Potlatch [28:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As the church’s pledge drive nears, let’s compare our spirit of giving with that of another world view exemplified by a custom of some Pacific Northwest native Americans.

Presented by: Rev. Dale Arnink, Minister Emeritus

 All You Need Is Love...Love, Love Is All You Need... [12:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Presented by: Sherry Hardage

Love is the Doctrine of this Church. Years ago when I first read that sentence I thought it was nonsense. An emotion as a doctrine, a teaching? Why would a church that prides itself on rational thinking, and humanist principles have as its doctrine something as irrational as love?

So today, we’re going to talk about love. Is it really all you need?

I’m sure you’ve all seen someone do this: (pet imaginary dog) Is that love? There are people who would say it is not. Is that affection? Is it joy? When we have desires around another person and we wish to tie our futures together in marriage, is that love? In some cultures that desire has more to do with economics. In those culures it is expected that love and affection will grow later through living together, having children, and learning how to get along. How are we to distinguish all these different feelings?

Let’s start with our own culture’s roots. The Greeks. Plato and Aristotle both had a lot to say about love, friendship, and sex.

PHILIA is the love between friends. Today Philia means friendship in modern Greek. It is a dispassionate, virtuous love, and was a concept developed by Aristotle. Philia covers loyalty to family, community and friends, and requires virtue, familiarity, and surprisingly, equality.

PLATONIC LOVE derives from Plato’s writings about love and all it’s possibilities. It is defined as love without physical attraction.

EROS is passionate love with sensual desire and longing. Plato refined this word to include appreciation of the beauty within a person, and even an appreciation for beauty itself. He said that Eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros. We are all familiar with the decendant word erotica which refers to works of art; photography, sculpture, painting, and literature…..that create or deal with sexual beauty and arousal. Erotica as a modern word is used to describe the portrayal of human anatomy and sexuality with high art aspirations. The distinction between erotica and pornography is that erotica is intended to arouse aesthetic feelings, to transcend the sexual and create an appreciation of beauty. But as painter Stephen Gilbert remarked “The difference between erotica and pornography is simple. Erotica is what I like. Pornography is what you like, you pervert!”

AGAPE: Love in the sense of general affection and concern rather than the physical attraction defined by Eros. S’agapo in modern Greek means I love you. Agape covers how you might feel about your children, a good meal, your spouse. It appears in the bible referring to the love between Jesus and his disciples. Many Christian scholars have argued that this word describes God’s love for humanity, although it is used in other places in the bible to refer to love between people that is more than friendship.

Moving forward to modern times we have new words for love:

LIMERENCE: In the book; Love and Limerence, psychologist Dorothy Tennov discusses the phenomena of falling in love, what might be expressed as having a crush on someone. This emotion she calls Limerence is an involuntary cognitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person. It is characterized by intrusive thinking and an increased sensitivity to the body language of and the words spoken by the person who is the object of desire. The word might be unfamiliar but most of us have experienced limerence as a roller coaster ride, intense joy….extreme despair, depending on whether or not the feelings are reciprocated. In her book, which unfortunately is no longer in print, she says that about 10% of people in western cultures do not ever experience limerence. Under the best of conditions, limerence can be transformed through mutual reciprocation to become the emotion more commonly described as love.

Limerence is the emotion we associate with Chick-Flicks, Hollywood, and Valentine’s day. I don’t know about most of you, but I have certainly ridden the Limerent roller coaster. And those feelings were not really about the man I loved, they were about me. Oh sure there was a man that I was focused on, but the feelings, those lovely wonderful feelings were MY feelings. I wanted to be near the man I was in love with because of the feelings his presence caused me to have. I wanted to look into his eyes, be touched by him, talk to him, be with him, because of how I felt, not because of how he felt. If he were Limerent too, well, that was fabulous, but those intense feelings were something I wanted, something I never wanted to lose. And I’m not the only one. Many a love song has stated the same sentiment. Here’s one from Michael Bolton. (I won’t try to sing it!)

You are the candle, love’s the flame
A fire that burns through wind and rain
Shine your light on this heart of mine
Till the end of time
You came to me like the dawn through the night
Just shinin’ like the sun
Out of my dreams and into my life
You are the one, you are the one

Said I loved you but I lied
‘Cause this is more than love I feel inside
Said I loved you but I was wrong
‘Cause love could never ever feel so strong
Said I loved you but I lied

With all my soul I’ve tried in vain
How can mere words my heart explain
This taste of heaven so deep so true
I’ve found in you
So many reasons in so many ways
My life has just begun
Need you forever, I need you to stay
You are the one, you are the one

Said I loved you
But this is more than love I feel inside
Said I loved you….But I lied

In romantic love, what we feel is a reflection of our deepest desires, some would say it is the heart’s reaction to seeing itself reflected. And most of us have also experienced that horrible uncomfortable feeling when someone has those kinds of feelings for us, and we just can’t reciprocate.

In his book, The Road Less Traveled, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck says that love is not an emotion at all. It is an activity and an investment. Love is primarily the concern for the spiritual growth of another. Love cannot be sustained by mutual dependence, rather love between two parties is made stronger when they are completely independent of each other. Peck seeks to differentiate between love and cathexis. In psychoanalysis, cathexis refers to the libido’s charge of energy, and is what explains attractions to the opposite sex. Cathexis is defined as the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea. Real Love cannot begin in isolation. Cathexis must be present in some amount to create close proximity so love can begin.

There’s another kind of love for which we have no single word, no formal concept. And that’s a shame, I think it’s the most important form of love there is. The French use the term “joie d’vive”. It translates as joy of life, but in a larger perspective it means a sense of self in the world, a belonging, a joy for being alive, gratefulness for life itself. Many religious people would say this emotion is God’s love for us. It is in fact the love we feel for our own selves, the emotion that reflects a deep sense of having a right to be here.

