-- William Shakespeare
Meditation: a poem by Joyce Sutphen entitled “What the Heart Cannot Forget”
Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,
cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub
of watery fingers along its edge.
The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,
remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,
gathering itself together for the fall.
The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under
its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down
the sand under the beaks of savage birds.
The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years
of drought, the floods, the way things came
walking slowly towards it long ago.
And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches
where it was broken. The feet remember the dance,
and the arms remember lifting up the child.
The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.
Reading: by Ed Bacon from Eight Habits of Love. The first chapter of the book is entitled “The Habit of Generosity.” (p. 1)
The mighty Jordan River meanders along the eastern border of Israel/Palestine, giving life to two bodies of water, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee teems with this life. Everywhere you look there is vitality. On the water, people are fishing, boating, and waterskiing; on the banks, people are relaxing, eating, and drinking. Everyone is enjoying themselves. Sixty-five miles to the south lies the Dead Sea. It is just that, dead. The reason for this stark contrast is simple: the Jordan River flows into and out of the beautiful and vibrant Sea of Galilee. Inflow and outflow. Inhale and exhale. Receiving and giving… From the southern banks of the Sea of Galilee the river makes its way into the Dead Sea, but there the river stops. There is no outflow from the Dead Sea.
The human spirit, just like the seas, needs both inflow and outflow in order to foster life and create energy. When love flows out from within us, more flows in. When we open our hearts to love, we not only spread that love to others but also open ourselves to receiving love from others. Our outflow determines our inflow. The more we give, the more vital our lives, the bigger our spirits, and the deeper our giving.
Reading: by Harold Kushner from a Handbook for the Heart (edited by Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield, p. 39)
I recognize that I need love in the same way that I need food and sleep and exercise. I understand that my soul would shrivel up from malnutrition if I didn’t love, didn’t give love and receive love. One of the things that works for me, helps me fill my heart with love, is the series of Jewish prayers that focus on being grateful for all the things around us that we might otherwise take for granted. The first words of prayer when Jews wake up in the morning are to thank God that they’re still alive and awake, that their bodies work, their arms, legs, their eyes, their minds work, that they have clothes to wear and food to eat and things to look forward to. When your heart is filled with gratitude, when you can just go out and feel how lucky you are that the world is there for you, and how lucky you are that there are people out there trying to enrich your world, it’s a lot easier to be loving – to yourself and to others.
Reading: from the Gospel of John, Paul, George and Ringo. These words are attributed to Paul. (“Can’t Buy Me Love” by Paul McCartney, first recorded in January 1964)
I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright
I'll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright
Cos I don't care too much for money, and money can't buy me love
I'll give you all I got to give if you say you'll love me too
I may not have a lot to give but what I got I'll give to you
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love
Can't buy me love, everybody tells me so
Can't buy me love, no no no, no
Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love
How We Love
A Sermon Delivered on February 16, 2014
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
Fifty years ago last week, the Beatles’ arrival in North America was marked by their live appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9th, 1964. Seventy-three million Americans watched the show – that’s over one-third of the US population at the time. According to the Nielsen rating service, this was “the largest audience that had ever been recorded for an American television program.”
When I was a kid, Beatles songs were in the air. By the time I was a teenager, and a Beatles fan, the group had already broken up. The Fabulous Four were together only eight years. But in those years, they grew to become the biggest and best-selling band in music history.
The vast majority of their songs, early on, were about love. “She Loves You,” “All My Loving,” “Love Me Do,” and – of course – “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which according to the Washington Post, was their fourth most popular number one hit.
They were in their teens and early twenties, when they wrote these songs. And so perhaps not surprisingly, the love they were talking about reflected teen romance. That’s one kind of love: intense, passionate, overwhelming. It’s the love of heart-throbs, heart-aches, and heart-breaks.
But as the Beatles grew older, and perhaps a bit wiser, their love songs changed. The youth culture of the sixties was transformed by the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. The Beatles’ songs reflected these transformations.
