by Jennifer Schnayer, Intern Minister

A sermon given April 8, 2001

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning. We welcome you this spring morning to this place of worship. May this be a place where your troubles are soothed, where your worries are set down, and for this hour may you find the love and comfort you need. Come, let us worship together.

When we love someone we open our hearts. When we love and love with all our heart and mind and strength, we bring to creation its life-giving, life-affirming and life-generating force.

Yet, while it is true that revealing your beating heart to another can bring boundless joy, it also exposes your heart to pain of unimaginable depths. To love over the long haul we will withstand grief, loss, disappointment, loneliness, betrayal and guilt. Love is not for the faint of heart. It takes courage to love.

So why risk loving? If we know that deep and honest love brings pain?

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes that "love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." We are called to love because in loving we engage in the enduring Mystery of Life. We participate in a divine creation when we love. It is love that holds us in both life and death.

Paul closes this chapter writing: "and now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." In Paul's eyes love outstrips faith and hope--love is the active and transforming agent. I think we risk loving because our drive to love is buttressed by a faith and hope that cajole us into it.

And the gifts of love are countless. Loving up close, loving long and hard and true opens us up to joy, deepens our experience of what it means to be alive. Whether the love we speak of is the love of family, friend, partner or God, love is a soul commitment.

And commitments of the soul require discipline, tenacity, strength, forgiveness, hope and a good sense of humor.

A few months ago, my husband and I had begun to develop some bad habits. We were both working all day, coming home late, grabbing dinner, sitting in front of the TV for an hour and then falling into bed to sleep, getting up the next day and doing it all over again. This is not a lifestyle I recommend--we were just going through the motions with each other.

"How was your day?" we'd ask (at least we got that far!). Then the other would launch into a laundry list of the day’s events. Besides simply recounting our days for each other, we spent no time or energy on US. All I knew about Stu was what happened that day! Something needed to change. We needed time to be together, sharing something that would enrich our life as a couple. So we started a nightly ritual that tends to our relationship. For a start the TV went off. Stuart decided that we should even MOVE the TV to make more room for us in the house. Then we came up with what we'd do together. Now, each night, we read to each other and then take some time to talk--to really talk to one another. A few nights ago, Stuart told me, "I am really growing right now. Things are changing in me and I am becoming a different person. I am excited about it and I want you to know about the changes that are happening inside me." Stuart knows this is a growing time for him. And I am grateful we are taking the time and creating a place in our life together so that we can share the transformations that are occurring inside each of us. I have the privilege of seeing my lover grow--as Rilke says so eloquently, "to see the other whole against a wide sky." The way we were going a few months ago, I am not sure we would have had the important conversation we had the other night. We were probably moving at such a pace that Stuart might not have noticed anything different about himself other that what had happened that day!

It is with effort that we stay alongside the people we love as we grow and change in life. Our families, the ones closest to us, are often at risk of being lost in the busy-ness of life. We must meet the people we love as they are and welcome them each day. A lasting love requires commitment and an ability to let each other grow independently while at the same time striving to grow together. It is a complicated dance, to be sure.

There are many enemies of love, and possibly the greatest enemy of love is fear. Fear of what might go wrong, how someone will change. Will they be there? Will they like the person I am becoming? Will I be lied to? Will I be betrayed? The questions are always there, and we can never be certain of the answers. Sometimes I think the only thing that can take us through the fear is faith and hope. As Paul suggests, faith, hope and love travel together.

But what happens when our fears are realized? What do we do when the one we love betrays us? Wounds us? Breaks our trust? What happens depends on the people involved and his or her situation. But I can promise you that everyone who loves is betrayed or wounded--at one time or another--by the one they love. The fear of loving is so strong because it is so very real. Some of our fears will be realized.

How can this be? How can the ones who love us, hurt us? We give our love so generously. And we made promises to each other. How can this be?

