Listen:
OPENING READING: "We humans..."
We humans, we complex, sometimes majestic, sometimes sorry and sad beings need ideals! Without them, we would be dreamless and dreary; with them, we can not only reach for but also arrive at those magical far-away stars.
-- Beaudreault
MEDIATION WORDS: "To Look at the Only You"
To look at the only you,
Right only this moment -
And judge (on the basis of that),
Is to deny the possible you,
The you of what might happen:
Opening into manifold flowerings.
To sit with you patiently;
To respect the tender soul of you
(Awaiting the times in you to be),
Is love.
But yesterday -
Yesterday, I would rush to the other side,
(To my private madness:
An idealized fantasy life where I dream unfettered dreams;
Lost to any demands but my own).
Yesterday, I would go there -
But for you, my love,
Who spoke, simply - through your tears,
That you cared...
And now I know that it will not be you alone who will grow.
SERMON: "Love, From the Bottom Up"
This morning I feel like the guy as described by that Arkansas poet Miller Williams in his piece titled "One of Those Rare Occurrences on a City Bus":
For exactly sixty seconds riding to work
approaching a traffic light going to green
he understands everything. I mean from the outer
curling edge of the universe to quarks,
the white geometries of time, of language,
death and God, the potted plants of love.
He sits there and looks at the truth. He laughs.
What could we want, except for him to laugh?
Understanding all, he understands
he has only sixty seconds, then he returns
to live with us in ignorance again,
and little enough to laugh at. "Do you have pen,"
he says to the man beside him,
"that I could use?" The man pats his pockets
and shakes his head and shows his open palms
to say that he is sorry. Fifty-three. Fifty-four.
Yes, as I approach today's topic of love, I feel very much like that guy. And I imagine that sometimes, you have, too: because, just when you think you've figured "it" out (whatever "it" might mean at the moment: love or otherwise), you realize sixty seconds later that you haven't! Now, if only you had had a pencil to write down what you had discovered - before it was lost by the next salvo of life!
Well, that's Love, From the Bottom Up! Ever changing its meaning, its purpose, its truth. Nevertheless, let me attempt to talk about it.
For instance, when I think about those more than 600 couples I have married during my ministerial career, I can only recall some of the thoughts and feelings I had about these people:
Six hundred couples married by me
Some in the valley, some by the sea.
Some ON the sea - in ships numbered three:
Delta Queen and the Matthew McKinley,
And an elegant scow next to Queen Mary.
Couples on sand, couples on land,
Dunes and cliffs, hotels and bars,
Churches and temples and even graveyards!
X-priests and x-nuns, Hollywood stars.
Guys with guys; and gals with gals -
Their love as real as any Mabel and Al!
Pulitzer Prize winners and all kinds of losers,
Some straight-laced, and others, big boozers!
A dying patient and his nurse,
Disco dancers, each with a purse.
Cajuns and Asians,
Arabs and Jews,
Throw in a Christian - and pagans, too.
Brides expecting and brides already had
With child in attendance held by mommy and dad.
The too-young and never too old
To say "I do - now let our life unfold"!
So, each of us gets but a glimpse of meaning - even when we are having a profound experience, like a wedding. It's happening at the moment - this particular insight or truth - and then it vanishes.
And I am in wonder at the ephemeral nature of it all. Life, love - like a moth attracted to a flame and brilliantly dancing before it, getting closer and closer, only to be consumed by it. Or rather, does the moth consume the flame? Or, is it a mutual act? Or, does any of it matter? Brief awareness, then no more!
All those couples "married by me"! All that love - or near-love. Where is their love now? Back then, at the time of ceremony, the love was palpable: crying brides AND grooms overcome by emotion; quivering bodies overtaken by the grand mystery of the occasion. Love in evidence; in full-bloom (for most, some couples were already showing signs of wearing each other down - or out). For most of them, however, the wedding ceremony was a time of sweetness, of love pure and hopeful.
Admittedly, some had not yet progressed to the stage of Love, From the Bottom Up - and were still enraptured - or perhaps entrapped by the lower regions. But, the overall feeling of the moment when the vows were spoken and the rings were exchanged was: AH!
But again, let me ask: Where is their love now? Granted for some couples it is a blessing when they realize their love has ended. It is sad, too, when it has ended for one partner and not for the other.
It has now been over three decades since the wedding for some of those couples I married. But I wonder about all these people whose lives have touched mine for a brief instant: Where is their love now? Is it still growing? Or has it withered away?
Given the odds, more than half of that love of 1,200 human beings who stood before me and recited their "undying" love for their partner, has died - officially! As in a divorce decree! For others, still married, the love might have died, too, although it has not officially been declared "deceased."
And I do not presume to guess which couple will kill off their love when they first meet with me to discuss their wedding plans. Handholding in the minister's office is not always an accurate way for anyone to predict the lasting quality of a love affair.
I do know that each and every wedding ceremony at which I officiate, is a joy for me to do - although there are different degrees of this joy. But I do know that at the time of official union, love for most of these couples was in full, glorious bloom.
Well, let me tell you of one incredible day in my life, when, for just a short span of time within the timelessness of the universe, I understood something important about love. It was as if Eros had taken aim with his bow and arrow and shot into my consciousness.
