Here is the Time For All Ages that is referenced throughout this sermon. Please watch this before reading the sermon.
Eros. Philia. Agape. How do we make this a love story?
Ancient Greece recognized (at least) three kinds of love: eros (sexual love) and philia (love among family members) and agape (deep, unconditional love, sometimes spoken about as if reserved for god). There are love stories that are rom-coms (romantic comedies). Clever or slapstick (or both). There are love stories that are tragedies – iterations of Romeo and Juliet which was itself an iteration of the tragic love stories that came before.
There are books and poems and films and songs – all kinds of art that are odes to love. And sometimes to the lack of love.The lack of love. We know that all around us, there is evidence of the failure to love (thank you, Barry Lopez for this poignant phrase). Others’ failure to love… and, if we are honest with ourselves, our own.
How do we make this a love story?
At last week’s Question Box service, two questions submitted beforehand were about love. And minutes before the service began, someone asked a third. One question was a request to define love – is it the golden rule (do onto others as you would have done unto you)? Is it the platinum rule (do onto others as those others would like have done onto them)? Or something else altogether? One question was whether love is real – whether it actually exists. (My short answer is no. And yes.) And the third: please explain what it means to Unitarian Universalists to place love at the center.
Well, so here goes.
~~~
Here we are, a few days after Valentine’s Day, which is, supposedly, our cultural pinnacle to raise up ideas about love in hopes that they are worthy. It is my hope that today’s service, while likely not satisfying to everyone, will get us closer to how love can be defined as Unitarian Universalists and to my heart and mind, must be part of our necessary equipment at all times, but certainly in the course of our lifetimes, and at this particular moment, in this particular era.
At this point in the 21st century, Unitarian Universalists proclaim that we have six core values with love at the center. One of the core values is generosity, which we are in the midst of practicing with our Reverse Offering and our attention to stewardship, when we are inspired to be good financial stewards, making an annual pledge within our means to sustain this place and people that sustains you.
The other Values are Justice, Equity, Transformation, Interdependence, and Pluralism, which pop in and out of many of my sermons, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. And it’s not just in my sermons that we can see these Values embodied – they are in the work of teams and committees and circles and faith development: these values are alive in all we say and do.
(And if we were in the sanctuary, I would ask you to look around the walls to appreciate the images that proclaim our very essence as pluralist – symbols of many of the world’s religious traditions keep us company in every – well, nearly every – 70-minute hour.)
Yet, at the center of those six Shared Values, we say that Love is at the center. In fact, officially, we say it this way, in the bylaws of not our specific congregation, but our religious association of congregations:
As Unitarian Universalists, we covenant, congregation-to-congregation and through our Association, to support and assist one another in our ministries. We draw from our heritages of freedom, reason, hope, and courage, building on the foundation of love.
Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for doing the work of living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of Love.
By saying love is at the center of these Shared Values, we are drawing deeply and choosing to emphasize our Universalist heritage. For it was the Universalists whose theology proclaimed, in direct opposition to the orthodox Christian theology of the times (17th through 19th centuries), that god is Love, not judgment or punishment; that heaven is for all (universally), not just for some; that there is no hell, except the hell we make for one another here, in this lifetime. (Yes, there it is again: hell is the evidence of the failure to love…)
There are folks new to our faith movement showing up every Sunday, because they sense we have something powerful to offer. Some of you are here today and it makes my heart swell.
Because it is true: we do have something powerful to offer. There are many in this room who know, but not all of us, that Unitarian Universalism emerged on the religious scene in 1961 when the two much-longer-standing heretical Christian sects – Unitarians and Universalists – decided to have a go at a new thing. A new, explicitly non-Christian thing.
(And yes, to be clear: we welcome and recognize individual Christians as part of our vibrant theological and cultural tapestry. Yet, institutionally, we understand ourselves as a religion outside of, and separate from, Christianity.)
And when we Unitarian Universalists say Love is at the center, we are claiming and reclaiming what has always been a part of our theology. Our Universalist theology. A part of our merged identity
that for 75 years, since the merger, was overshadowed by the focus on Unitarian reason, which has served us well and its ongoing place, but need not dominate center stage.
~~~
More and more often I have been sharing the poetry of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. She is the author of the piece Erika will read in just a bit. And given today’s topic, how could I not make room for this one, too? Its title is, “In a Dangerous Time:”
I think of the bones
of the unsung rib cage,
the way they protect
the heart. How bone,
too, is living, how it constantly
renews and remakes itself.
I think of how ribs engage
with other ribs
to expand, to contract,
and because they do
their solid work,
they allow the heart to float.
This is what I want to do:
to be a rib in this body
of our country,
to make a safe space for love.
There is so much now
that needs protection.
I want to be that flexible,
that committed to what’s vital,
that unwilling to yield.
Is this one of the ways we make this time a love story? Becoming protection. Becoming flexible protection for what’s vital? Becoming unyielding protection able to expand and contract, yet still defend against threats and danger?
A handful of times in the past not quite a year or so, I have brought up to you the work of Daniel Hunter. He’s an organizer, a faith-based strategist (he’s Quaker) and the brilliant mind behind Choose Democracy. Choose Democracy generated that choose-your-own adventure website to help discern what to do if Trump won or if he lost and contested about which I preached in August.
