\u201cA Short Note to My Very Critical and Well-Beloved Friends and Comrades\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe final reading was from Jordan’s introduction to her book of poems titled \u201cPassion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the poetry of the New World, you meet with a reverence for the material world that begins with a reverence for human life, an intellectual trust in sensuality as a means of knowledge and unity\u2026 and a deliberate balancing \u2026 of sensory report with moral exhortation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sermon: \u201cWho Deserves Our Love?\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The English language has some distinct limitations. For example, we only have one word for \u201clove.\u201d Contrast this with ancient Greek, which has half a dozen words that can be translated by the one English word \u201clove.\u201d This creates some problems for us English speakers, because we\u2019re the inheritors of the Western intellectual tradition which extends back to ancient Greece. When you\u2019re speaking English and you hear the word \u201clove,\u201d you have to automatically do some internal translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When this person says \u201clove,\u201d do they mean erotic or romantic love? Do they mean the love that can exist between good friends? What about the love that exists between parents and children, which is different than the love that exists between good friends, because where friends are more or less equal, there\u2019s an imbalance of power between parent and child — at least there is when the child is young. Then there\u2019s love of oneself, which is a virtue when it\u2019s tied to ordinary self respect, but is a vice when it becomes self-obsession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, there\u2019s a kind of selfless love, the kind of love where you continue to love even when you get nothing out of it. The early Christians picked up on this last kind of love — the ancient Greek name for it is \u201cagape\u201d — and integrated it into their conception of God, and their formulation of the Golden Rule. The story of the Good Samaritan is a story of agape-type love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As English speakers, we have all these different kinds of love sort of mushed together into the one word. This can cause a certain amount of confusion. But I think it\u2019s also useful for people like Unitarian Universalists, who spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how we can be the best people possible. We also spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to get through the day to day challenges that life throws at us, things like the death of people we love, or betrayals by people we thought we loved, and so on. Life rarely breaks down into neat, tidy categories. So I find it helpful to know that love doesn\u2019t necessarily break down into neat tidy categories either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this brings me to the book of poetry that June Jordan published way back in 1980. The title of the book is \u201cPassion.\u201d The poems in the book cover a wide range. There are poems about passionate erotic and romantic love, as we heard in the first reading — and here I should point out that June Jordan was part of the LGBTQ+ community, so when she\u2019s talking about passionate erotic and romantic love, she\u2019s not restricting that love to opposite sex attraction. June Jordan also has a couple of poems in that book that are about rape. These particular poems are pretty graphic, and I find them very difficult to read — I\u2019m giving you fair warning, in case you decide to pick up this book and read through it. But these poems are included for a reason. Jordan wants us to understand how for her as a woman, passionate erotic love can also become something twisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are also poems about relationships between equals, the love of friendship between equals. That\u2019s what we heard in the second reading, the poem titled \u201cA Short Note to My Very Critical and Well-Beloved Friends and Comrades.\u201d I\u2019ll read you the last few lines of the poem again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Make up your mind! They said. Are you militant
or sweet? Are you vegetarian or meat? Are you straight
or are you gay?
And I said, Hey! It\u2019s not about my mind<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love this poem because I\u2019ve had this sort of thing happen to me in my own friendships. And I\u2019ve done this to others. We humans tend to put each other into boxes. We put people into boxes based on skin color, age, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status, political party…. Let me pause here and focus on political party, because that’s where people are putting other people into boxes a lot right now. And it\u2019s pretty ugly. I hear Republicans talking about \u201cSleepy Joe\u201d Biden, and I hear Democrats talking about \u201cDementia Donald\u201d Trump. There\u2019s no love lost here — there\u2019s no love present here, none at all, just rank stereotyping and sometimes naked hatred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is what we humans do. We strive for love. We want to create a world where all people are loved equally. But when reality confronts us with other people who are doing things which we find distasteful or reprehensible or misguided, we can switch from universal love to individual hatred pretty quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I feel like this has become a spiritual crisis in our country. There is a lot of demonization going on all around us. Going back to June Jordan\u2019s poem, we all find ourselves saying unpleasant things about other people — that other people are too racist or too anti-racist, that other people are too much of a nationalist, that other people are too stupid, or too angry, or too idealistic. This kind of thing tips over into demonization very quickly. We demonize people, imagining them as demons rather than humans, when we feel those other people are too angry, or too old, or too different. To which June Jordan replies — \u201cHey! it\u2019s not about my mind.\u201d She\u2019s right. Demonization is always about the mind of the person who does the demonizing. I\u2019ve done my share of demonizing recently, mostly aimed at politicians and public figures with whom I don\u2019t agree, and that demonizing that I do is more about me than about the person at whom I direct it. When I demonize someone, it damages me, and it damages our public discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We need to find a way out of this — a way out of these demonizing behaviors that dominate our public discourse right now. To do so, I\u2019m going to go back to one of our great spiritual resources, our Universalist tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The early Universalists were Christians, of course, and not all of us now are Christians. But those early Universalists got at some universal truths through their liberal Christian tradition. One of those truths is encapsulated in the phrase, \u201cGod is love.