You see, even before lunch, I had this trinity of enlightenment: the death of a 91-year-old church member who left his beloved wife of 62 years; a pre-marital counseling session with a couple in their middle years whose wedding would be performed on Valentine's day (a third wedding for him and a third wedding for her); and a phone call from a 20-something-year-old woman whose sister's wedding I had officiated at a few years before: "Will you do my wedding, too?" she asked.
Three aspects of love: seasoned, maturing, newly budded. Love wrapped up in an epiphany for your minister! All telling me the truth: that the multiple aspects of romantic love transcends age or time; that it is an ever-growing process where one is given the opportunity to look into the very essence of another human being and see one's own reflection; that love of this kind is a deeply spiritual experience.
What an ideal for which to strive! The Taoist writer Kuan Tao-Sheng provides us with such an image:
Take a lump of clay,
Wet it, pat it,
Make a statue of you
And a statue of me
Then shatter them, clatter them,
Add some water,
And break them and mold them
Into a statue of you
And a statue of me.
Then in mine, there are bits of you
And in you there are bits of me,
Nothing ever shall keep us apart.
Granted, with each passing moment in a romantic relationship comes the possibility of joy or sorrow - whether or not one has been with one's lover for 62 years or an instant.
Consider this story about a couple on their golden wedding anniversary. All day long they had been kept busy with the celebration. There had been a huge crowd of relatives and friends who dropped in to congratulate them. So, at the end of the day, they were grateful to be alone on the front porch, watching the sunset and trying to relax before going to bed.
The old man gazed fondly at his wife and said, "Mabel, I'm proud of you!"
"What was that you said, Al?" asked the old lady. "You know I'm hard of hearing. So, speak up!"
"I said: I'm proud of you!"
"That's all right," she replied, "I'm tired of you, too!"
Truly, each moment in a marriage: something new, something unexpected, something challenging, and something glorious - or not!
As the psychotherapist John Welwood puts it: "Every couple comes to a point sooner or later where they must ask themselves, in the face of the difficult challenges of intimate relationship, Why go on?"
Obviously, the longtime couples have figured that one out, each in their own way. The ones about to be married, or the ones struggling in a relationship, have yet to more fully understand their possible answers to: Why go on?
It takes a commitment to grow individually AND together, realizing, along with Anne Morrow Lindbergh who died at the age of 94:
When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of relationships. We insist on permanency...when the only continuity in life as in love is in growth, in freedom - in the sense that dancers are free, barely touching as they pas, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in possessing, not in demanding...Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be...but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.
She is talking about a spiritual relationship - where each partner relates to the other with awe and respect, honoring the core of the other's being; knowing that there are differences: of belief, of action, of dreams, but that together the two can weave a wonderfully integrated tapestry.
It is a task of heart and mind; sometimes it might be more of a chore, but some lovers are able to surmount the negatives, learn from them, and go on. Some do not, and that is all right, too. Where love or lack of love exists let me not judge others.
Indeed, each of us is a variation on the theme of being human, and being human is a most complex symphony. And to be human is to define "love" in a myriad of ways; to live "love" the way we understand it.
Some of us, indeed, love our aloneness; others do not. Some find love outside of just one person. Perhaps within the context of civic involvement, social activism, philanthropy. Perhaps through the care and nurturing of family and friends in need.
Some find love through work or avocation.
But whatever love might mean for you, I do believe that it is the force behind the gifts we give to others and to ourselves. It is that which motivates us toward a higher self.
And truly never be deceived into believing that total love is that which you see or feel at the moment. For love between two human beings can only deepen, if it be true love, when the changes of body and mind occur.
In other words look beyond that which is obvious and attempt to see into the spirit of the person; beyond the appearance to the very essence. And if what you see there transfixes you with its beauty and desirability, know that you have, at last, found love.
Let me close with these words of advice titled "Life" written by an unknown author:
Life isn't about keeping score.
It's not about how many friends you have
Or how accepted you are.
Not about if you have plans this weekend or if you're alone.
It isn't about who you're dating, who you used to date, how many people you've dated,
or if you haven't been with anyone at all.
It isn't about who you have kissed,
It's not about sex.
It isn't about who your family is or how much money they have
Or what kind of car you drive.
Or where you are sent to school.
It's not about how beautiful or ugly you are.
Or what clothes you wear, what shoes you have on, or what kind of music you listen to.
It's not about if your hair is blonde, red, black, or brown
Or if your skin is too light or too dark.
Not about what grades you get, how smart you are, how smart everybody else thinks you
are, or how smart standardized tests say you are.
It's not about what clubs you're in or how good you are at your sport.
It's not about representing your whole being on a piece of paper and seeing who will
accept the written you.
LIFE JUST ISN'T.
But, life is about who you love and who you hurt.
It's about who you make happy or unhappy purposefully.
It's about keeping or betraying trust.
It's about friendship, used as a sanctity or a weapon.
It's about what you say and mean, maybe hurtful, maybe heartening.
About starting rumors and contributing to petty gossip.
It's about what judgments you pass and why. And who your judgments are spread to.
It's about who you've ignored with full control and intention.
It's about jealousy, fear, ignorance, and revenge.
It's about carrying inner hate and love, letting it grow, and spreading it.
But most of all, it's about using your life to touch or poison other people's hearts in such
a way that could have never occurred alone.
Only you choose the way those hearts are affected, and those choices are what life's all about.
-- Anonymous
CLOSING WORDS: "Attempting Mutuality"
Attempting mutuality,
We work at love too hard,
Ending incomplete...
It's when we are,
Just are;
Not trying,
Only being,
That it's best.