Romantic Love--Tough Love
Sermon by Steve Edington
February 10, 2002
Reading No. 1. From Richard Gilbert. "Love is an Irrational Commitment." from Living on Paradox Drive.
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.
Cut beneath the crust of human appearance,
Penetrate the core.
Bore into the land of love
Whence comes all truth and beauty and goodness.
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."
Reading No. 2. From Thomas Moore. Care of the Soul.
Love is a kind of madness, Plato said, a divine madness. Today we talk about love as though it were primarily an aspect of relationship and also, to a degree, as if it were something within our control. We're concerned about how to do it right, how to make it successful, how to overcome its failures . . . We sometimes talk about love lightly, not acknowledging how powerful and lasting it can be. We always expect love to be healing and whole, and then are astonished to find that it can create hollow gaps and empty failures. . . .Our love of love and our high expectations that it will somehow make life complete seem to be an integral part of the experience. . . . I suppose we do learn things about love each time we experience it. In the failure of a relationship we resolve never to make the same mistakes again. We get toughened to some extent and perhaps become a little wiser. But love itself is eternally young and always manifests some of the folly of youth. So maybe it is better not to become too jaded by love's sufferings and dead ends, but rather to appreciate that emptiness is part of love's heritage and therefore its very nature. It isn't necessary to make strong efforts to avoid past mistakes or learn to be clever about love. The advance we make after we have been devastated by love may be to be able to simply enter it freely once again.
Last Friday an article ran in the Boston Globe with a lot a statistics from the United States Census Bureau relating to marriage, divorce, remarriage and the like. I didn't take the time to peruse all of it, but did stop to ponder the line that read "Roughly 9 out of 10 Americans are expected to marry in their lifetime, the report projected." I hearkened back in my mind to the late 60s and 70s and to some of the articles, discussions, seminars, etc. of that time about whether or not marriage was a dying institution; and how new forms of relationships and family living were about to emerge. This was a time when the book The Harrad Experiment was actually taken seriously in some quarters. Whatever their pitfalls, marriages or life-long committed partnerships, are still pursued and entered into--now more than ever if this latest report is accurate. We take joy and deep meaning from them; some of us are wounded and deeply hurt by them as well. We still seek to understand what makes them work--or what makes them not work.
I don't keep an exact count of such things but I would guess that by now I've worked with three to four hundred couples, over the past 30 years, in planning wedding ceremonies or services of union. I'm frequently asked if I can suggest any readings, poems, meditations, etc. that can be incorporated into the ceremony. Always ready to oblige I have an anthology of such readings that I often loan the couple to look over to see if they can find something they like. While this anthology is a UU publication, I've noticed that Rev. Richard Gilbert's little poem, portions of which I just read, is not in that collection. At times the Devil in me wants to suggest it. What if I were to say to the happy couple before me, "Well, would you be interested in a poem called 'Love is an Irrational Commitment'?" I'm not sure how well that would go over. It could be taken as a cruel insult. I can imagine a response along these lines: How can you call what we're doing irrational? We've never been so sure of anything in our lives. We love each other and want to spend the rest of our lives with each other. We've thought long and hard about this; we're very serious about our relationship, so don't talk to us about irrationality.
I wouldn't question such sentiments for a minute. And the reason I don't go setting myself up for such a conversation in the first place is because I know Dick Gilbert didn't write that little poem as he was about to get married. No, he wrote it, at least in part I believe, as a Valentine's Day message to his wife after years of their being together. It was then that he could say: "Live in love, this irrational commitment. Laugh and laugh, shed a tear, remember me." It should also be noted that these words are contained in a small book of poems and meditations Rev. Gilbert has collectively titled Living on Paradox Drive.
I thought of this poem this past week as I was reading just a single chapter in a book by Dr. Nathaniel Brandon called The Psychology of Romantic Love. It's not a bad book; but not one I'll be spending a whole lot of time with today, except for just one chapter Dr. Brandon calls "The Evolution of Romantic Love." He could have also been titled it "A Brief History of Marriage." Brandon points out that for most of human history--beginning with tribal societies and continuing through various stages in the Western civilization down to the present day--love and marriage haven't always been necessarily linked. Love and marriage haven't always gone "together like a horse and carriage," and nor were they expected to. Marriages, and their resultant family units, primarily served economic or social or political purposes. They had more to do with the stability and survivability of a tribe, society, or culture than they did the well being of the couple involved; and among the ruling classes marriages were primarily a means of forging political ties or alliances between nations. A married couple might fall in love with each other, as a kind of bonus perhaps, but it wasn't the chief basis of the marriage itself. Love was sought out by other means, and those means varied from one time and culture to another; which is an interesting story all by itself. But I'm not going there today.