“All You Need Is Love” (the anthem our choir sang this morning) was performed live by the Beatles in the summer of 1967, on the first ever live global television link, broadcast via satellite, and watched by over 150 million people in 26 countries. As one music critic puts it – the song is an anthem for the Summer of Love. It is “a plea for love and peace around the world,” and conveys a “zen-like wisdom, reinforcing the limitless power of love.” (www.ultimateclassicrock.com)
John Lennon, who was fascinated by the power of slogans to unite people and who wrote the song, thought of it as a kind of “propaganda song.” He saw himself as a revolutionary artist, dedicated to social change. The songs he wrote increasingly imagined a revolutionary love.
* * *
Last week, Pamela Van Wyk, and my wife, Elaine, joined 1,500 other Unitarian Universalists, and about 100,000 demonstrators altogether in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the Mass Moral March. The protestors were marching for voting rights, civil rights, women’s rights, and labor rights. They were marching in support of public education, and health care for all, and the alleviation of poverty. The NAACP played a key role in organizing the march, which included a wide array of grassroots organizations.
Our Unitarian Universalist involvement was part of our “Standing on the Side of Love” initiative, that is perpetually trying to rally our support for important social causes. The spirit of this movement is conveyed in our first hymn this morning: “We are standing on the side of love, hands joined together as hearts beat as one. Emboldened by faith we dare to proclaim we are standing on the side of love.”
This is yet another way to imagine love.
* * *
What is it we mean when we talk of “love”?
According to the psychologist Alison Gopnik, on the most basic level, love is “attachment.” When psychologists speak of “attachment” in early childhood development, they mean what the rest of us call love. “All children want and need love. The craving for protection and nurturance is innate and universal – it’s a necessary part of the evolutionary scheme,” she says. It develops in the context of the give and take, the back and forth, in the relationship between infant and caregiver. (The Philosophical Baby, p. 180)
Our universal human need for love is most apparent when we are very young. As we grow older and more self-sufficient, independent, and autonomous, we may imagine ourselves less dependent on love to survive and to thrive. But this is really a mistake.
Harold Kushner is right. Even as adults, we need love in the same way we need food and sleep and exercise. Our soul would shrivel up, if we didn’t love – if we didn’t give and receive love.
Love is equally important, regardless whether we are young or old, whether we are parent or child. It is a rooted both in our deepest biological and evolutionary nature, as well as expressed in our highest spiritual sensibilities and aspirations.
As Thomas Merton puts it,
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. We do not discover the secret of our lives merely by study and calculation in our own isolated meditations. The meaning of our life is a secret that has to be revealed to us in love, by the one we love. And if this love is unreal, the secret will not be found… We will never be fully real until we let ourselves fall in love – either with another human person or with God.” (from Love and Living)
* * *
Love can be understood and experienced in many different ways. It can be imagined as something you fall into. Love takes hold of you, it’s out of your control, as you fall in love with another person, fall in love with God, or fall in love with life itself.
But love can also be understood as an attitude you consciously cultivate, an ability you try to acquire, a habit you intentionally practice. This is the kind of love Ed Bacon explores.
He says, we can learn to love by cultivating eight specific habits – call them paths to personal growth, or spiritual disciplines. We can deepen our experience of love when we foster our sense of compassion and community, candor and forgiveness, truthfulness, stillness, playfulness, and generosity.
As Ed Bacon sees it, generosity is the first, and perhaps most basic dimension of love. It reflects an essential dynamic of the human spirit. The human spirit moves and flows, just like the Sea of Galilee. It needs inflow and outflow in order to foster life and creativity. The notion of “flow” is at the root of the word “affluent.” Affluence is not the accumulation of wealth. It is the give and take, the sharing of wealth. This is true in both spiritual and financial terms. As someone put it at a meeting here a few weeks ago: “Money is like love, because we have to give it away to get the most out of it.” A spirit of generosity helps us do just that.
If you stop and think about it, this makes perfect sense. Nevertheless, it can sometimes be a challenge to put a spirit of generosity into action, because we are afraid. We are afraid that if we give things away we will be left empty-handed.
