This is an interesting word that means a promise between parties, it can be a formal contract or an agreement but if we are not careful it can simply end up as an acknowledgment of a material connection.

For me it means so much more. I got married to Lynn twelve years ago and the marriage certificate was the formal contract but my relationship with her is so much deeper, yes there is a deep and abiding love but there is something else, a deep and lasting commitment to care and cherish the relationship.

For the last ten years we have lived in remote and wild country, at first on a small island, two miles from the jetty by quad bike to a house that had no electricity or communication of any kind which was a wonderful opportunity and then we moved to our current home. The house and the land was in dire need of care, the house was run down and the land itself littered with the debris of previous occupants and it took about three years to bring it back to a situation where I was in a position to allow the natural order to return. During that period I began to develop a relationship with the land and the river that forms my eastern boundary what I now realise is that I have entered into something more. I have a covenant with the river and the land and the land and the river reciprocate that relationship back to me.

Its certainly not always easy, in my last blog I spoke about the unexpected joys of bathing in the burn before sunrise but this was bought starkly home to me recently when the UK was ravaged by Storm Gerrit. I stepped out of the door as usual into an air temperature of 3ºC with a wind speed of 50+km, I have no idea what the wind chill was and heavy rain was sheeting across the land. As usual I walked up the garden to my swimming spot and plunged into water that registered 2ºC on the thermometer and sang my usual prayers of thanks. Was it fun? Was there joy? but there was a sense of fulfilment in honouring the covenant.