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"Love - A Valentine's Day Sermon"
We are all drawn to love and be loved. If we are lucky, or maybe wise, our very search for love will guide us in our choices straight and true toward wholeness and fulfillment in our lives much as explorers are guided on their journey by the North Star. But if we identify as love something counterfeit or off the mark, we are likely to be singed by heartbreak and disappointment again and again - like moths guided by lamplight - our lives will lack direction.
When I realized that I was going to talk about love for Valentine's Day today, I became daunted. First of all, the subject of love is too big. On the one hand, what haven't you heard, what don't you know? On the other - the subject is so big - Love is manifest in so many ways and in many other kinds of relationships. Parental love, love of siblings and family - Aristotle considered friendship to be the highest form of love.
The passionate rap you heard from Erik expressed love in support of a friend who was grieving at the sudden shock of losing a relative. If you choose to come back upstairs after coffee hour (and I encourage you to do so) you will hear a rap about September 11, fueled by love of country. We cannot talk about all these forms today.
How can I narrow it down? When my own thoughts are so expansive there’s no containing them, I am apt to seek a dictionary definition or "conventional statement" of some kind to help me focus, bring me to earth and a structure. Are you surprised that there is no World Book Encyclopedia entry for love? It merely refers the reader to look up emotion or sex as categories under which love might be referenced.
And that was helpful. Because it provoked a memory. When I was coming of age there were two hugely popular rock groups, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. They both sang about love, but they were wildly different in their approach. The Stones wailed, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" and "Hey, you, get off a my Cloud" in which "cloud " was street parlance for prostitute - and their sexual energy drew the masses. For them love was sex. With the Beatles, love was emotion, of many different kinds. Their early expressions of love were innocent and romantic such as: "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Later they asked the a sobering question: "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?" I remember the year I graduated from high school the Beatles' song, "All You Need Is Love" was number one. My older brother Peter who was just returning, soul-weary, from a tour of duty in Vietnam said he'd never heard such a sarcastic song in his life. What I heard was a joyous but profound understatement. I took "All You Need Is Love" to be true - my brother on the other hand, said - "What - are you kidding?". The question itself is a profound one- "All you need is love." True or false? How do you answer? Romantic, practical and universal, these are the kinds of love I want to address today.
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A few years ago the ministers of the Ballou Channing District held a chapter meeting which focused on weddings. One colleague shared a story of refusing to marry one couple who came to her simply because she felt they were too idealistic about what marriage was. They were both deeply involved in what we call romantic love, the kind of love that we are usually referring to when we say, "Love is blind." There's nothing innately wrong with this. But my colleague saw insufficient evidence that the relationship was at all grounded.
Blind or not, romantic love is something I would wish on everyone in their lifetime. My mother told me that she knew Larry was the "one" when it came to me because the first time he came to the house, I served him breakfast and then left for work after putting the carton of eggs away in the freezer. I was in a daze. I also missed my exit off the highway that morning for the same reason - Within a year of putting the eggs in the freezer we were sitting before a clergy person - we knew so little of love back then. One conversation that I think would be fun would be hearing your stories about being love-struck - by a relationship that turned out to be naive, or by one that eventually defined much of your life.
But lasting love has to learn to be something more. The classic wedding or union vows that promise to "have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer and for poorer in sickness and health, to love and to cherish as long as you both shall live" flow so melodically off the tongue.. it is my belief that no idealistic young couple can grasp the implications of those words.
Young couples know no more of the work these vows entail than a pregnant couple can understand about labor and child rearing before their first child is born. Women who have had babies - would you consider telling an expectant woman, in graphic detail how painful it is to deliver a baby? Of course not. It would be inconsiderate and rude. Is it possible to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it how hard it is to care for a newborn? You can try, but they can't hear you anyway. So we acknowledge the difficulties with a smile and maybe a groan, and then stress how worth it, it is.
The truth is, marriage or union, will test every fiber of your being. There will be times over the years when the love that fueled your vows with such passion will be more of a memory than anything real. "For better, for poorer" sounds so romantic. What about "for better, for grouchy?" Can you love or be lovable if one of you is grouchy, not for a day or two, but for months on end? Can you love someone and be happy if you are preoccupied with how much weight you've gained or the fact that you hate the job you are stuck in? (The words "All You need Is Love" might ring hollow in times like these.) The challenges of life, big and small, can - will - chip at the edifice that romantic love seemed to be, until it is completely worn away. But that doesn't mean that love is necessarily gone or that love come of age is beyond reach. If we grow, love can transform - in one and in the other - given time and work and faith, and probably even a little luck.
