A Kind of Madness
Sermon by Steve Edington
February 19, 2006
A week ago last Tuesday I was pleased to join with several of my UU ministerial colleagues in New Hampshire, along with a good number of UUs and other religious liberals from around the State, up in Concord to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on a proposed amendment to the New Hampshire Constitution that would define marriage in our state to be between one man and one woman exclusively. The intent of this legislation, of course, is to head off even the possibility that same-sex couples in New Hampshire would ever have access to legal marriage under the laws of our State. Copies of the statement I made before the Judiciary Committee in opposition to the Amendment are on the Involvement Table in the Dining Room, and are posted on our church website. It is not the theme of my sermon for today, except to open with this:
Even in quite serious settings, I still seem to have a bit of the Devil in me. Before the hearing was called to order I was joshing around with some of my colleagues about what we were going to say. Trying to keep things loose, I suggested that maybe I should dispense with my prepared remarks and offer for the Committee's consideration the Kinky Friedman rationale for legalizing same-sex marriages. Who knows whom I'm talking about? Kinky Friedman is, well, a character - in more ways than one - who lives in Texas. He a singer, song-writer, author of what I guess you could call good-naturedly cynical books on contemporary American life, and a general jokester. He's also running for Governor of Texas.
At first his campaign was mostly a lark, but the response to his candidacy has been such that it is at least possible now that Texas may have its own version of Minnesota's Jesse Ventura. When he was interviewed on the Don Imus radio show several weeks ago, Mr. Imus asked Mr. Friedman his position on same-sex marriage. Mr. Friedman replied that he supported gay marriage because, in his own words now, "gay people should have as much of a right to be as miserable as all the rest of us."
I decided to leave that remark on the shelf and go with my prepared text. I can get rather cynical at times, but I'm not that cynical - and neither, I suspect is Mr. Friedman. But I'm a little intrigued, truth to tell, at the laugh that line gets whenever I've used it; and it gave me a pretty good chuckle the first time I heard it, too. Is there perhaps just a tad of recognition in the laugher? I would suggest that seeing the humor in such a wisecrack, particularly if one is married or in an ongoing committed relationship, is not because one believes their relationship is miserable, but because Friedman's words have at least some small element of reality to them. Intimate relationships, if lived with any kind of depth at all are, well, not miserable, but still doggone tough at times. We know that and that's why we laugh at such a remark as Kinky's.
Another piece of the humor in Friedman's punch-line (now that I'm really getting into analyzing this thing) is because it serves as an antidote to the often overly glorified and overly idealized image of marriage that opponents of same-sex marriages like to put forth. They speak as if there's this abstract, inviolate, pristine entity out there somewhere called "marriage" that is somehow going to be trampled under, if not utterly destroyed, if couples of the same gender are granted legal access to the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage. But marriage, or any kind an ongoing committed relationship, is not an abstraction. It is two people, two human beings, desiring and trying to make a life of it together; and doing a great and wonderful job of it sometimes and a not so great job of it at other times. So yes, I feel that homosexual couples are just as entitled to make a go of it as are heterosexual ones. And some of those gay and lesbian couples will do a wonderful life-long a job of it, and others of them will do a pretty lousy a job of it, at about the same rate - I would guess - as do those of us who are heterosexual. So let's knock off this talk about "defending" some idealized abstraction called "marriage," and simply let those couples who want it, whatever their sexual orientation, have their fair shake at it. How complicated can that be?
I said this was not going to be a sermon on same-sex marriage, so I'd better move on before it becomes one. The challenge I ran into in preparing this sermon - when I got right to about this point as a matter of fact - was trying to figure out if I wanted to talk about love, or about marriage. Because the two have not always gone together like a horse and carriage; and for much of human history they weren't even expected to.
