Loneliness,
Love, and Legend
Rev.
Ron Sala
Unitarian Universalist Society in
Stamford
February
10, 2002
Things
were so simple back in the Garden of Eden. For instance, one day Eve
whispered in Adam’s ear, “Do you love me?” Adam replied, “Who else?”
Indeed,
wouldn’t it be nice to spend life walking through a beautiful, clothing-optional
garden spot with a partner made for you personally by God? But, according
to the Bible, things didn’t stay that way. Adam started to blame Eve
for his own decisions, they had to move to a less posh neighborhood,
and things went downhill for the human race after that.
Certainly,
love and sex would never be as simple. C.S. Lewis once wrote something
to the effect that if sex weren’t so messy in our lives, people would
hardly have put so much time and energy into suppressing and repressing
it. After all, love and sex have been implicated in such unpleasant
things as loneliness, divorce, rivalry, bad songs, and generally making
a fool of yourself.
Nevertheless,
all that hasn’t seemed to have dampened our taste for them. I would
be interested in the types of numbers a person would come up with if
they counted the number of times they had heart romantic love mentioned
in the coming week. He or she would have to consider songs on the radio,
the rack of romance novels in the local drug store, articles in the
magazines, emails from friends, favorite shows on TV, the current roster
of Broadway shows.
Pacific
Northwest poet Gary Snyder speculates in his book,
The Earth Household that the Western World dotes so much on romantic
love because it has lost so much in the areas of culture and spirituality.
We
long for a love to come into our lives, sweep us off our feet, and make
our troubles go away for the rest of our lives. I don’t think it ever
happens quite that way, though. Some of us must wait a long time for
someone to love; none of us find that our troubles go away. Some of
us are cut off too soon from our lovers by death or separation.
It’s
been said that love at first sight is often cured by a second look.
Sadly, that second look isn’t taken until we’re well into a relationship.
Yes, love certainly can be complicated. Complicated even in our language.
We have but one word to denote the relationship of parent and child,
brother and sister, friend and friend, lover and lover. We have made
so much art and poetry and music trying to capture the form of this
beautiful experience, yet just what love is remains elusive. Is it chemistry?
Biology? Psychology? Religion? Or maybe it is the fire behind the stars?
When two people speak of love, they may have very different things in
mind. To one, it is a synonym for lust. To another, it is tenderness
and longing. To still another, it is commitment and stability.
Perhaps
we can think of the evolution of a love relationship like a rocket blasting
into space. At first, there is great fire and a rapidly accelerating
trajectory toward the heavens. Even this early, there might be problems.
The rocket could explode on the launch pad or it could malfunction and
come crashing back to earth. And then successive sections of the rocket
fall away as it climbs higher and higher. We begin to regard the rocket’s
flight as on-target. Eventually, if all goes well, the craft will sail
through the silent vacuum. There is no need for fire at this point,
except for course corrections. But what the pod lacks in fire, it has
in abundance in both altitude and velocity. By this time, each astronaut
knows that the course had better be correct or the ship will be lost
in space or come crashing down to earth.
To
speak more directly, the relationship begins with attraction and passion.
Excitement mounts as barrier after barrier of our personal defenses
melts away in the presence of this amazing near-stranger. Some people
never get beyond this stage. Some get bored and move on to a new supplier
when the drug of romance has begun to lose its potency. Others get scared
and sabotage or otherwise end the relationship before their excitement
can turn to terror of being with the wrong person or getting too close
to the right one.
But
then, there are some who can ride out the storms and form a deep and
enduring love, a love based on friendship, mutual respect, and commitment.
They have found someone they enjoy being with and are basically happy
with the relationship. The length of the relationship has a lot to do
with both partners being committed to keeping on course through the
changes and dangers of life.
This
is the difference between romantic and mature love. Thankfully, they’re
not mutually exclusive. We all enjoy a thrill at being with someone
we love. And really, one of the best defenses a relationship can have
is a continuing romance within it.
But
many people mistake romance for the entirety of love. As a result, they
deprive themselves of the joys of a love that can prove itself come
what may. Author and feminist Beverley Jones said, “Romance, like the
rabbit at the dog track, is the elusive, fake, and never attained reward,
which, for the benefit and amusement of our masters, keeps us running
and thinking in safe circles.”
As
for mature love, nothing beats love at first sight except love with
insight. That is, we constantly discover more of who our partner is
and who we are we with them. It demands us to bring our very selves
to the other person. As Beethoven once said, “Love demands all, and
has a right to do it.”
Even
though we have this need for love, there seem to be so many things that
can keep us from it: Not meeting the right person, character traits
and habits that alienate us from others, social attitudes that try to
make us look down on ourselves for being attracted to a person of the
quote-unquote “wrong” color, religion, or gender.