It wasn't until the nineteenth century, in the Western world, when the idea of the free and autonomous individual who had the right to pursue happiness in this life began to emerge, that the idea of marriage as a voluntary union between two loving individuals became the accepted basis for marriage. As Brandon puts it: "The concept of romantic love as a widely accepted cultural value and as the ideal basis of marriage (is) a product of the nineteenth century (and beyond)." That is to say, this thing Plato called "a divine madness" has only recently, in the overall span of human history, become the basis of a life-long commitment. Perhaps the Paradox Drive many of us live on when it comes maintaining long-term relationships in this day and age then, is in facing the challenge of bringing a measure rationality to an irrational commitment.
Some 5 or 6 years ago a couple in Albuquerque, New Mexico named Teresa and Rex got their Andy Warholian 15 minutes of fame in their effort to do something like that. Along with their marriage license this couple also filed, also at the Albuquerque City Hall I presume, a notarized 25 count Pre-Nuptial Agreement. The text of this Agreement somehow found its way into Harper's Magazine--which was how I found it. Their 25 counts were sub-grouped into four categories of Finances, Children, Sex and Child Care, and Personal Conduct. Under finances, for example, was a clause stating "We will spend the following amounts on gifts for relatives" followed by a listing of relatives and how much will be spent for whom. (I don't know if the amounts were adjusted for inflation or cost of living increases.) Under Children was included: "We will take the children on one good vacation a year" and "The children will be expected to help out around the house and obey house rules" (Good luck, guys). The Sex and Child Care Category called for "healthy sex three to five times a week" No mention is made of "unhealthy sex", so let's not go there. Under Personal Conduct are such stipulations as "We will turn out the lights by 11:30 p.m. and wake up at 6:30 am." (and) "We will buy supreme unleaded fuel and won't let the gas gauge get lower than half a tank."
The most intriguing clause, however, was the 25th one. After 24 clearly stated conditions for marriage, Teresa and Rex also agree that "We will provide unconditional love and fulfill each other's basic needs." This does raise a compelling question: Can unconditional love be provided even when the gas gauge falls below one-half. Well God bless Teresa and Rex. I really wish I could check in with these guys and see how it's going now some 5-6 years down the road.
Wittingly or not, Teresa and Rex have demonstrated one of the supreme paradoxes of this thing called "love." In its purest and most ideal form love is unconditional. One of the highest concepts of God that we human beings have come up with is that of a Being who loves humanity, who loves us all, unconditionally. But in the nitty-gritty of human relationships all kinds of conditions are going to arise if love is to be preserved. In considering Teresa and Rex's pre-nuptial agreement it occurred to me that they were either terribly naive in thinking that fulfilling a list of conditions would result in their knowing unconditional love; or they're smarter than the rest of us in realizing that whatever "unconditional love" may be, it doesn't just happen over the long term. Certain understandings, agreements, conditions, if you will, are inevitably going to be devised to keep love alive.
Well, those first few words of Thomas Moore that I read from his book Care of the Soul should have been enough to warn me off from even embarking upon a sermon like this one: "Love is a kind of madness, Plato said, a divine madness." Trying to create a reasonably coherent discourse about something which as wise a man as Plato called "divine madness;" and which Dick Gilbert, in his wisdom, calls an "irrational commitment" is probably nothing short of folly. But there is a certain kind of freedom involved when one embarks upon folly. When you don't fully know what it is you're doing at the outset of a venture, then you just do what you do and see what happens; the very same thing you do when you fall in love, in other words.
So what does it mean to love another person? Staying the course on Paradox Drive, the word that most readily comes to mind when I think about what it means to love another person is "risk." Recall Thomas Moore's words again: "We expect [emphasis added] love to be healing and whole." That, as I see it, is what we risk 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 that we believe we cannot not find on our own, in our singularity. And that is a risk. The promises made, the vows exchanged, the agreements agreed upon at the outset of a relationship are ways of acknowledging that risk while also saying 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 acknowledge is unknown territory. I think the reason we find a pre-nuptial agreement like Teresa and Rex's both amusing, and even a little silly, is because it is really an attempt to eliminate the risk factor in a relationship; and you can't have a relationship with out a risk factor--and a pretty high one at that.
What else might it mean to love another person in a committed relationship? To do just one more take on the question, it means that you need more than love--love in the sense of divine madness that is--to maintain the framework. An even stronger ingredient, I would say, is respect. I turn to one of my more familiar, and oft cited, sources on this one, the novelist and essayist Kurt Vonnegut. Way back at our 1986 UU General Assembly he gave a talk/lecture with the title "Love is Too Strong A Word." I was privileged to be present to hear it. It was later printed in a collection of Vonnegut's essays and speeches called Fates Worse Than Death. Before getting into the lecture itself, I got a kick of how Vonnegut introduced it in this book. He said, "In order not to seem a spiritual quadriplegic to strangers trying to get a fix on me, I sometimes say I'm a Unitarian Universalist. So, that denomination claims me as one of their own. They honored me by having me deliver a lecture at a Unitarian Universalist gathering..." Then, in the talk itself Vonnegut observed:
"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 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 and plutonium, is all the people getting divorced because they don't love each other any more. 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 Mr. Vonnegut refers here is, to the best of my knowledge, still his wife today; which means that respect did tie them over when not too much overt love was present. Those of you who read this man's works--and he's still going strong at age 80--know that he has his own, often cynical way of expressing himself, as he does here. Vonnegut is also, at bottom however, a very strong moralist. His point here is a sound one. Love--in the romantic sense--will wax and it will wane; it is an underlying and ongoing positive regard for, and positive valuing, i.e. respect, of the other that sustains a relationship over time.