I like these words by Anne Morrow Lindbergh from Gifts of the Sea, and have used them in many wedding ceremonies:
"When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration , on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth in fluidity -- in freedom.... How can one learn to take the trough of the wave? It is easier to understand here on the beach, where the breathlessly still ebb tide reveals another life below the level which mortals usually reach. In this crystalline moment of suspense, one has a sudden revelation of the secret kingdom at the bottom of the sea... So, beautiful is the still hour of the sea's withdrawal, as beautiful as the sea's return.."
All couples, I believe, strive for a long union as their goal, knowing that the best wine, is wine that has come of age. Robert Bly writes of this in a poem entitled "The Third Body:"
A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
At this moment to be older, or younger,
nor born
in any other nation, or time or place.
They are content to be where they are,
talking or not talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom
we do not know.
The man sees the way her fingers move;
he sees her hands close around a book she
hands to him.
They obey a third body that they share
in common.
They have made a promise to love that body.
Age may come, parting may come, death will come.
A man and a woman sit near each other;
as they breathe they feed someone we do not know,
someone we know of, whom we have never seen.
Bly's beautiful poem may bring to mind a relationship in your life- be it a man and a woman, two women or two men, - a relationship that is this beautiful, that represents love come of age. The poem is a snapshot of a precious, beautiful moment in such a relationship. But what can't be seen is the ebb and flow of these lives, the battles fought, the growth forced as two individuals struggled to learn how to nurture that third body. No lovers can move seamlessly from their naive early vows to depth of partnership without facing and dealing with the left hooks that life throws us all. There is unseen shake, rattle and roll in the life of every significant relationship. Even when love's foundation is solid, there can be considerable confusion about what love means and how to love. Preconception after preconception will shatter, sometimes dramatically, more often quietly, in the vicissitudes of daily living. We've all made unexpected compromises with our ideal of what it means to love, in our partnerships, our friendships and our kinship. Love, regardless of what form it takes, if it is to endure, will always pose unexpected, sometimes primal challenges which have to be met and solved.
This poem about two lovers making a vow in their old age comes to mind.... "The Promise" by Sharon Olds. ...
With the second drink, at the restaurant,
holding hands on the bare table,
we are at it again, renewing our promise
to kill each other. You are drinking gin,
night-blue juniper berry
dissolving in your body, I am drinking Fume,
chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are
taking on earth, we are part soil already,
and wherever we are, we are also in our
bed, fitted, naked, closely
along each other, half passed out,
after love, drifting back
and forth across the border of consciousness,
our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand
tightens on the table. You’re a little afraid
I’ll chicken out. What you do not want
is to lie in a hospital bed for a year
after a stroke, without being able
to think or die, you do not want
to be tied to a chair like your prim grandmother,
cursing. The room is dim around us,
ivory globes, pink curtains
bound at the waist— and outside,
a weightless, luminous, lifted-up
summer twilight. I tell you you do not
know me if you think I will not
kill you. Think how we have floated together
eye to eye, nipple to nipple,
sex to sex, the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it— you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.
The demands of love are as varied as life itself. Love relationships are, in their turn, hard work, confusing, growth producing, heartbreaking and very rewarding. What can serve to guide us along the way?
I don't mean to be fresh, but why not love?
All you need is love. True, or false? Saints and sages from virtually all the world's great religions, I think, would say yes. In the book of John we hear Jesus saying, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." In Judaism we are taught that "Love is the beginning and the end of the Torah." The great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says, "If love is in our heart, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle." And the Islamic poet Fakhruddin writes. "Although you may not know it/ if you love anyone, it is Him you love/ If you turn your head in any direction/ it is toward Him you turn."
The only thing wrong with the Beatle's declaration "All You Need is Love" is the word "all" which makes love sound so simple. How do we achieve this universal, healing love - which is the love of God - which is the arrow of the heart's direction towards goodness and wholeness, which is available to us all?
There is no magic potion that can bring love forth or magnify it in us. Universal love is as available just as the lion's whisker was available to the Ethiopian woman in this morning's story - love, pursued with passion, persistence, patience and prayer, is the best path to the heart's desire and to the heart of the world.