Tomorrow,
I will go to Hartford to do something about this last barrier to love.
I will testify before the State Assembly on the issue of same gender
marriage. This is what I plan to say:
Good morning! I’m the Rev.
Ron Sala, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford.
As you know, this is the week of Valentine’s Day. As I was preparing
for the sermon I preached yesterday to honor the holiday, I was struck
with an unsettling bit of irony. As I researched, I discovered that
there was more than one saint named Valentine, but the legend of one
of these men seemed to me especially relevant today.
The saint was a Christian priest
under the reign of one of the latter Roman emperors, by the name of
Claudius II. The emperor was also known by the epithet “Claudius the
Cruel.” And his name was well deserved. Claudius, seeing that men would
rather stay at home with their wives than go out with his legions, decided
to eliminate the distractions of domestic life by outlawing marriage!
Valentine, believing marriage
to be ordained of God, continued to perform weddings in secret. Eventually,
he was discovered and executed. Many years later, the Church would recognize
Valentine as a suitable saint for a day honoring romantic love.
How odd, I thought to myself,
that all these centuries later, we are confronted by a similar situation.
I remembered my brave colleagues in other denominations who continue
to risk, if not their lives then certainly their careers, in following
their consciences by performing services of union for same sex couples.
I am lucky enough to serve in a denomination that has not only allowed
but, encouraged its ministers to perform such ceremonies since it passed
a resolution on the subject in 1984. But any same sex service of union,
or, as I prefer to say, wedding, I perform no more enjoys the approval
of the state than St. Valentine’s weddings did. And perhaps the denial
of marriage to same gender couples today is even more tragic than its
denial to the couples in St. Valentine’s legend. Marriage in ancient
times was primarily a business contract, with love and affection, if
it developed, an afterthought. Today, we tend to marry for love and
regard the legal provisions that come with marriage as courtesies we
extend to each other as members of a civilized society.
This is an issue about which
religious people disagree. But it’s not the job of the state to decide
religious questions. The bill before you regards
civil marriage and equality before the law regardless of sexual
orientation. If the state can find no compelling reason to deny the
right of marriage to same sex couples (and I do not believe it can)
then that denial is arbitrary and, indeed, cruel. That some people are
uncomfortable with the recognition of the human rights of others is
no reason for those rights to be withheld.
Therefore, I urge the Assembly
to support an act legalizing same sex marriage.
Thank you.
I’m
going to Hartford because I feel this world is lonely enough already
without excluding people because of their sexual orientation or any
other factor that shouldn’t matter in our recognition of them as people.
This world is lonely enough already.
To
turn once again to C.S. Lewis, “We are born helpless. As soon as we
are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically,
emotionally, intellectually. We need them if we are to know anything,
even ourselves.” Our culture’s cult of the individual has increased
the loneliness many of us feel as people turn away from gathering together
as families and communities and toward private pursuits. The late Mother
Teresa claimed, “The spiritual poverty of the Western world is much
greater than the physical poverty of our people. You in the West have
millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness.”
The
German philosopher Schopenhauer bitterly likened the human race to a
bunch of porcupines huddling together on a cold winter's night. He said,
"The colder it gets outside, the more we huddle together for warmth;
but the closer we get to one another, the more we hurt one another with
our sharp quills. And in the lonely night of earth's winter eventually
we begin to drift apart and wander out on our own and freeze to death
in our loneliness."
Are
those our two alternatives? To be torn apart by pain or freeze to death
from loneliness?
No,
there is another. That alternative is called love.
Easy
enough to say, you might think. Love is for those who can find it and
hold on to it. That’s not me now, you might say. Or, That may not be
me in the future. Or, That’s not me, period.
But,
I tell you, love is everywhere!
The
reason we don’t realize that is that we regard so little of the love
sent our way as love. We give so little of the love that is ours to
give. We shrink our consciousness down to romantic visions that have
neither reality nor duration. We leave out the love of family and friends,
perhaps even of strangers. We leave out the love we can give to ourselves.
We forget that the Universe itself is tied together with a kind of love,
from the proverbial birds and bees to the ubiquitous attraction of gravity
to the gentle waves of wind through the grain.
We
forget that hidden dimension that some call spirit or soul. That prophet
of Liberal Religion, Ralph Waldo Emerson, spoke of that hidden dimension
in his essay “The Over-Soul.” Please forgive the non-gender-inclusive
language of the nineteenth century. Emerson writes:
[T]he soul in man is not an
organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function,
like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these
as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect
or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background
of our being, in which they lie, - an immensity not possessed and that
cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, a light shines through
us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light
is all. A man is the façade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good
abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting
man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents
himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would
he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When
it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through
his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love.
