I Love, Therefore I Am

Sermon

When I was little, I attended a girls' school which had been founded by my great aunt. The motto of the school was carved on a plaque in the entry hall of the school. I was an eager student, and I was probably four when I first read the words, "He lives most who thinks most."

I was baffled. What did it mean? I asked the grownups. They gave me grownup explanations ­ something about the importance of education, applying oneself, living through thinking ­ a restatement of Rene Descartes' "I think, therefore I am."

There were two things that troubled me about the quote ­ one was the use of the masculine pronoun for a girls' school motto. Shouldn't it read "She lives most who thinks most?" Even in my youth I had feminist leanings. The other was the idea that thinking was the most important function of humankind. What about helping? And caring? And loving? And creating? And a whole host of other human attributes?

Joyce Natalie told me about an article she read which referred to our ways of being in the world as our "default settings." For those of you without computers, a "default setting" is what the computer gives you unless you ask for something different. For instance, my computer gives me 10 point Times New Roman type. I'd prefer 14 point, but I've never figured out how to change the default setting. Changing a default setting is like changing the ball on an old IBM Selectric typewriter.

The author of this article suggested that each of us has a default setting for going through life. Hers is cynic. Mine is student. Perhaps it was all those years at the Burke's School or perhaps it is my DNA, but I always look at new opportunities as something I can learn from. No matter how steep the learning curve, I love learning new things ­ especially if it's something I turn out to be pretty good at.
Over the years I've wondered what it would be like to come to one's life as a lover ­ to have "lover" as my default setting. To get us all on the same page, I want to talk for a moment about love. I've already given you two definitions: Saint Exupery says love is like taming a wild animal, making a connection; that it requires patience; and that it enables one to see what is essential, from the heart, rightly. May Sarton says that love is both fragile and self-renewing, through hunger and hope. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk says that love is "understanding", and M. Scott Peck, the psychoanalyst and author says that love is the willingness to contribute to one's own or another's spiritual growth.

So this is the model of love that I'm using. One that connects, one that is patient, one that can be broken and yet be mended, one that understands, one that gives treasure to the other, and from Paul, from whom the text of our second hymn came this morning, love is the most important human attribute. Speaking to the people of Corinth, Paul tells us what love is and is not:

Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish; not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other people's sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.

Dr. Carol Pearson, who consults in the area of professional development and personal growth, has written several books, among them Awakening The Heroes Within. In this book she names 12 archetypal patterns that can aid your inner development and your quest for wholeness. Among them is lover, and Dr. Pearson lists six attributes of the lover archetype.. They are all written in the first person.

1. I feel sexy.
2. I agree with the statement, "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
3. I embrace life fully.
4. I find fulfillment through relationships.
5. I like to help people connect with one another.
6. I feel loving toward people in general.

The first one says, "I feel sexy." Whoa! What a way to start. Is this OK to say out loud in church, "I feel sexy." Well, I hope it's OK to say here, today, in this church, because I'm saying it! This is the number one attribute of a Lover. He or she feels sexy. Desire plays an important part in many of the world's religions.

Joanna Macy, a scholar of Buddhism and systems theory, reminds us of the rich expressions of erotic relationship in Hinduism.

In early Vaydic hymns, the first stirrings of life are equated with that primal pulse of eros. In the beginning there was the sacred, self-existent one, Prajapati. Lonely, it created the world by splitting into that with which it could copulate. Pregnant with its own inner amplitude and tension, it gave birth to all phenomena, out of desire...
That erotic affirmation of the phenomenal world is not limited to Hinduism. Ancient Goddess religions, now being explored (at last!) carry it too, as do strains of Sufism and the Kabbalah, and Christianity has its tradition of bridal mysticism.

One wonderful example of erotic imagery is in Psalm 139. "Thou knowest me through and through; my body is no mystery to thee."

Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and author who did a lot of writing during the mid-twentieth century, wrote a slim volume called The Art of Loving. He talks about five different love orientations, as we come to know them through our psychological and spiritual development: love for one's brother or sister; a mother's or father's love; erotic love; self-love; and love of God. I think it's interesting to note that self-love and love of God are proceeded by erotic love.

So feeling sexy is important to being a lover.

Pearson's next "Lover" attribute is, "I agree with the statement: It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Oh, this is a hard one. Especially in our culture, controlled as it is by popular media. Hollywood loves the happy ending, where the two lovers are reunited in the end. We can almost count on the fingers of one hand recent films with love interests which did not bring the lovers back into union after separation.

Can you remember a love you lost? Perhaps a lover? Perhaps a child? Perhaps a cause? Perhaps a work opportunity? Can you remember how painful it felt to lose the object of your love? We, who are older, are more likely to have survived a lost love. Some children and youth have yet to encounter life's lesson in losing a loved one. As family members, teachers, friends, we'd love to save them this pain. Ah, but if we truly believe it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, then we must encourage their love, knowing it may be lost. Shana Goodwin, our speaker last week, quoted Dizzy Gillespie on this subject, "If you believe it, live it!"

I remember when my children lost their father. He died just as my two sons were entering adolescence. It was heart-breaking to watch them grieve. I believe they still miss him, as I do my parents, who died close to 40 years ago. Yet, how wonderful they knew him. Had time with him. Came to appreciate some of his quirky ways. Loved him.

The third quality Pearson attributes to Lovers is their full embrace of life. There is no one who writes more from a Lover's perspective than Rumi, the Sufi poet who lived in the 13th century. Our opening hymn this morning comes from Rumi:

Come, come whoever you are
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
Ours is no caravan of despair
'Though your vows are broken a thousand times
Come yet again come

Those lines give you a hint of how fully he embraces life. These give you the full flavor. He calls this poem "The Guest House."

