“LOVE RECONSIDERED”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday,
All
It is difficult, almost impossible, to say anything new or useful on the topic of "Love." Probably no other human concern has been more written about, sung about, experienced, celebrated, and suffered as that of love. Parents try to nurture it, publishers try to sell it, composers try to express it, churches try to proclaim it, and lovers try to practice it.
Maybe it’s the rebel in me, but I’m glad to see, once in a while, that someone, somewhere, tries to "debunk" it – or anything else about which we think we are certain. It is not that I have anything against love. Love is vital to my life and my religion. But it is just that since so much has been written about this subject, a lot of what is said about love turns out to be bunk. So it is healthy, I think, for someone to clear away the faulty debris.
Recently, Indianapolis declared this to be the year of Kurt Vonnegut – who is not just one of this city’s favorite prodigal sons, but also a product of the Sunday school classes here at All Souls. When I saw the publicity about Vonnegut this year, I recalled attending a Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, over 20 years ago, when Vonnegut delivered the Ware Lecture. His title was “Love is Too Strong a Word,” and I recall responding as I often do to his writing, by being shown a new way to look at things I never noticed before.
Most of us are content with how our minds work, as if our thoughts are comfortably outfitted for our own world. Vonnegut is one of those people who can enter your mind and simply re-arrange the furniture, then leave before you know what happened. The world looks strangely different after he gets hold of your mind.
And I recall
that happening as I listened to his Ware Lecture in 1986 in
"Love is too strong a word." Vonnegut's message, like so much of his writing, is at the same time both superficially irreverent and deeply inspirational. Any of you who may be unfamiliar with his style of writing may feel some discomfort in hearing it for the first time. You are fore-warned. Those who are familiar with his style will probably smile knowingly and sympathetically.
In this lecture, Vonnegut’s thesis is that love can be a dangerous ambition for people, for religions, and for cultures. It is not that he is against love. Rather, he claims that love is an ideal, an extreme ideal, that rarely, if ever, is achieved. In some cases, it sets our sights too high, and we're bound to fall short and ultimately feel defeated. Rather than try to paraphrase, let me excerpt some key sections from Vonnegut's article.
"Preachers exhort their listeners to
love one another, and to love their neighbors, and so on. Love is simply too strong a word to be much
use in ordinary, day‑to‑day relationships. Love is for Romeo and
Juliet.
"I'm to love my neighbor? How can I do that when I'm not even speaking
to my wife and kids today? My wife said
to me the other day, after a knock‑down drag‑out fight about
interior decoration, 'I don't love you anymore.' And I said to her, 'So, what
else is new?' She really didn't love me then, which was perfectly normal. She will love me some other time – I think, I
hope. It's possible.
"If she had wanted to terminate the
marriage, to carry it past the point of no return, she would have had to say,
'I don't RESPECT you anymore.' Now – that would be terminal.
"One of the many unnecessary American
catastrophes going on right now, along with the religious revival and boiling
water with plutonium, is all the people who are getting divorced because they
don't love each other any more. That is
like trading a car when the ashtrays are full.
When you don't RESPECT your mate anymore – that’s when the transmission
is shot and there's a crack in the engine block.
"I like to think that Jesus said in
Aramaic, 'Ye shall RESPECT one another.' That would be a sign to me that he
really wanted to help us here on earth, and not just in the afterlife. Then again, he had no way of knowing what
ludicrously high standards
"'Ye shall respect one another.' Now
there is something almost anybody in reasonable mental health can do day after
day, year in and year out, come one, come all, to everyone's clear benefit."
Vonnegut's essay on love was far broader than talking simply about romantic love between two people. He went on to show how, when love becomes the goal, and we naturally fall short of that goal, our alternative is to slip from love to hate. This, he says, is the story of Christendom. Jesus told his followers to love their neighbors, but when they found they couldn't do that, they felt obliged to do the opposite: to hate them. From this, says Vonnegut, has sprung countless wars and crusades and vengeful killings. If we can't love our neighbor, the psychological implication goes, that must mean we must hate them.
How less violent we would have been, Vonnegut speculated, if Jesus had told his followers that, instead of loving their neighbors, they must respect their neighbors. Because the alternative to respect is something far less than hate. If Jesus' followers failed to respect their neighbors, the consequences may not have been so bloody. Here is how Vonnegut sees it:
"'Respect' does not imply a spectrum of
(dangerous) alternatives. Respect is
like a light switch. It is either on or
off. And if we are no longer able to respect
someone, we don't feel like killing him or her.