Jim and Donna live in Chicago. They have been married getting onto thirty years now. They have a good life together on the south side of Chicago. But they tell a funny story about how they got there. When they were first married, Jim and Donna lived in Lincoln Park, a neighborhood on Chicago's north side, where Donna grew up. One day, after they'd adopted their two children, Jim piled Donna and the kids into the car and headed south. The family pulled up in front of a house in Hyde Park on the south side of the city. "This is our new house," he said. "We move in tomorrow." A new house, a new neighborhood, and all of it an utter surprise to Donna. Can you imagine being out for a drive and finding out that you are moving the next day to a new place? No discussion. No looking for houses together. Nothing. Just surprise. And Donna LIKED where they already lived in Lincoln Park. She didn't want to move. But it wasn't so much the moving across town that upset her, it was that he made the decision without her. They still live in Hyde Park on the south side, where Donna is, believe it or not, a realtor . . . and there have been no surprises like that one in the last 25 years.

Over time there will be betrayal, disappointment, promises broken and plain old boring times. The challenge of a lasting love is learning to promise again and again.

In her book The Girls with Grandmother Faces, Frances Weaver tells about how she is negotiating the later years of her life with her adult children. She is living on her own, free to travel and to experience life as she desires for a while. But, she acknowledges, "there will be plenty of time when they might have a helpless old woman on their hands, needing care. In a way we're all taking turns--for a few years anyway." Weaver recognizes that the promises we make in our families change as we grow older. The bonds and assumptions we have with our children change from childhood, to adulthood and independence, and finally there can come a time when instead of the parent promising to care for the child, the child promises to care for the parent. As we move through life, the promises we make with our family and friends will change depending on our circumstances. There are many more times besides when we marry and when we dedicate our children that it is useful to take time to talk with our loved ones, re-evaluating our lives and again making promises to one another that serve that time of life.

And some of the promises made will be kept, and some will be broken. That is the reality of human love.

I remember the first time I confided in my best friend. She wasn't my best friend yet, but she was getting there! She and I were in college and we were talking about our families. I remember feeling a bit nervous. I recognized that I wasn't sure whether she could be trusted. Would she be careful with the confidence I was sharing with her? We can never fully know whether our trust in someone will be honored. It is always a leap of faith. You can be 90 or even 99% sure, but never 100%. The people we place our trust in are independent creatures with their own choices to make.

That was 12 years ago, and a lot has happened since then. Now, Janien and I have a great trust in one another; we speak honestly with each other, telling the hard truth to each other. Over the years, I have been plenty angry with Janien and she with me. It is hard work to love someone truly, honestly and with care.

About six years ago she was with a man that really frightened me. One of the things Janien really values is not having people tell her what they think unless she asks. I wanted her to ask me what I thought about him SO BADLY! And I also felt like I owed it to her to respect her choices--she had stayed alongside me for three years of a horrible relationship of my own, not judging me, just loving me and telling me what she could when I was able to hear it. She deserved the same from me. But it was so hard. It was a time in our friendship when I loved her more than she was loving herself. Finally, she did ask me what I thought and I had my chance. I told her how worried I was, how I thought she could do better, how controlling and emotionally volatile I thought he was. I was afraid my honesty might really hurt our friendship. She listened. And then went home to him. A few weeks later, I got a panicked message on my answering machine saying she needed me right away. I could hear him hollering in the background. I rushed over to her house and brought her back home with me. "You aren't going back there," I said firmly. "You are staying here with me." She eventually decided to move back home to the bay area with her parents and to look for work there. We call him Mike the Mistake now. The friendship endured. But it might have gone the other way. She could have resented my pushy-ness. She could have been blinded by love and stayed. Love can do that too.

In the New Testament, Jesus tells us to "love thy neighbor as thyself." For me this simple statement tells us to extend our love out into the world, to offer our love to neighbors, strangers, as well as our friends and family. Even when our neighbor is unpleasant we are called to love them. But there is more to that statement than loving others. Jesus calls us to love thy neighbor as THYSELF. The love extended outward is equal to the love extended inward. We are also called to love ourselves. Self-love is sometimes the hardest kind of love. And it can be easily lost. During her time with Mike, Janien somehow began to let the love she had for herself slip through her hands. This can happen to anyone at any time. Remembering to tend to yourself, to love yourself fully, is an important part of the equation. It comes first.

I think Tom Owen-Towle, the minister of our UU church in San Diego, says it well: "Self regard is our greatest spiritual resource as soul-journeyers. Unless we consistently care about ourselves in invigorating ways, the rest of creation will receive from us a watered-down, idolatrous form of love. Self-neglect, indeed self-abuse is possibly love's number 1 enemy."

