About this Oath

If you or anybody you know is struggling, please reach out to one of our clergy, or call 988 to reach the 24/7 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

The whole world is being reborn around us at the Spring Equinox, and now is the time to celebrate life! Whenever we have the opportunity to choose, we want to choose actions that support life. We know that life is rough sometimes, but we also firmly believe it can get better.

Life comes first! And the existence of life and the breath depends on the body, so along with the obvious choice between life and death, this oath includes making everyday choices in how we care for our selves and our bodies, so that we can each have the best life available to us. This doesn't mean a life of ascetic deprivation, but treating ourselves at least as good as we treat our pets, seeking to manage our stress, eat good food, take care of our physical and mental health, and provide ourselves with a fully enriched life of social and creative activities. (Come on, ask any zookeeper how important that last bit is.)

We encourage outside support here, as well. Everybody should have outside people to talk to, people to vent to and get outside opinions from. This might be a paid therapist, but it can also be a peer, a mentor, or a social group. Just like individuals need to reach out to other individuals for support in order to stay healthy, our community needs regular interaction with outside ideas and opinions in order to stay healthy.

We normalize rest and taking breaks here. Even within our own leadership, we have a wide variety of bodies and abilities. Some people's big contributions come from their arms and legs, but some people's come from their hearts, and some from their brains, and some from the beauty their souls are able to add to our community. We respect everyone's capacity.

What does this Oath mean to you?