Our response is restrained. We
simply want to make him or her feel like something the cat drug in. Compare
making somebody feel like something the cat drug in with Armageddon or World
War Three."
"Love is too strong a word," said Vonnegut, too strong to command obedience from us, we who are fallible human beings. This is how he chose to debunk the hallowed principle of love, and I must say I appreciate him for doing so. Vonnegut overstated his case in order to make a point, and it is up to us to measure the degree of his overstatement.
Though Vonnegut's essay offered implications of national, international, and even cosmic proportions, at this time of year approaching Valentine’s day, we pay primary attention to the notion of love of the romantic kind; that is, love between two people committed to share their lives together.
I see many couples in love, sometimes deliriously in love, when they come to me for a wedding. It is a very enjoyable part of my work. I typically don’t put myself in an advisory role on love, but sometimes I feel like letting them know that there is a great deal of stereotypes about love that are worth de-bunking. They are worth de-bunking because a lot of ideas we have about love are bunk.
I might tell them, for example, that it’s a mistake to believe that love means you need someone. This is the "I can't live without you" kind of love, and as love, it is bunk. Mature love is a free choice, which says "I can live without you, but I chose to live with you." Love is not based on what we need from another; it is based on what we want with another.
Quite a number of writers have pointed out that in our society, we often confuse love with dependency. We think that when we need someone, we must love them. In fact, whenever we depend on someone else for our happiness, it is a sign of emotional ill health. Rollo May, who has written a great deal on the subject of love, goes so far as to claim, "you can only (truly) love in proportion to your capacity for independence."
Another common mistake (i.e., bunk) about love is that it is something you fall into. As Scott Peck wrote in his classic book, The Road Less Traveled, you might fall into deep infatuation, but love is something you do, not something you feel. Love is active, not passive. Peck makes this point:
"It is when a couple falls out of love (that) they may begin to really love.... Love often occurs in a context in which the feeling of love is lacking, when we act lovingly despite the fact that we don't feel loving."
This, I think, is what Vonnegut was saying: that even when his wife didn't love him, the strength of their marriage was rooted in something more realistic than love, like respect.
To the extent that love is simply a feeling or an emotion, it offers little on which to base a lasting relationship. But to the extent that love is a conscious and free decision, followed by action, then there is some hope for a solid relationship.
Another piece of bunk about love is the notion that love is enough, or as long as we have love, we'll make it. The fact is that love rarely remains constant. It ebbs and flows, rises and recedes, widens and narrows. A loving relationship, therefore, will not succeed based only on love, but there also must be a broad network of shared values and commitments. Respect is one necessary piece, but so is trust.
One final piece of bunk is what Eric Fromm calls the "marketplace" theory of love. That is, people so often believe that love can be "earned." If I do enough for you, take care of you and so forth, then you will love me. This is commonly found in parental love, in which we try to earn love from our children by showing them how much we've done for them, and by buying them whatever they want. But it is also common among couples. The marketplace theory of love says we can earn love by doing what they want us to do.
Allow me to get just a bit theological. Being loved in the first place is an undeserved gift. You do not earn the privilege of being loved. That privilege comes as a gift, freely. In theological language, being loved is an act of “grace” – and grace means "undeserved gift." Like any gift, it should be accepted and cherished, but it cannot be earned. It can be lost or squandered away, but it can’t be earned.
While being loved is a gift of grace, maintaining love requires a great deal of work. There is nothing grace‑ful about keeping love once it given. Keeping love alive must be earned and deserved.
Bunk thoughts about love, then, portray it as something one feels, rather than something one does, something that controls us, rather than something we control.
In Western culture, our notion of love is rooted in the biblical concept of “agape,” or divine love. There are, of course, many other kinds of love, such as what used to be called “brotherly” love before our consciousnesses were raised. The notion of “agape,” though is modeled after divine love, what theology calls “unconditional love.” Agape means being passionately interested in the personal welfare and fulfillment of another person, accepting them for who they are, and not making demands that they live up to your requirements or specifications. Agape love trusts and respects, but does not need or demand anything of the other.
This is divine love. This is how God is said to love. In the famous passage from Paul, frequently read at weddings, where he declares that “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” it may be a surprise to know that his subject was not romantic love at all. He was not advising love in a marriage or partnership. He used the word “agape,” and he meant do describe how God loves, and what we can learn from divine love.