There are a lot of sources I could cite on this but I'll very briefly make use of a single chapter in a book titled The Psychology of Romantic Love - written, of course, by a psychologist - Dr. Nathaniel Brandon. I can't think of a much more unromantic sounding title that "The Psychology of Romantic Love" but that seems to be the way academics like to title their works. Anyhow, the author points out that for most of human history, particularly Western history, from tribal societies until the modern era, marriages and the family units they produced mostly served economic or social or political purposes. They had far more to do with the stability and survivability of a tribe or society or culture than they had to do with the happiness and well being of the couple involved. Among the ruling classes marriages were mostly a ways of forging political ties or alliances between nations. Or they served the purpose of even further strengthening the wealth and power of wealthy and powerful families, sort of like a corporate merger.
A married couple, under any of these kinds of circumstances might well fall in love with each other; and form real bonds of affection over the course of their lives. But that would be a bonus - it wasn't the chief end of marriage itself. Of course there was still love - that divine madness that even as erudite a philosopher as Plato recognized - but it was sought by other means. Those means varied from one time and culture to another, which is a pretty interesting story all by itself. But it's not where I going today.
Staying with our historical tour, it's not until we get to about the 18th and 19th centuries that love and marriage came to be joined. By then we'd had this movement called The Enlightenment; and out of that came this idea that the supreme good was the autonomous individual who had the right to pursue happiness in this life. Thomas Jefferson, as you well know, called such a pursuit an inalienable right in the very founding document of our nation. So it was at this point in human history - when the pursuit of human happiness became so elevated - that the idea of marriage as a voluntary union between two loving individuals became the accepted, and indeed the primary basis for marriage. Think of it: In a family, or on either side of a family, where there are questions or misgivings about the wisdom of an upcoming union, the fall back line is usually: "Well, if the two of them are happy then I guess that's the main thing." Happiness, and the opportunity to pursue happiness in an ongoing, loving, and committed relationship is now considered the main thing in a marriage.
I happen to believe this is a good thing. I'll bet most, if not all, of you do too. We marry, or enter into long-term relationships for the sake of love and happiness, and we wish the same for our children. But even good things come with their challenges. And the paradoxical challenge of living and loving in an ongoing, committed relationship - whether it is given the legal sanction marriage or not - is in having to learn reasonable and rational ways to live out something that is really an irrational commitment. Now where did I get a term like "irrational commitment." Well, I got it from a love poem titled "Love is an Irrational Commitment." It was written by Richard Gilbert. This is the same Richard Gilbert, a retired UU minister, who will be here with us on March 26 to help kick off our congregational social justice workshop that will be held the following weekend.
Dick may be primarily known within our UU family as our "social justice guy," but he also writes a pretty good love poem. (I'm not suggesting, of course, that the two are mutually exclusive. In fact, loving humanity and loving another person could and should go together quite well) Anyway, here's part of a Valentines Day poem Dick Gilbert wrote to his wife of many years:
"Love is an irrational commitment,
St. Valentine, from long ago and far away
Whispered in my ear this week:
'Away with logic,' he intoned.
'Have done with reason for a time...
Time there is enough to think and theorize;
So take time to send a greeting to those you love
Who have given you more than you can ever give.
Live in love, this irrational commitment
Laugh and laugh,'
Shed a tear,
Remember me."
This poem is part of a collection of poems and meditations Dick published many years ago under the title Living on Paradox Drive. Good title. Paradox Drive is the road over which most lasting relationships are traveled and lived. If unconditional love is to stay alive certain understandings, agreements, and conditions need to be in place. If an irrational commitment is to keep it's spark and certain amount of reasonable and rational arrangement and understanding need to be in place. If divine madness is to continue to make our lives joyful - some measure of sane living needs to be in place. Living on Paradox Drive is kinda where it's at when it comes to living out a life of love. Because nobody makes a rational decision to fall in love (Do they? I know I didn't). Otherwise it wouldn't even be called divine madness. Falling in love is pretty easy; it's where and how you go about things after you pick yourself up that takes the effort.
Any of you who, like my wife and I, have raised a son and/or daughter through their adolescence and into early adulthood have probably witnessed their own encounters with divine madness love, and the giddiness, and sometimes the hurt, that goes with it. For myself it's been a real mixed bag to witness all that with our own offspring. There's the wistful part of me that says, "Yeah, those were the days," but another part that says, "And I'm just as glad to be past them."
