As I worked on today's order of service, someone in the church office (who shall remain nameless) pointed out to me how the sermon title read: "Some People Are Harder to Love than Others (colon) Richard S. Gilbert." After appreciating the humor of that remark, I began to think that is precisely my point, which will I hope become clear by sermon's end. For now I'll just keep you guessing.
Anne Morrow Lindberg died this week, the widow of the great aviator Charles Lindberg, but more importantly a fine writer. One of her most endearing writings is about love - perhaps you have read or heard it. She likens a good relationship to a dance pattern in which
the partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. . . . There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back - it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.
Thus far she has created a beautifully romantic, but psychologically and spiritually sound image - a very egalitarian marriage - the kind which Unitarian Universalists champion - at least in theory. Then she considers the ebb and flow of love, realizing that most of us most of the time demand this idyllic equality and interpersonal beauty.
We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity, when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
She gives us a perspective, not only of the moment, but over human time, a perspective that acknowledges our need for security, but "security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia nor looking forward to what might be in dread or anticipation, but in living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now." We must, she says, "accept the security of the winged life, the ebb and flow, of intermittancy."[1]
That is a lovely sentiment this Sunday before Valentine's Day - a reading I use often in wedding ceremonies. I have done hundreds of these rituals - mostly heterosexual weddings, a few services of commitment by a couple which does not wish a more formal legal ceremony and a few same-sex union ceremonies. (I should note parenthetically that yesterday was Freedom to Marry Day set aside to encourage legalization of unions between same-sex couples - which I support.) Whatever their make-up, such couples always begin in joy and enthusiasm, in high hopes and expectations, in anticipation of many happy years together.
I do not want to disabuse them of their idealism, nor strip from them their hope, but I do try to suggest in my ministerial role some sober sense of realism. That is admittedly hard to do since, as one anonymous writer said, "People who are sensible about love are incapable of it." As one who is coming up on his 40th wedding anniversary, I am not really sure about that.
The phrase I really like in a wedding ceremony - the so-called interrogation - has a nice combination of the ideal and the real: "Knowing what you know of each other and trusting in what you do not yet know, are you now ready to be married?" Those are heavy words. One hopes two people committing themselves to a lifetime together do know each other rather well. Still, it is hard for me to imagine - at the vantage point of nearly two-score years - how this young couple in their twenties really can know anything about each other. While most of them have been living together, while many of them have experienced ups and downs in their relationship, while they seem to speak knowledgeably of one another, really, how much can they know? How can any pair of human beings possibly claim they know enough about each other to make such an incredible commitment?
On the other hand, we did it 40 years ago, and here we are - more or less intact. We came from families with a tradition of togetherness - Joyce's parents having celebrated their 60th anniversary and my parents - the kids - having celebrated their 50th anniversary. We inherited something over 110 years of marriage! Still, what did we know - then?
The second part of that phrase, "trusting in what you do not yet know," drips with danger, pulsates with peril, is full of foolishness. How do we trust in what we do not yet know? There is just no way to do that. No two people can really know enough about each other or trust in what they do not know about each other to make such a commitment. But we do - time and time and time again - some take the plunge a single time, others take two or three tries to make it work. It is a hard business.
I fear that kind of perspective is often missing today. We are in an age of what some have called "serial monogamy." There is a fearful sense that the commitment too often is "I pledge myself to you until something better comes along." Look at the foolish inanity of Fox TV's "Tempation Island!" Was there ever a more cynical program presented to the American public?
I don't watch much TV, but I felt a need to take the pulse of popular culture by tuning in - which I did last Thursday night. Five minutes was about all I could stand. I know, that is not enough to make an informed judgment, but along with reviews of that misanthropic view of human nature, it was enough for me.
If you have been living in a cocoon these past weeks you know that the plot of this naughty nonsense. One reviewer sums it up this way: "It was with great resentment that I turned in Wednesday to Fox's 'Temptation Island,' where four super hot couples are separted on different resorts, each member to be tempted by 13 equally super hot members of the opposite sex. The linchpin of the whole game show: Will any of the partners succmb to the seductive wiles of their island mates?"
Entertainment Weekly critic Josh Wolk went on, "We're supposed to feel sympathy for attractive guys with gorgeous girlfriends because they might be forced to sleep with other gorgeous women? Oh, the humanity! That's as rewarding as watching Microsoft's Bill Gates play "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?". . . . Fortunately, I stuck around for the whole show, because when it ended I felt pretty good about myself. It turns out that, at least judgemnt from these examples, really attractive people are as dull as a flattened lipliner." He concludes, "A weekly hour-long glimpse into a land where the attractive gather to showcase their flatlining personalities and generally bore the bikinis off each other is enough to make one glad to stay home, read a book and bless every roll of love handles and every strand of your back hair."[2]
So much for "reality TV," which bears little resemblance to my reality or the reality I observe in a congregation of real people. But such is the "free agentry" style of modern culture - that you stick with a team only until a higher salary comes along. It may be all right for professional athletes, but it is not the kind of stuff of which real relationships are made.