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be cleaning you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

What a concept! Welcome even depression and meanness, shame and malice, and be grateful! Rumi is an over-the-top Lover!

The fourth quality Pearson attributes to lovers is the fact that they find fulfillment through relationships. Both Buddhism and Christianity stress the importance of relationships.

In the Christian Bible, three of the gospel writers ­ Matthew, Mark and Luke ­ tell us that Jesus taught a new commandment ­ to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as your self. Gone is the list of rules. Thou shalt and thou shalt not. Instead, he taught only one injunction ­ love! Love God, love others and love your self. In Buddhism, this concept is expressed as being in right relationship.

Love, by definition, is relational. Love demands an object. Joanna Macy, concerned for the earth, anxious for its healing, invites us to take the world as lover. She tells us that

when you see the world as lover, every being, every phenomenon, can become-if you have a clever, appreciative eye-an expression of that ongoing, erotic impulse. It takes form right now in each one of us and in everyone and everything we encounter-the bus driver, the clerk at the checkout counter, the leaping squirrel.

I remember once when I was beginning psychotherapy with a woman named Reba, I told her I wanted to do it without transference. I had in mind stories I had heard from friends about how angry they had become with their therapists because the therapists reminded them of their mothers or fathers and how much they hated their therapists at times. I definitely did not want that to happen to my relationship with Reba. I did not want to confuse her with my mother or my father, much less display any anger, for whatever reason! To me anger represented the absence of love, the loss of relationship.

To her credit, Reba did not burst out laughing. Instead she gently explained to me that all relationships involve transference ­ that it is impossible to be in relation with someone without there being transference. Rabbi Edwin Friedman wrote a great book talking about why temples and churches are such yeasty place for experiencing relationships. We bring to our weekly meetings all of life experience, including the aspects of others we don't like. He goes on to say that we are very likely to run into people in our congregations who remind us of these tainted relationships. That we do is a gift, because we get to do the relationships over ­ only this time better. This time, the Finance Committee Chair, who reminds us of our older brother, won't make us feel wounded when he prickles a bit about budget and how slowly money is coming in. This time, the lead soprano in the choir, who reminds us of our younger sister, won't make us feel abandoned when she laps up all the recognition for an anthem well sung. This time, the minister, who reminds us of our mean father, won't squash our enthusiasm for a program the minister doesn't like.

Friedman says we bring our unfinished business from our birth families with us to temple or church every week, and the wonder of it all is that we are often able to resolve and heal relationships within our families because of work we do within our congregations. The paradox is that learning to be honest, to express anger in caring and healthy ways, does contribute to our own spiritual growth and the others', and, in doing so, makes love possible. Without truth, love cannot live.

I know this is so for my sister and me. We were estranged for a number of years. However, each of us walked a spiritual path, albeit different spiritual paths, unlearning deceitful tactics of misrepresenting ourselves by trying to please others, and learning to express ourselves honestly and with compassion. What a world of difference it has made in our relationship! Just three weeks ago I spent a week with my sister while I studied at Starr King School. We could not have endured a week together under one roof ten years ago ­ not without a lot of strain.

So a Lover is fulfilled through relationships, and works on relationships to be fulfilled.
Lovers also like to help people connect with one another. I am drawn to ministry in part because of the thrill of watching a community grow and develop because of the connections made between people within the community.

Sometimes I will refer one of you to another. For instance, in another congregation in another galaxy, a parent confided to me that her child had been sexually molested by another child. In the pastoral process that followed that conversation, I learned a lot about the resources available in the community for the child molested, the molester, and both families.

Not long after that event, another parent confided to me that her child had been sexually molested by a child ­ a different child, I might add. After supporting the family through their initial shock and grief, the mother of the first child agreed to be a mentor for the mother of the second child. I loved connecting them with each other.

Pearson's final comment about lovers is that they feel loving toward people in general. Joanna Macy would change this to say that they feel loving toward the world, in general. Both follow in the footsteps of Jesus, the rabbi from Nazareth. For when we love the other as ourselves, we see the unity between us. Macy writes,

I used to think that I ended with my skin, that everything within the skin was me and everything outside the skin was not. But now that you've [heard] these words, and the concepts they represent are reaching your cortex, so "the process" that is me now extends as far as you. And where, for that matter, did this process begin? I certainly can trace it to my teachers, some of whom I never met, and to my husband and children, who give me courage and support to do the work I do, and to the plant and animal beings who sustain my body.

Macy goes on to describe herself as a "flow-through" of matter, energy, and information transformed by her experiences and intentions. So, too, each of us is a "flow-through", nodes connecting the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

In a sense we cannot love God with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our mind, and all our strength until we love ourselves and then see the unity between ourselves and every other aspect of creation. Experiencing ourselves as "flow-through" nodes is, in a sense, loving God.

Thich Nhat Hanh describes this phenomenon of world as lover and world as self in this poem, called "The Old Mendicant." (A mendicant is a holy beggar. A meson, one of the words he uses, is a sub-atomic particle.)

Being rock, being gas, being mist, being Mind,
Being the mesons traveling among galaxies with the speed of light,
You have come here, my beloved one
You have manifested yourself as trees, as grass, as butterflies, as single-celled beings, and as chrysanthemums;
but the eyes with which you looked at me this morning tell me you have never died.

The Lover feels sexy, believes it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, embraces life fully, finds fulfillment through relationships, likes to help people connect with one another, and feels loving toward the world in general. Yes, I think it would be interesting to have "lover" as my default.

Blessed are the lovers of this world, for they shall know that love is a gift not of their own making, which multiplies when it is given away.

Let us sing together, "There Is More Love Somewhere", Hymn 95