By Brian Vickery
I was recently blessed to walk my eldest daughter down the aisle at her wedding ceremony.
Besides providing my first opportunity to make a wedding toast as Daddy, this wedding introduced me to the Salt Covenant Ceremony.
Of course, I immediately thought of the Spin Sucks community. OK, maybe I didn’t think about this occasionally rowdy, always outspoken bunch of authors and commenters until a few days after the wedding…but you were “right there,” honest!
But I digress. In Biblical times, people carried pouches of salt.
If they wanted to enter into a contract, they would exchange salt from their pouches and then give the pouches a good shake. The contract could only be broken if each party was willing to open their pouch and separate every grain of salt that wasn’t theirs.
Ever tried to get sand out of your shoe or a beach towel? It’s practically impossible; so imagine how difficult it would be to separate GRAINS of sand by color!
The Salt Covenant
The salt covenant symbolizes entering into a contract that will never be broken.
The longevity and vitality of the Spin Sucks community came to mind as I watched this ceremony. Authors relish opportunities to guest post on Spin Sucks because they know they will get a high level of engagement in the comments. The commenters may not always agree with the blogger’s points, but the tone is always respectful – unless the relationship between author and commenter is strong enough to support “snarkish” camaraderie while disagreeing.
And trust me, relationships have flourished in this community. Go back and scan prior Spin Sucks blog posts, and then read the comments. You will see the “usual suspects” carrying threaded banter and inside jokes across multiple comment threads.
This is the spirit of community, folks. We follow the principles of “iron sharpening iron” that Solomon alluded to when he stated: “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”
We exchange our grains of sand with each interaction, and our ideas and convictions are forever colored by the thoughtful contributions from other Spin Sucks community members.
I’ll exchange salt with you any time…and give it a good shake as well!
Photo Credit: Alexis and Josh Wedding via JECO Photo.