\u201d If you\u2019re a Christian, this phrase might focus you on the Christian God. From that perspective, this phrase defines God as being all about love. If you\u2019re not a Christian, though, this phrase can still make sense. Here in the West, the term \u201cGod\u201d serves as a philosophical placeholder for the object of our ultimate concern. So this phrase need not be taken literally. It can be understood quite simply as saying that love is our ultimate concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The old Universalists wanted everyone to see the truth of that phrase, \u201cGod is love.\u201d They understood that if God is love, there can be no such thing as eternal damnation, because love must eventually overpower hatred and evil. Instead, hell is something that happens here on earth, during our lifetimes, when we forget that love is supposed to be our ultimate concern. In particular, hell can arise here on earth when one group of people demonizes another group of people. Of course it feels hellish to be on the receiving end of the hatred that comes with racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ageism, and so on. But hell also arises in the hearts of those who demonize others. When we demonize others we throw ourselves into hell, into a place where hatred is more important than human connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the old Universalists wanted us to get ourselves out of any hell that is here and now. They wanted everyone to truly feel in their bones that love is the most powerful force in the universe. They wanted to build their religious communities centered on love. The early Universalist Hosea Ballou put it like this: \u201cIf we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, and if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next century or so, the Universalists pulled back from that early trust in the power of love. The power of evil seemed so strong that they returned to the old idea that there must be some kind of punishment after death. They decided that God would in fact condemn some people to hell, it just wouldn\u2019t be forever. In other words, they decided that God might be love, but that God\u2019s love had limits to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in my view, they weren\u2019t really thinking about God, they were thinking about themselves. They weren\u2019t asking: Who deserves God\u2019s love? Or to put it in non-theistic terms: Who deserves to be included in our ultimate concern? Instead, they were asking: Who deserves my love? IThey were saying: \u2019m not so concerned with ultimate concerns, I\u2019m narrowly concerned with whom do I love? And whom do I not love? Even: whom do I hate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now remember the different meanings that the word \u201clove\u201d has in the English language. Of course we limit our romantic love to our romantic partners. Of course we limit parent-child love to our own families. Of course we limit the kind of love that exists in friendships to our friends. But there is also that larger love, that unconditional love, which extends to all of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It takes a truly great person to be able to extend universal unconditional love to all persons. Martin Luther King, Jr., was able to extend a universal unconditional love even to the White racists who beat him and jailed him and reviled him, the people who hated him and did everything they could to keep him in the little box they constructed for him. When I say he extended a universal love to the White racists, I don\u2019t mean that he wanted to become best friends with them. I don\u2019t mean that he liked them. I don\u2019t even mean that he loved them personally. What he did was to see that even those White racists had an inherent worthiness, they had an inherent human dignity. From within his progressive Christian world view, he saw that God loved those White racists, and he respected that universal love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By doing this, Martin Luther King, Jr., set an example for the rest of the world. In fact, he changed the world. His understanding of universal love changed the world. It might not have seemed like it at the time, but his unconditional love for all humanity, expressed through nonviolent action, changed even those White racists permanently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Universal love is a real spiritual challenges right now. I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m not as good a person as Martin Luther King, Jr. I find it quite difficult to turn the other cheek. Yet when I think about it, it\u2019s pretty clear that responding to hatred and demonization with more hatred and demonization is probably just going to make things worse. I\u2019m not as good as Martin Luther King, Jr., so I\u2019m not sure that I can rise to the level of feeling that universal love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I can do — what all of us can do — is to do a little less demonizing. Asking ourselves to stop demonizing certain very public figures, such as the leading politicians of the other political party, is probably too much to ask. If you\u2019re a member of one political party, you don\u2019t have to love politicians in the other political party. Start small. Start with people you know here on the South Shore who are of a different political persuasion than you. When we see people who are different from us face to face, we can disagree with them, but we can also try to remember that they, too, are deserving of universal love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is going to be difficult in this election year — and this is an election cycle that promises to be especially rancorous. But here\u2019s what I\u2019ve found. Every time I manage to stop myself from demonizing some political figure, I feel a tiny sense of relief. I feel better about myself, too; I like myself better. I find that I\u2019m also just a little bit nicer to my spouse. It\u2019s not a huge effect, but I can notice the difference. I\u2019m a little bit happier, I\u2019m a little more at peace with myself and with the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps this is part of what Martin Luther King, Jr., was trying to tell us with his theory of nonviolent action. Real change begins within our hearts and minds, and then spreads outwards to affect others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. Once again this week, more than the usual number of typos and errors, but I didn’t have time to correct them \u2014 sorry! Readings The first reading was June Jordan’s poem \u201cAlla Tha’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[77,221,325,301,125,59,133],"class_list":["post-1528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unitarian-universalism","tag-democracy","tag-god","tag-hell","tag-june-jordan","tag-love-and-compassion","tag-martin-luther-king","tag-universalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1535,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions\/1535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}