But even if respect is the stronger ingredient in an ongoing, intimate relationship it cannot do the job alone. Many of you know that my, or our, present marriage of nearly 24 years is my second one. I can truly say that my first wife and I still have a great deal of respect for each other, even though the decision to end the marriage has proved to be the right one for both of us once we confronted the reality that there was no more "divine madness" or "blessed folly" left to be had. Among the risks that are taken in entering into any kind of committed relationship is an encounter with emptiness. So while there is more than a little truth to Vonnegut's remark about getting divorced because the ash trays are full; there certainly are times when the engine block is indeed cracked.
Recall that line of Thomas Moore's 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." I don't want--or need--to dwell on this point so much this morning 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 romantic love and tough love can run, at times, so close together. [I know the term "tough love" also has to do with strategies for dealing with difficult or troubled adolescents in a family setting, but that's not my context for today.] Nobody, of course, likes being hurt or wounded; and in a perfect world, I guess, such things would not happen. If there is any positive message to be found in dealing with the pain--the tough pain--of a failed relationship, or if the relationship has ended because of the loss, the passing away, of another; the pain you feel under these kinds of circumstances is a clear indication that you still have your humanity. The thing to truly be concerned about would be if you felt nothing at all.
I'll close on this point by recalling just a few more of Thomas Moore's words on this subject: "Maybe its better not to become too jaded by love's sufferings and dead ends, but rather to appreciate the emptiness is part of love's heritage... it isn't necessary to make strong efforts to avoid past mistakes or learn how to be clever about love. The advance we make after we have been devastated by love may be to be able to simply enter it freely once again.."
What does it mean, then--or what is to be done--when it comes to loving another person? I've taken up a good chunk of time here today on these questions and have barely scratched the surface. That's hardly surprising. I'm sure there's a message in that fact alone. Well, I'll leave it at this: Keep yourself open to divine madness; do your best to build a good and lasting framework for your delightful folly--with a solid foundation of respect; be aware of the vulnerability and pain you risk, knowing that both are essential parts of your humanity; in the midst of wariness over love gone awry, or love denied, don't be afraid to love again; ...... and for God's sake, keep your eye on that gas gauge.
By way of some final thoughts I want to move a little beyond the stated sermon topic, and try to bring things a little closer to home here. What does it mean to love a community of people? More specifically, what does love mean in the religious community of people we are continually building here? I'm not speaking in a romantic sense now, although sometimes such an undertaking can be as tough as it is usually joyful. For our Words for Reflection earlier I used a very familiar piece that begins, "Love is the doctrine of this church..." This meditation has been in UU circles for years, and has been included in the last two hymnals our UU Association has produced: "Love is the doctrine of this church."
Even in a non-doctrinal faith like our own, I can certainly accept that statement. What might it mean? I hardly take it to mean that we each and all go around equally loving each other in some sentimental or fanciful way. In a congregation of our size it is only natural that each of you will form closer relationships with some members than with others. And in a congregation of this size its not too surprising if some members or friends discover that there are other folk whom they don't particularly care for. (I can always hope that such would never be the case; but can also accept that it sometimes is.)
But the phrase "Love is the doctrine of this church" speaks instead to the values we hold in common and that we seek to live out both within our midst and beyond our walls. To join this congregation is to enter into both a relationship and a covenant. While I wouldn't exactly call it a pre-nuptial agreement, it is an agreement nonetheless to work and live together to see that certain principles are upheld. Part of the agreement is stated in our first UU Principle; that we will affirm and promote "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." That has become as familiar an expression in our midst as "Love is the doctrine of this church." Let me, in closing, say how I see it relating to some of the things I've said this morning.
I've said a good deal about relationships today; about being in and out of love; about respect; about knowing divine madness and about knowing the tough emptiness of love gone awry. One of our many roles as a liberal religious community is to offer a wider circle of love and respect within which all of us can find acceptance and encouragement as we celebrate, or struggle with, the relationships of which we're a part. Our affirmation of inherent worth and dignity is one that calls us to be a common home for a diversity of households; to offer a Common Relationship for a variety of relationships that are in our midst: For the couple in the early stages of a life together with all the possibility they see before them; for those who now have as much to reflect back upon as look forward to; for those dealing with the joys and agonies of parenthood even as they look to keep love alive for themselves; for those who are discovering how to be just a couple again when the children are gone; for the single mother or father dealing with all the challenges they face; for the gay or lesbian couple or individual seeking a place where they can simply be themselves; for the single person with love to give and share; and for those dealing with the loss of relationship and who are seeking ways to love again.
Love is the doctrine of this church for each and all of these folk and many, many more. May this community encircle them, and all of us.
