Opening Words

From our fragmented personal worlds,
We gather here to seek wholeness.

From the feeling of isolation and loneliness,
We come here to feel connected to others.

From the many evils in this world,
We come here to understand what is good and just.

From the tempting idolatries of the mind and the confusion of the spirit,
We would seek here a deeper meaning.

From the chaos of terror, war, and death,
We would find here the strength of hope.

From the thoughtless, uncaring acts all around us,
Let us find here faith in ourselves,
And love for our human family.

Come, let us recall that love and faith,
Come, let us worship.

Based on an unattributed reading,
The Handbook of Religious Services, Church of the Larger Fellowship.

Reading

The desire for the love of another is an impulse perhaps as old as humanity itself.  Scriptures, poems, plays, and songs all capture this sentiment, and frequently the best, most moving of these writings are those about love.  We can all relate to these depictions of love, because we know what it feels like to find love, to lose it, or to long for it.  Much of our popular culture is devoted to these themes. 

February, in addition to being a time devoted to the concept of love, is also Black History Month.  Our reading this morning takes us to the intersection of pop culture, the theme of love, and, a little later on this morning, the life experiences of an African-American icon.

Many of you probably know Tina Turner, from her meteoric career in the 80s.  Her most famous hit, "What's Love Got To Do With It," was number one on the music charts in 1984.  (I won't bother you with what grade I was in back then, but at least it wasn't elementary school...)  The song is in part addressed to a prospective romantic partner, but the chorus contains a series of questions that she, herself, is struggling with.   For our reading this morning, I offer you the lyrics of Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It":  

You must understand how the touch of your hand,
Makes my pulse react.
That it's only the thrill of boy meeting girl,
Opposites attract.
It's physical.
Only logical.
You must try to ignore that it means more than that.

What's love got to do with it?
What's love but a second hand emotion?
What's love got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

It may seem to you that I'm acting confused,
When you're close to me.
If I tend to look dazed, I've read it someplace,
I've got cause to be.
There's a name for it.
There's a phrase that fits.
But whatever the reason you do it for me.

What's love got to do with it?
What's love but a second hand emotion?
What's love got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

I've been taking on a new direction.
But I have to say,
I've been thinking about my own protection,
It scares me to feel this way.

What's love got to do with it?
What's love but a sweet old fashioned notion?
What's love got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

 What's Love Got To Do With It, by Tina Turner
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Introduction to the Homilies

"What's Love Got To Do With It?"  It's a good question.  Do we need romantic love?  If so, why?  What do we gain from it?  I've asked our lay preachers today to reflect on that question, to reflect on what they have learned from love, love's lessons, if you will.

As we share with you our reflections, we also offer you the different voices and faces of love.  The diversity represented this morning is not accidental or coincidence.  You will hear from a young adult, from the middle-aged, and from one of our church elders.  You will hear from both men and women, you will hear from individuals who are straight and one who is gay.  You will hear from someone who is single, from a married couple, and from a widow. 

From these diverse backgrounds and different perspectives, we offer you our lessons in love.

Homily by Lary Crews

Good morning. Manish asked me to talk briefly today about how the love of my partner has challenged me to grow and develop as a human being. While I could talk about my wife, Lori for several days, I promise this morning I will speak for only a few minutes.

After fifty years of futility - searching for that one person who could love me as much as I could love them - I finally found her, or rather, she found me nine years ago this month, at a writers conference about eight blocks from here.

I have always been the kind of guy women SAY they want - funny and sensitive and faithful. But all too often the women I met didn't want to be loved as much as I could love them. I still remember the girl who broke up with me because she felt I was "too nice."

A large part of why our relationship changed my life is that Lori is glad I love her as much as I do. George Elliot wrote: "I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved." And I am glad that my dear Lori LIKES being told frequently how much I love her. Lori actually WANTS a husband who calls her "hunny-bunny," "Darling" and "my sweet baby." Lori is pleased when I kiss her in the cereal aisle at Albertson's only because I love her.  It also pleases ME to express my love and appreciation for the woman I adore, the woman who has lifted my self-esteem from the cellar it's been in most of my life. I think: "If this Princess, whom I love, loves me, I must be okay."