Let's return to Thomas Moore again: "We talk of love as if it were something within our control...We expect it to be healing and whole and then are astonished to find it can create hollow gaps..." Moore is addressing the risk we choose to run in an ongoing relationship once the divine madness phase has ebbed. We choose to invest of ourselves, to give of ourselves, in a relationship trusting that we will find, or receive, a good measure of wholeness and healing, which we cannot find on our own and in our singularity. And that's a risk. The promises made, the vows exchanged, the agreements agreed upon at the outset of a relationship are also ways of acknowledging that risk while also saying that it is not a blind one: Yes you may expect these things of me, and I will expect these things of you, but we are taking these promises into what we both know is unknown territory, and on journey down Paradox Drive.
If that journey is going to make it, it's going to take more than love - strange as that my sound at first. Several years ago Kurt Vonnegut gave one of the major addresses at one of our annual UU General Assemblies. The title of his talk was "Love is Too Strong a Word." I know I've used this before, but I get such a kick out of it that I don't mind taking it around the block again every once in awhile. Here's Vonnegut: -
"Love is simply too strong a word to be of much use in 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."
"If she had really wanted to terminate the marriage," Vonnegut continued, "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 American catastrophes going on right now, along with the religious revival, is all the people getting divorced because they don't love each other anymore. That's like trading in 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 actually said, in Aramaic, "Ye shall respect one another.' That would be a sign that he really wanted to help us here on Earth and not just in the afterlife."
The spouse to which Vonnegut referred in this address is still, to the best of my knowledge, his wife to this day; which means that respect did carry the day when divine madness was in short supply. Those of you who have read this man's work know that he has his own, often cynical, way of expressing himself. I think he and Kinky Friedman would get along very well. But Vonnegut is also a very strong moralist, and his point - beyond his sardonic language - is a sound one. Love, in the romantic, divine madness, sense will wax and wane - and sometime it's "wax" and sometimes it's "wane." But it is an underlying positive regard for and a positive valuing of the other that sustains a relationship over time.
I'll move to a close by revisiting Thomas Moore one more time. Again: "We always expect love to be healing and whole and then are astonished to find that it can create hollow gaps and empty failures." There no need to dwell on this point so much as to acknowledge it. Because love addresses some of our deepest needs, it also exposes us to some of our deepest human vulnerabilities. This is why it is a very fine line, at times, that separates our being whole and our being hurt. Nobody, of course, likes being hurt or wounded, and in a perfect world I guess such things would not happen. But that isn't the world any of us live in. If there is any positive message to be found in dealing with the pain of a failed relationship, or if the relationship has ended because of the loss of another, the pain you feel at such a time is also a clear indication that you still have your humanity. The thing to be truly concerned about would be if you felt nothing at all.
I had the feeling as I set out to prepare this sermon that it was folly and madness - divine or otherwise - to attempt a sermon on what it meant to love another person. I'm not surprised that I've only scratched the surface. But there's a scene right at the end of Woody Allen's wonderful movie "Annie Hall" that has stayed with me over the many years now since it was made. It comes after the relationship that the Woody Allen character and the Diane Keaton (as Annie Hall) character has come and gone. They happen to meet up with one another on a New York City street corner, and they chat about old times for a few minutes before continuing on their respective ways. Woody Allen then turns to the camera, taking on the role of narrator to the audience, and says something like, "Love and relationships remind me of the old joke about the two women having dinner at a Catskills resort. One of them says, 'Gee the food here is bad,' and the other one says, 'It sure is; and they serve such small portions, too!'"
So however much love may try and test us at times, we still not satisfied or happy or fulfilled if there's only a small portion of it for us. So, keep yourself open to divine madness, wherever you may happen to be on our life journey - and whoever you may be sharing it with. Do your best to build a good and lasting framework for you irrational commitment; be aware of the vulnerability you risk in loving another, while also knowing that you give up a very vital part of living by not taking such a risk.
Stephen D. Edington
February 19, 2006