Authentic self-love brings into being self-assured people, capable of extending that love into the world. People who love themselves deeply are able to exercise strong character. To make choices based on their values--they cannot be bought or easily swayed by the whims of popular opinion. As religious people, we are called to develop in ourselves this strong moral compass. A morality founded on self-love and emanating outward into ever-widening circles of love and care.

We must beware self-pity, however. It sometimes masquerades as self-love. But this cloaked villain keeps us locked in our own world. In the grip of self-pity, we love neither ourselves, nor others.

Love is perhaps life's most complicated endeavor. Learning to love self and others through our losses, betrayals, broken promises, hope, laughter and joy takes staggering commitment. It takes discipline to love truly and deeply. In our consumer-driven, disposable culture it is easy to set aside the practice of discipline: staying with something, or someone, when it is difficult. I do think there are situations when the love we have for another threatens our love of self. It is in these cases that we must consider severing the ties with one we love, lest we betray our love of self. But, mostly I think we are called to stay alongside the people we love.

Ultimately the one surety of love is loss. We lose the ones we love through death or divorce or departure. To risk loving is to risk losing. And yet loving brings with it some of life's greatest rewards.

Several years ago now, I got a phone call. Rene's voice on the phone was troubled. He sounded scared and tired. "She isn't awake, but you can come. Maybe that will help." So I went. The drive to the nursing home took an hour and a half. Rene was waiting out front for me when I drove up. As we walked together toward the room where his beloved was, he told me, "Every day I get up, eat breakfast and then come here. It is good just to be near her. At lunch I eat and then come back. I talk to her sometimes, or just sit. I get so tired in the afternoon, so I go home and take a nap and then come back until dinner. Sometimes I see a friend in the evening." He was quiet for a time. We stopped outside the door to her room. "It's been two months like this. Maybe your coming will help. Talk to her." He pushed the door open and we went inside.

I sat on the edge of her bed and held her hand. "Laverne, its Jennifer--Jennifer Williams from the Vista church. I wanted to come and see you. To tell you I love you." I talked to her for a long time, holding her hand, which I thought might have squeezed mine, but I wasn't sure. Her eyes never opened and she never stirred.

Rene and I went to dinner together that night. He told me about her latest stroke and what the last 8 weeks had been like. Finally he said, "I miss her so much. I miss being able to talk to her. We'd talk and talk. I love to hear what she is thinking. Now it’s only my thoughts." Talking to someone else wasn't the same. He wanted HER. The years they spent together were deeply satisfying. I remember watching them just the year before holding hands and looking at each other across the dinner table. Eyes sparkling.

Ten days later, I got the call that Laverne had died. Rene and Laverne were married for 66 years. I had known them for 20 of those years. We'd met the very first day I had come to the UU church. They were so special to me. The two were deeply in love, an example to us young folks of what was possible. Rene's eyes still sparkle with her memory, with the memory of their long life together.

Losing Laverne was one of the losses in my life that has cut most deeply. I can't imagine Rene's pain. But I do know that he celebrates her and that he enjoys the love of his family. It is bittersweet, the joy of his satisfying life and now living now without her. On his own for the first time in many decades.

A Shoshone medicine healer reminds us wisely : "If the dead be truly dead, why should they be walking in my heart."

Any enduring love that is deep and true brings something of the Divine to life. When we love and love well we are participating in the greater Love that ultimately holds the creation. That Love is complicated, confounding and beyond our comprehension, and though it is a Love beyond our understanding, we work to create it when we reach out in love to one another.

And so faith, hope and love abide. May you be held by a great Love, and may you bring that Love to life all your days. Amen.

PRAYER

Let us pray together. Spirit of Life we rest in your love this hour, and every hour. Remind us of that love. Help us to renew our hope when our disappointments loom large. Help us as we stretch the love that lives in our heart out into the world. May we find the courage to love for the long haul. Give us strength to endure love's challenges; and be with us as we rejoice in loves many blessings. May we be led all our days by a deep trust in a love that can be ever renewed by faith and hope. Amen.

BENEDICTION

As you go from this place, may you rejoice in the love you share and may the love that lies in your heart bring you a deep and satisfying peace. Go with faith and go with hope. Amen.

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Copyright 2001, Jennifer Schnayer. All rights reserved.