. To continue to learn, evolve and move forward. To listen more. To speak up. To not be afraid. To always be kind.

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I vow to keep learning about what really matters.

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Be the person who makes others feel welcome and thereby makes him/her self feel welcome and fitting in.