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. Lori's ongoing love and emotional support gives me the courage to believe what I really believe and not what others have tried to force me to believe nearly all my life.

Living with Lori also brings me a peacefulness I have always wanted. I'm not a fighter. I am not competitive or combative. So it pleases me that Lori and I do not fight, argue or raise our voices in anger. In fact, ours is the first entirely honest relationship I have ever had. Like most humans, I had secrets I'd hidden from previous romantic partners. Lori expects and offers honesty. Not tactless facts. Just a lack of secrets and lies. I appreciate the calm that being honest brings to my life. Being honest gives you fewer stories you have to remember.

We are similar in many ways, including our love of reading, writing and old movies, and we are different in ways that complement one another. Lori is smarter than I am but I have a better sense of direction. I'm more organized and she is more spontaneous.

I love Lori not only for who she is but for who I am when I am with her and I love to be with her. 

Another important reason our relationship has brought me such joy is that we don't just LOVE each other. We also LIKE each other. Lori is my very best friend and I would rather be with her than anyone else in the world.
To conclude this little speech in our lifetime, I'd like to quote the last scene in the 1970s movie, WHAT'S UP DOC, in which Ryan O'Neil says to Barbra Streisand, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." To which she responds, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." I am inclined to agree with her.

To me, love means being strong enough to say "I'm sorry" and mean it. Love means being considerate enough to put the top back on the sugar bowl for the third time today without mentioning it to your partner, just because you accept them as they are.

And above all, I have learned from Lori to honor the love of others. In this world, we believe whom you love is much less important than the fact that you do love. Love means to commit to another without guarantee or demand. Love means never having to say you're selfish.

Finally, I suppose no one says it better than 5-year old Jennifer Martin of Fort Myers, who told her teacher: "When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you."

May little stars come out of each and every one of you.

Homily by Lori Crews

If you've noticed Lary and me around church since we arrived last summer, you might have thought, "Now there's an old married couple." Well, we are getting older, and we are married, but we've only been married for a little over 8 years.  So I guess we're a not so long married, late middle aged couple who looks happy.

If I believed in miracles, which I don't, being a rational Unitarian, I would believe that just meeting Lary was a miracle. Back in 1997, we were both teachers; I taught middle school English, and he taught people on America Online who wanted to try and write novels. At that time, he lived in Sarasota, Florida, and I lived in Burbank, California. That's 3,000 miles apart, but I won't go into how we ended up married. I'll save that for another day.

What Manish has asked us to talk about is how our marriage partner has helped us grow and gain insights about life and people.Since I was almost 50 when I met Lary, you wouldn't think I'd be able to change much, but, thankfully, I did. I was raised by alcoholic parents who mostly gave me negative attention, when they bothered to notice me at all. Instead of any encouragement, even though I was an honor roll student, they loved to constantly tell their daughter all the things that were wrong with her. Needless to say, I didn't feel good about myself or much of anything.

Sadly, when I married the first time I picked a husband who continued the negativity. We yelled and fought a great deal. My weight was a big issue. I developed a hair trigger temper and continued my gloomy outlook on life. All this changed 25 years later when I was lucky enough to meet Lary, an unbelievably kind and gentle person. (He's so tender hearted that he even cries at happy movies. ) I was excited that life had taken such a turn for the better, but I felt it wouldn't last. I figured that, sooner or later, we'd start yelling and fighting just like it had always been before. Nobody is THAT nice. Or so I feared.

Remember when you're first dating? How polite you try to be? How cool. How personable? Then, little bad habits start, and before you know it you're nattering at each other. Picking. That's why so many marriages end in divorce - believe me we've been there - or people stay married but most of the love withers and dies. But Lary has taught me that it doesn't have to be that way.

Believe it or not, we've not had a serious argument in the nine years we've been together. Not one. And believe me, we've gone through some tough times. You see, I didn't want to be the first one to yell, and now I've almost
forgotten how. Isn't that wonderful? I went from a little girl who felt worthless and unloved to a person who
hears on a daily basis, "Honey, I'm so proud of you," or "You look so pretty today," (Instead of "Why can't you loose some weight." As a result of this, the bad temper I thought I had is gone. I'm a happier and more positive  person than I've ever been.