By contrast, I think of the story of one man who, celebrating his fiftieth wedding anniversary, told the secret of his marital success. He woke up every morning, looked in the mirror, and said, "You're no prize either." [3]
Which brings us full circle to the beginning of this Valentine's Sunday homily: "Some People Are Harder to Love than Others" (colon) Richard S. Gilbert. I will not embarrass my wife or myself by elaborating why I am hard to love. I do not seek to demean myself before by pointing out my flaws - they usually are too obvious to require mention. I point to myself only to note the universal truth that - when you get right down to it - we are all hard to love - at some time - in some ways. Or, as I read on the Zen Internet book of quotations last week: "Always remember you're unique. Just like everyone else."
As Barbara Rhode so wisely put it in this morning's reading: "Perhaps every long marriage follows these five stages: (1) Darling, you are perfect. (2) Good grief. You seem to have a few foibles. (3) Let me help you get rid of your foibles so you will indeed be perfect. (4) Okay, I love you in spite of your foibles. (5) I can't believe this has happened. I sometimes love because of your foibles."[4]
I don't mean to take all the romance out of Valentine's Day, nor to discourage young lovers, nor to take the edge off love, only to inject another dimension in the love which binds people to one another - husbands and wives, gay and lesbian lovers, life-partners, grandparents and parents and children and all the other ways we configure and reconfigure ourselves in human families.
That dimension of love - so elusive - was described in - of all places - USA Weekend by my favorite correspondent couple, Cokie and Steve Roberts. In "What's Next for our Marriage," they use the word "devotion" - loving and knowing each other for a long period of time - going through many things together and not trying to change the other. Their most felicitous phrase for devotion was "an unlimited commitment to an unknowable partner."[5]
Some years ago I preached a sermon on love based on a poem by Joseph Meredith, "The Acid Test: Advice to My Son." It happened that day that a ministerial colleague was in attendance - having a few hours of free time before reporting back to Strong Memorial Hospital for heart surgery. He had come from our of town for tests, expecting to return home. But when he was examined, he was told to prepare for surgery on Monday. He had to go out and buy a toothbrush and a bathrobe, which he did after the service. While shopping he had a heart episode in the store, but eventually had successful surgery, and is now in happy and, I trust, healthy retirement. We joked that his episode was caused by Meredith's "The Acid Test" which spoke to his condition that fateful Sunday. It is a powerful poem and can apply to any loving relationship. I leave you with are parts of it, with interpretation.
The father is giving sober advice to a son as he seeks a mate: "The Acid Test."
If she touches you when she talks,
laying her hand, lightly on your forearm,
do not assume she is the one.
For some women, this touching is learned.
It is no more than tactile punctuation -
delightful in itself, so feel free to enjoy it -
but not the sign you crave. . . .
Slip your arm around her waist.
If you hear in her voice,
dark and warm as mulled wine,
viole da gamba play, and the region
from your belt to your knees begins to deliquesce,
there may be strings attached.
Or if she says only things that please you,
you must conclude that she is greasing the skids.
She is not the one you seek.
Remember, in talk as in music, some friction
is both necessary and desirable.
Strings do not sound so sweet without the scraping bow. . . .
And when you gaze deep into her eyes,
do not seek to see the movement of her soul.
It cannot be done.
When you look into a lake
you see no fish beneath the surface.What you mostly see is your own face,
distorted, gazing back.
So with her eyes - and there diminished, too.
Treasure more the oddities you find:
the tiny flecks of gold and opalescent green
that make the sad gray iris dance.
In other words, should she "speak volumes"
with her eyes, do not think she is the one
before you find who owns the copyright
or check the date of publication.
The sure signs you seek are phantoms -
embers in the ash that seem to move.
After these words of warning, the father imagines a scene far down the road which speaks to any of us who are hard to love - when age and disease and the vicissitudes of life have taken their toll - and when we have shared both the good and the bad times together. "Trusting in what you know," but perhaps "trusting more in what you do not yet know" - this is the acid test. Meredith concludes:
You might, though, try this:
Imagine a dim room
down the long hallway of the future. . . .
The shades are drawn. You are in the bed
and around the foot stand
several solemn young people looking
vaguely like the face you shave each day.
She prays in a chair beside you,
her fingers touching your forearm.
They are gnarled and pale as roots -
a hag's fingers.
What hair she has is white and brittle.
Her eyes have all but disappeared
into the flesh of her face.
Her voice grates on your ears
like a child's violin.
Now, if you find her
absolutely essential to the scene,
if the thought of her not being there
feels empty in your stomach
and full in your throat,
then, perhaps, she is the one.
"Knowing what you know of each other, and trusting what you do you do not yet know, are you now ready....?" We are all hard to love - every last one of us. But we know we must take the risk. There is just no other way.
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