I have a right to be here. That gives me a sense of place from which to act, motivation to move forth and create. From this emotion comes the need to act out the love that I feel, to say words that assure others they are worthy of my love, to provide a sense of security to myself and my family, to invest myself in other people, in my community.

It is no small wonder that love is the doctrine of this church. As a religion, Unitarian Universalism teaches that we should love each other and take care of each other, we’re all in this life together. This is Peck’s version of love as a call to action, love in the form of commitment, loyalty, and concern. The love we feel for life itself, projected outwards into the community and world. We’re talking grand motivations here, and we’re talking about simple joys, that loving full feeling when we connect with friends, humor and laughter, and yes the sweet warm cuddly feelings when we pick up a puppy and cuddle it.

Namaste.

I spent my youth in a township of a thousand or so people; everyone knew everyone (‘s business!). Practically everyone yielded to the social pressure to attend one of the several churches available. Except my dad.

I often heard Dad say, “All Churches do is try to get your money.” He might attend a very special memorial service, but attendance at a Sunday Service never happened. But here’s a paradox. He happily went to fund raising dinners. People in town could cook and he loved to eat. He didn’t mind shelling out some cash to the church so long as he got to eat at a big buffet dinner.

I’ve never liked to talk about money and it probably is the result of Dad’s influence. I don’t even like to think about money.

But I’ve always liked the food and the social aspects of a church dinner.
So I’m looking forward to the one this church is organizing for Saturday, February 24th at the Best Western Hilltop House Banquet Room.

We’re going out to eat! Over the years the annual attempt to raise the money for the church budget has taken a number of forms, but I think it has always involved food. I have always thought those that were best did not require some few people to put out a lot of effort. It has never seemed right to me that the majority were at least being treated to a good time while being “bilked” for money (there’s my dad’s voice) while a few were concerned about and working through a billion details to provide the dinner. And those few I always suspected gave a bunch of money too because they were so generous in other ways.

So we are eating out. Not for the first time by any means but the first in quite a while. I’m pleased that the worker bees are getting a break so that we ALL can have a good time; so that we can ALL socialize and enjoy one another’s company. Yes, it’s probably more expensive so far as money alone goes. But you know that charity and environmental organizations have an overhead for fund-raising. Ours is pretty low and this, I think, is worth more than the cost of “burn out” for our members.

But, hey, don’t be misled. This church is going to try to get your money! The follow-up canvass will seek pledges so that sensible budgeting can happen. Of the worthy causes you care about I hope you can see more value in the “free church” tradition than my dad could see in the evangelical one. In a world of ranting and raving and narrow vision even a small outpost of loving reasonableness has great value. And if you think that all this church does is ask for your money, please let me know. A kid never wants his dad to always be right.

Rev. Dale Arnink
Transition Minister, Minister Emeritus

Sarah Vowell, a favorite writer, in her essay “Take the Cannoli” wrote:

I’d been born into rock-solid Christianity, and every year that went by, my faith eroded a little more, so that by the time I got to college I was a recent, and therefore shaky, atheist. Like a lot of once devout people who have lost religion, I had holes the size of heaven and hell in my head and my heart. Once, I had a god, commandments, faith, the promise of redemption, and a bible. The Bible, that offered an explanation of everything from creation on through to the end of the world. I had slowly but surely replaced the old-fashioned exclamation points of hallelujahs with the question marks of modern life. God was dead and I had whackd him.

That is a fair description of where I was when I entered the first UU church I joined. Perhaps that is where some of you are now.

Stopping at Boomerang Creek on my way home from Madison, I told my high school buddy that for UUs like myself it is Reason, not Revelation. Not a very good elevator speech. Driving through the night in Kansas I had Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics in my CD player, which shortened my trip by seven hours. This progressive evangelical has given me many insights into religion’s claim on our being.

Dale’s tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. provided me with a couple more R-beads to reveal in an elevator. The string now contains Reason-Reflection-Reverence-Respect-Reconciliation-Redemption, and more may come from reading David Korten’s The Great Turning. When Dale spoke of a beloved and intentional community, I realized that I would have to have Love on my string. The Greek agape described the love of Christians for one another. As UUs seeking a beloved community, it seems that we need to be continually transforming our practice of love toward the ideal of Love (agape).

Rev. Scott Prinster’s New Year’s Eve sermon (in Madison) was “What Have We Wrought?” He pointed out that when we look to the past we could discern the outcomes of choices. However, we cannot know for certain what outcomes present choices will deliver. His example of unintended consequences: those who worked hard to make First Unitarian Society a welcoming and successful place could not have guessed that it would become so popular that many of them would eventually feel pushed out of their religious home. (Current size 2000.) Prinster’s admonition was to live boldly with wisdom and love: educate ourselves about our past, see the present moment as part of a larger picture, and bring our deepest values to the choice of our next steps.

Our Long Range Planning Committee has produced a plan that our Board is eager to use to navigate our future. When we gather to consider this plan, I will keep in mind the role that UU communities have had in my spiritual transformation, and my hope our church community welcomes and serves other seekers. I will keep in mind this part of Dale’s sermon on Intentional Community: Love, alive in a community, has its own reality that transcends individuals; the spirit of love moves and directs, informs and discovers what individuals alone could never grasp. I will keep in mind this line from Rev. Prinster’s sermon: “Love is making our choices from the depths of our truest selves, letting go of the demand that the future be our possession, and being at peace with the complexity of this life.” I hope you will find parts of the Long Range Plan that you are willing to join with others to realize, and that working together we build a Beloved Community that honors our founders, their successors, and ourselves.

Carl Newton
2006-2007 Church President