Perhaps even more important, this former English teacher keeps foremost in her mind the feelings of other people. Thoughtless, sarcastic, or cutting words can never be taken back. Oh., a person can apologize, but the memory of the words haunts the relationship. This is true whether it's a husband and wife, a parent and a child, friends, or colleagues at work. That's why I'm more careful with what I say and do these days, and I have Lary to thank for this. Meeting him changed my life and changed my attitude about life.

Somebody at work the other day told me she liked my positive attitude! Me. Positive? Yes. I try. Lary and I plan to spend the years we have left being kind to one another, and trying to spread this feeling of kindness as much as we can. When I wake Lary up every morning, he smiles and says, "Good morning, star shine." It's
a wonderful way to start the day.

Thank you, sweetie.

Sermon by Rev. Mishra

"What's love got to do with it?  What's love but a second hand emotion?  What's love got to do with it?  Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?"

These are curious words, especially for a song that hit number one on the music charts.  I remember when I first heard these words and absorbed Tina Turner's rather difficult questions.  'What's love but a second hand emotion?'  That was the hardest one.  Second hand?  Meaning something passed down and used?  Or, possibly an emotion experienced indirectly?  That didn't make any sense to me.  'Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?'  Well, if you have a heart, isn't it going to get broken sometimes?  'What's love got to do with it?'  "Everything!" I wanted to scream out in protest.  Her words were those of someone who had given up on love.  I was never going to give up on love, I decided in my youthful exuberance.  And, so, while I liked Tina Turner, I didn't like this song much, and I chose to ignore it.

I ignored it until a decade later, in 1993, when Tina Turner's autobiography was made into a Hollywood movie named after her most famous song.  I didn't know anything about her life prior to this.  I didn't know that she was a popular singer in the 1960s, as part of a rhythm and blues band called The Ike and Tina Turner Revue.  Ike and Tina, the husband and wife team, produced about a dozen hit songs over the decade of the 60s, became a musical sensation in England as well as the U.S., and at the height of their career, in 1969, were the opening band when the Rolling Stones went on tour.

All of this outward success took place during a time when Tina's day-to-day life was a living nightmare.  Her husband, Ike, abused both drugs and alcohol and would physically beat Tina and their children.  He insisted, perhaps from a place of insecurity, on controlling every aspect of Tina's life, her whereabouts, what she did, etc., and alternated between emotional and physical violence and affirmations of love.

In 1975, after an unsuccessful attempt at suicide, Tina Turner walked out on her husband Ike.  She left with literally nothing but the clothes on her back; she had 36 cents in her pocket and a gas station credit card.  She was so desperate to get away from Ike, that she gave up claim on a decade's worth of earnings, she relinquished all monetary claims, deciding that freedom and a divorce were more important than money.  She went from being an international music sensation to living on food stamps and starting a solo singing career from scratch, working in small night clubs and lounges.  By the mid-80s, she had re-built her career, and made it back to the top of her vocation.

A decade after Tina Turner's number one hit song came out, I finally understood it.

It is, indeed, a song about bitterness, about the unfulfilled promise of love.  But it's also a story about courage, in several different ways.   It takes courage to love another human being.  We put our hearts on the line every time we choose to care.  Tina Turner had been a devoted wife, she had put her heart on the line, and she had it broken.  How could one not wonder 'what's love got to do with it' when you've been so completely devastated by love?  'Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?'  One is hesitant after that, you wonder if you should ever take the risk of loving another person again.  You may not even be able to feel that intensity of love again, a part of you shuts down, love becomes something external, something other people feel, not you, it becomes 'a second hand emotion.'  I could now understand the pain behind Tina Turner's words, a pain rooted in the courageous risk to love, in the fact that she got her heart broken.

She came back from the abyss, nearly committing suicide, by nurturing love for herself and her own physical and mental well-being.  That takes perhaps even more courage.  When love fails, when we choose the wrong romantic partners, when people are cruel to us, or a relationship just doesn't work out, it takes courage to walk away, knowing that in doing so you are affirming your own worth and dignity and sanity.