"Agape" love is caring for another without expectations or demands for them. It is not jealous, it is not resentful, it does not insist on its own way. Agape love is what makes a relationship meaningful, whether between friends, or parent and child, or governments, or lovers. Eros, or romatic love, is important for a marriage of loving partnership, but it is not enough to sustain it. Only agape can sustain a relationship.
Ah, but here's the rub. Here's the Catch‑22 of human relationships. Here's the devilish dilemma that we human beings suffer under. It is this: “agape” – the selfless caring without expectations or conditions to our love – agape is downright impossible for most of us human beings to practice most of the time, if ever. Agape is for gods, not people.
Whoever devised the scheme of things in this world made a grievous error. He, she, or it formulated a system for human happiness and human morality that is beyond the capacity of human beings to achieve.
Who among us can love without making demands, at least unconsciously? Who among us can care for others without expecting something in return? At minimum, we expect that our care is appreciated. More often, we expect the person to act in ways that we want them to act. And when our children or our spouses, or our friends, or our neighbors, or our fellow citizens, or other countries behave differently from what we expect from them, our love is tested; often our love is threatened.
Whoever designed love as such an unattainable ideal really goofed. Whatever they were thinking, whatever they had in mind, they knew very little about human beings.
Human love is more imperfect, more difficult, and sometimes even painful. The passage I read from Kahlil Gibran was more insightful about human love than any passage about agape, or divine love. Gibran’s Prophet tells us that love teaches us the “pain of too much tenderness,” and if we want love, we must be ready to “bleed willingly and joyfully.” He says,
“For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth, so he is for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in clinging to the earth.”
When Vonnegut claimed that “love is too strong a word,” I think he was acknowledging that we too freely associate love with agape, the perfect form of love that is too often out of human reach. We hold love to the standards of the apostle Paul rather than to those identified by Gibran’s Prophet. Agape is a divine attribute, not a human one. Only the gods can truly love like that.
Therefore, reasoned Vonnegut, we must aspire to something not as strong as love. Something a little less divine. He suggests "respect."
And in a practical sense, I think he is right, though I wouldn't limit it to respect. In a practical sense, love, as it is understood in our culture, is a super‑human action, something to which we can rarely, if ever, aspire to achieve fully. So, in this practical sense, we must look to other values, such as respect. Let me list four, adding three others to Vonnegut's "respect." These four are respect, encouragement, trust, and attention.
While I agree with Vonnegut that love is too strong a word to describe what can be expected from human beings, and that we are justified therefore to aspire to something less than love, I part from Vonnegut when he implies that love is therefore somehow irrelevant.
The fact is that these so‑called lesser values are derivative of love: these are the ways we fallible human beings have of expressing "agape." Respect, encouragement, trust, and attention to particular people – these are the human face of agape love, which itself is really super‑human.
Let me offer a metaphor to
illustrate this idea. I would like to
experience what it was like to live in colonial
But I can do many things that are
derivative of this desire. I can read
any of hundreds of books on the subject.
I can walk the Freedom Trail in
I would also like to love – pure undefiled agape. Agape means caring for people without expectations, demands, or qualifications for that care. This, however, is something that I cannot do, or at least cannot do adequately. For human beings, such behavior is about as inaccessible as climbing into a time machine.
But there are many things we can do that are derivative of love. With another person, we can show genuine respect for their individuality, we can encourage them in their own values and goals, we can trust them to be honest with us, and we can give them our attention, show interest in them. Respect, encouragement, trust, and attention: these and other behaviors are human expressions of love.
Love may be too strong a word for
the aspiration of fallible human beings. It is especially dangerous when it is
cluttered up with all the bunk that society and
from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians,
Chapter 13.
I may speak in the tongues of [people] or of angels, but if I have no love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy and the knowledge of every hidden truth; I may have faith enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may give all I possess to the needy, I may give my body to be burnt, but if I have no love, I gain nothing by it.
Love is patient and kind. Love envies no one, is never boastful, never conceited, never rude; love is never selfish, never quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs, takes no pleasure in the sins of others, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, its endurance.
Love will never come to an end. . . There are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of the three is love.
from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love. And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them, and with great voice he said:
When love beckons you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when her wings enfold you, yield to her, though the sword hidden among her pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth, so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not, nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God." And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that siings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
To rest at the
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.