He wrote that powerful article at the time of the election – I preached on it the Sunday after. The article contained ten ways to prepare and ground ourselves, the first of which was to trust yourself and the second of which was to find people to trust. (When I say that, I hear “find the necessary equipment.”)
It’s a powerful list, all ten things make sense to me. All ten ways to be prepared and grounded strike me as having love at the center of them. And allowing us, in this challenging time, to orient ourselves to love at the center.It’s worth finding and reading. We’ll link to it in the eNews.
It’s the work of Choose Democracy, through their open source offerings, that we have based the workshops this congregation has been offering to help discern what is ours to do at this moment in time.
Just yesterday, with Abbie W as my co-organizer, we got to lead that workshop for 9 young adults in the congregation. Next Sunday, after the service, the workshop is being offered, co-facilitated by two congregants, for adults of any age. Registration is required – as of an hour ago, there was still one slot open. And in March, there will another workshops as a queer affinity group.
This workshop is one tool we can use to discern our way – your way, your way, my way, your way – to place love at the center. Because it’s not like there is only one set of instructions for how to do this. That isn’t how it works in our faith community. Sometimes it’s about affirming something you already know and are doing. Sometimes it’s about having an a-ha moment of what calls you – and what noise you must disregard – in order to follow love at the center.
~~~
adrienne maree brown and their sister, Autumn Brown, host a podcast called, How to Survive the End of the World. It’s been around since the first Trump administration – 2017. This past December, they aired a conversation with Daniel Hunter on tactical disobedience. Remember, Daniel is a Quaker. He comes from a tradition that prizes civil disobedience in obedience to god’s will. He’s a student of authoritarian regimes and the movements that resist them. He knows about disobedience. He knows about not obeying in advance.
It was in that podcast conversation when I became enamored with the question, how do we make this a love story? How do we make this dumpster fire of fascism and climate crisis and the great unraveling in the midst of late-stage capitalism – how do we make all that – all this – a love story?
In that conversation, adrienne maree brown observed that the alarm-based story about the climate crisis and fascism, while not wrong, didn’t seem to be working. They counseled humility about that and then said,
I’m curious if there’s a story shift that the movement needs to be making to something less binary, less linear. To something that gives the average person more agency?
To which Daniel Hunter responded in compelling ways, sharing lessons from historic resistance movements; reflecting on the likelihood that we who understand ourselves as part of a resistance movement need to get used to losing before we experience winning; and then noting a particular Turkish political scientist who observes that every tyrant overreaches. And when they do, we need to be ready.
Ready with the necessary equipment.
What kind of necessary equipment in that case? Surely not hot water and a surfboard!
Probably not. But certainly a friend. Or two. Or a handful. Or a dozen. Or a congregation. The necessary equipment of community, of connection, of centering love over lies.
Hunter believes there are allies out there, who aren’t quite allies yet, but will be soon, or someday, because the world they thought they voted for, is going to break them, or break someone they love. He says that there are “folks who are under attack and [will] see someone offering them a lifeline – [they] will react differently than they would at another moment in history.” He says there are allies who do not yet exist, but who will.
Daniel Hunter says,
“We aren’t in that moment yet. But we have to imagine ourselves to get to that moment.”
And the story we tell now – to ourselves, to each other, to anyone who risks listening, who is longing for a different story that is on offer, we bring them in, as part of the vast conspiracy to heal the world (as we say when we dedicate babies – we say it to our babies, we say it to their families, and we say it to ourselves).
We also say that love is at the center. That we commit to doing our best to embodying love at the center. Not always knowing what it is – whether it is grieving what has been lost, what is being destroyed, while simultaneously making room for joy, for singing, for delight in snow whether with sun or clouds. Risking trusting each other, even when we don’t earn it at first. Even when that risk means we touch old wounds that haven’t yet healed, might never fully heal.
That is how we make this a love story.
It’s definitely not a rom-com. And it most definitely has its tragic elements that cannot be ignored or minimized. I guess it’s up to us, and others like us, to make sure, in the long run, that love outshines the tragedy, the cruelty, the damage.
Which brings us back to that rescue story with which we began the morning.
I learned that story from transgender activist and storyteller, S. Bear Bergman. I want to invite his voice here, because I think his way of telling that story is yet another example of what it is to place love at the center. This is what Bear had to say about this true-life rescue scenario:
There are a number of things I appreciate about this story, but it’s Langenberger’s statement that resonates for me. That is what I aspire to, to see injury or difficulty or something gone to trouble and decide: I am on my way with the necessary equipment.
But also, to hold on to the understanding that sometimes the necessary equipment is the resolve to try and a friend who will help, and that sometimes I *am* the necessary equipment – the friend who shows up to make myself useful under the direction of an expert.
Bear continues
There are a lot of moments these days that I find it very, very hard to do the next thing, or indeed to do anything. The world is so, so difficult. I often feel useless or overwhelmed or exhausted or just really [x%#&] sad. But I am going to try starting the day by saying, with all the starch that I imagine a naturalist willing to chance the ice in darkness to save a baby bird might possess: I am on my way with the necessary equipment.
May we be more crocus, more tulip, more peony.
May we shower love on those who wield the pen;the poets, the comics, the resolute reporters, and yes, on those who build palisades and pitfalls from statutes and precedents
May we find ourselves surrounded by a rebellion of generous love.
May we be the unsung rib cage for someone who needs that protection.
May we show up with the necessary equipment.