Tina's life story resonated deeply with me, because, perhaps like her, my first and most pivotal lesson in love was also about courage.  Some of you have heard bits and pieces about my struggle, many years ago, over being gay.  I'll add another piece of that struggle for you here, today.

Valentine's Day is an important marker for me, for it was this weekend, exactly fifteen years ago, that I had reached the limit of the pain I could bear in trying so hard to unsuccessfully be heterosexual.  As you know from previous sermons, I had prayed, fasted, and tried every religious good deed I could think of to become straight.  Despite my earnestness, God had not intervened, and by February of 1992, I had had it.  The life I was leading, a closeted one, was too painful, and I could not see any alternative to the pain.  If I came out of the closet my family would be devastated, and I would lose my friends; if I stayed in the closet, I might wind up in a heterosexual marriage, ruining someone else's life.  All of those possibilities were heart-wrenchingly painful, and none of them were OK by me, and so I stood in the middle of Key Bridge, Washington D.C.'s highest bridge, at the age of 20, thinking that I should end my life.

In a moment of clarity, I didn't go through with it.  And, with the help of some close friends, I made the choice that Tina made, I found the courage to love myself.  And, in the process, I discovered that, for some of us, just the act of openly loving another human being takes courage.  And if I could find that courage, I discovered that love need not be 'a second hand emotion,' I could experience it myself.  As with Tina, the freedom I found was life affirming, it was life saving, and it was the only sane possibility.

Love comes in many forms, gay and straight and many others.  And while, yes, on Valentine's Day we primarily celebrate romantic love, depending on the circumstances of our lives, that type of love may or may not exist.  For those of us that are single, like myself, we quickly learn that the experience of deep connection, of deep friendship, with others can create a form of love that also sustains and nurtures us.  Such meaningful friendships may lack physical intimacy, but they require no less courage of us.  Our hearts are still on the line. 

And, so, whether love is romantic or not, it always involves risk.  There is always the possibility that we will have chosen poorly, that the person we have chosen to love may be unworthy of either our love or our trust.  There is the possibility that the person we've given our heart to will intentionally be cruel, perhaps even abusive.  There is the possibility that death or illness may rob us of our loved one.  There is also the possibility that our feelings will change, or that two people might just naturally drift apart.  Whatever the reason, when we take the risk to love, we put ourselves at equal risk of being hurt.  We have each, at some time in our lives, experienced heartache -- whether as an adolescent crush, or with the end of many years of marriage or partnership, or with everything in life that happens in between. 

Tina Turner's song hit number one because -- welling up out of her own life experience -- she tapped into a pain that is universal.  It is a song about bitterness, and it is a bitterness that we each know in our own unique ways. 

The challenge is finding our way out of that pain.  Because if we close off our hearts, we may stay stuck in bitterness.  Tina Turner says in her song: 'I've been taking on a new direction.  But I have to say, I've been thinking about my own protection, it scares me to feel this way.'  Having been burned by love, we don't want to get burned again.  Isn't it better, for our own protection, to just shut down, and stop loving?  The pain and bitterness of a broken heart can make us fearful, it can make us scared to love again.

'What's love got to do with it?'  I come back to the same answer I had when I was younger - love has everything to do with it.  Life is lived 'in the trying.'  We must try to love, because not loving means shutting down, it means letting pain and bitterness over take us.  It is an important act of faith in our own humanity and in the humanity of others, that we keep trying to love, even after having our hearts broken.  Faith and hopefulness are what keep love alive. 

As we head towards Valentine's Day, I recognize that it is not an easy holiday.  There are the blessed few for whom angelic hosts appear and the trumpets of heaven blow.  But for the rest of us, there is a certain amount of stress.  If we're single, we may feel self-conscious about that, or may not have anyone to spend the day with.  If we're coupled, well, then, there are just a million ways we could screw it up...the wrong gift, the wrong restaurant, the wrong card, the list is endless. 

I urge you to relax into the holiday. 

Whether it be with a close friend, a date, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or a partner or spouse, do take the risk to love.  It is an act of courage, one that, by itself, is worthy of the day.  And then, beyond that, take a leap of faith.  Keep trying to love.  Come what may, keep trying to love.    

Blessings for a Happy Valentine's Day!