As
we come to know this soul-love that binds us to ourselves, each other,
and the planet, we see that it is not a substitute for romantic love
but rather the basis by which romantic love can grow into mature love.
This soul-love is always present and available. And the more we give,
the more we have.
To
feel soul-love:
Go
to the mirror and tell yourself, “I love you!”
Send
a card to a sick friend.
Sit
quietly and let the calm which passes understanding envelop you.
Throw
a Frisbee with your dog.
Watch
your nephew for an afternoon.
Remember
fondly your first kiss.
Forgive
someone who hurt you badly—not only for their sake but for your own.
I’m
sure you can come up with a few thousand other ways.
I
am well acquainted, myself, with the pangs of loneliness. By nature
a shy person, I found the dating scene difficult. And plagued by low
self-esteem, I didn’t think I was worthy of someone who could love me
fully and completely and sometimes settled for relationships that fell
short of what I really needed. I once mused out loud to a friend how
my last name was the beginning of the word “solitude.” She thought I
was just making a bad joke. It was no joke to me. But as I began to
find the courage to reach out beyond myself, to love myself no matter
what, to find myself more at home in the world, I did begin a relationship
that has grown and nurtured me ever since. In my pocket I carry a little
bag with a heart and the word “love” in it. ReBecca gave it to me to
remind me that her heart and her love always go with me. If my way through
life has been hard in some ways, that difficulty has made our love all
the sweeter for me.
Life
may hold out to you the type of relationship you dreamed out. It may
not. Maybe you found that love and he or she has passed. Maybe you are
one of those rare people who find their greatest fulfillment being single.
But each of us, no matter our circumstances, can be in love with life.
And life will return our affections.
I
will conclude with an example of a man caught between love lost and
the courage to love again. His name is Raymond L. Aaron, and he writes:
My wife and I separated in
late December and, as you might expect, I had a very difficult January.
During a therapy session to help me handle the emotional turmoil stirred
up by the split, I asked my therapist to give me something to help me
in my new life. I had no idea whether she would agree and, if she did,
I had no idea what she might offer.
I was happy that she immediately
did agree and, as I expected, she gave me something totally unexpected!
She handed me a heart, a small handmade Play-Doh® heart, brightly and
lovingly painted. It had been given to her by a previous male client
who had also gone through a divorce and who, like myself, had difficulty
accessing his feelings. She added that it was not for me to keep, but
only to hold onto until I got my own heart. Then I must return it to
her. I understood that she was giving me a physical heart as a visual
goal or as some kind of material representation of my own quest for
a richer emotional life. I accepted it with anticipation of deeper emotional
life. I accepted it with anticipation of deeper emotional connections
to come.
Little did I realize how quickly
that wonderful gift would actually start to work.
After the session, I placed
the heart carefully on the dash of my car and drove excitedly to pick
up my daughter Juli-Ann, for this was the first night that she would
be sleeping over at my new home. As she got into the car, she was immediately
drawn to the heart, picking it up, examining it and asking me what it
was. I was unsure whether I should explain the full psychological background
because, after all, she was still a child. But I decided that I would
tell her.
“It’s a present from my therapist
to help me through this difficult time and it is not for me to keep,
but only to have till I get my own heart,” I explained. Juli-Ann made
no comment. I wonder again if I should have told her. At 11 years old,
could she understand? What possible idea could she have of the huge
chasm I was attempting to bridge to break my old patterns and develop
deeper, richer loving connections with people?
Weeks later, when my daughter
was again at my home, she handed me my Valentine’s Day present early:
a small box that she had painted red, tied daintily with a gold band,
topped by a chocolate that we shared. With anticipation, I reached into
the pretty little box. To my surprise, I pulled out a Play-Doh® heart
that she had made for me and painted. I looked quizzically at her, wondering
what it meant. Why was she giving me a replica of what my therapist
had given me?
Then she slowly handed me a
card she had made. She was embarrassed about the card but then finally
allowed me to open it and read it. It was a poem far beyond her years.
She had understood totally the meaning of the gift from my therapist.
Juli-Ann had written me the most touching and loving poem I have ever
read. Tears flooded my eyes and my heart burst open:
For My Dad
Here is a heart
For you to keep
For the big leap
You’re trying to take.
Have fun on your journey.
It might be blurry.
But when you get there,
Learn to care.
Happy Valentine’s Day
Love, Your Daughter, Juli-Ann
Above all my material wealth,
I count this poem as my most sacred treasure.
I
wish for you each to find your heart this Valentine’s Day—if not in
Eden, then in Stamford, Connecticut.
Amen.