As Ed Bacon writes,
“We often worry about not having enough, financially or emotionally. This feeling flows directly from the force field of fear. I must hoard. I must grasp. I simply do not have enough to give even a little bit away: not enough money, energy, or forgiveness. I am depleted. This notion is especially prevalent in our culture today, given the fragile state of the world economy and of our precious Earth.” (p. 14)
But this sense of scarcity is not a reflection of the world as it is, it is a reflection of our fears. Real life, and real love, exists in abundance. It flourishes to the degree that we share it and share in it. A spirit of generosity can help us overcome our fears.
Ed Bacon writes,
“Generosity comes from knowing that love is not a zero-sum game. The energy of love, of approaching life from your loving self, knows no limits. Whenever someone loves, more love is generated. Life flows. Imaginative ideas multiply. Cooperation and goodwill spread. Creativity-limiting fear diminishes. When people act from their fearful selves, not trusting that there is enough love and goodwill to go around, they not only hurt those in need but they hurt themselves too. They become like the Dead Sea, stagnant.” (p. 5)
Bacon tells the story of a friend of his who practices generosity simply by making a point of complimenting one person every day, whether it is a stranger in the street or a friend at the office. She will tell a woman in the corner store that her shoes are wonderful or comment favorably to a man on the train about the book he is reading.
Seeing the surprise on their faces, watching the transformation as the recipient acknowledges and absorbs the blessing, is infinitely rewarding. Her kindness does not get used up. It begets more kindness.
The habit of generosity can teach us to be more loving. It can make us happier people. It can inspire us to open our hearts to others, and the whole world around us, and help us play a greater part in changing the world for the better.
And the best thing about generosity is that it is both a spirit and a skill we can choose to consciously cultivate. Ed Bacon offers a list of several possible practices. Let me share three of them with you:
First - Consider sharing the gift of a smile. Small kindnesses can have an enormous impact. You may be amazed how your day can change when you smile and speak to strangers. Almost always they will respond by mirroring your smile. This simple act not only helps us open our hearts, it also reduces the overall amount of stress in the world.
Second - Consider making a list of five things you are grateful for today. Think of five things…. And as you do so notice the subtle change in yourself as you write. See if you can feel your fearful self actually shifting to your loving self. Notice that all of those items on your list were gifts to you from some other hand from someone or some source beyond yourself.
The third and final practice I want to share with you has to do with money. This weekend marks the Kick Off of our annual stewardship fundraising effort, after all. This is what Ed Bacon suggests, he writes:
“Consider how much money you currently give away every year. Compare it proportionally to your household income. Stretch yourself to give away a larger percentage; you could start with 10 percent of your spending money. Be aware of the effect that this giving has on your fear quotient. My experience is that with every percentage point I give approaching 10 percent of my total income and then beyond, the less clenched and fearful I am about money, and the more [mindful] I am in budgeting the rest. Those of us throughout the world who give 10 percent or more know that the remaining 90 percent goes much farther as a result of having given the 10 percent away. Perhaps you are deeply in debt or your budget just barely meets you needs, and you find giving away money causes too much anxiety for you to do so with equanimity. But we do all have the capacity to give, even if it is only a little. Each small effort at financial Generosity brings you closer to leaving behind your fear of scarcity.” (p. 26)
* * *
I don’t know how well the truths and teachings contained in the Gospels of John, Paul, George, and Ringo will withstand the test of time. But I do think they got one thing right: we can’t buy love. We can’t gain love by chasing it. We can’t accumulate love by hoarding it. We can’t hold on to love by locking it up inside our hearts.
We will gain love the more generously we give it away. We will find love the more we open our hearts, the more we allow love to flow into us and out of us. Our love will never run out, as long as we are willing give and receive. The more we give, the more vital our lives, and the bigger our spirits.
May we have the courage to face down our fears,
And find it in our hearts to practice the habit of love.
Guided by love, may we discover the deep joy of generosity.
May the spirit of generosity transform our lives, and change the world.
Amen.
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