In respect to a dear friend, I am typing up this sermon that he wrote and preached likely 35 to 40 years ago. He entrusted me with the
original copy of his sermon on October 4th of 2003. Rel Davis - RIP. I doubt he'd want this sermon to be left in the book he gave to me
that day, never to see the light again, he wasn't that kind of man. Some of the sermon, historic and political reference, I am leaving out
as they do little for the message of the article since they are irrelevant to the present. This is only the first two of 13 pages, which is
actually 7 sermons. Rel Davis was a Unitarian Universalist minister, a magazine publisher, an author, and when I met him in person, he'd
just returned from Bulgaria having served in the Peace Corps. My apologies for any typos.
REALLY! IT ISN'T REALLY LOVE IF THEY DON'T LOVE YOU BACK!
As the Swedish pop group ABBA sang: "Lovers live longer!" Research has shown that people in loving relationships live longer than other
people. People who have regular sex live longer than people who don't. If you don't have enough love in your life, you could be
shortening your own lifespan.
But not having love can take away your life another way as well. For the life lived without love in it, is not really a whole life. You're
missing a part of what being alive is all about if you don't have love in your life.
Now all this might seem obvious to you -- and it should be -- but many people have no idea how to go about getting the love they don't
now have.
That's what this morning's talk is all about. How to get the love you need to really be alive. First, we have to identify just what love is. It's
easier to explain what love isn't -- because we use the word quite loosely in this culture.
LOVE ISN'T smothering and crushing a child under a load of over-protection and over-indulgence. The more you keep a child from
growing, from making mistakes, from having to support itself and to earn respect from others, the more you keep that child crippled
as a human being.
LOVE ISN'T forcing a child into a carbon copy of oneself -- however successful "oneself" might be.
LOVE ISN'T abusing a child into becoming a miniature adult at an early age.
LOVE ISN'T wanting to possess and control another human being so much that you would lie, steal, and manipulate others to gain such control.
LOVE ISN'T signing a marriage license so you'll always have someone to support you, or to make your meals, or to keep your feet warm in bed.
LOVE ISN'T having sex for money or for power, or because of loneliness, or because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings.
LOVE ISN'T giving up who you want to be because someone you think you need wants you to.
LOVE ISN'T self-denial, self-abasement, self-abuse, or committing suicide because someone won't marry you.
LOVE ISN'T kidnapping, beating, or murdering someone because they won't marry you.
LOVE ISN'T being so sick you can't sleep or eat or concentrate unless someone says they love you back.
LOVE ISN'T taking care of or being taken care of.
Love isn't any of those things. In fact, those are all contrary to love. They are, every one of them, anti-love actions.
So what is love, anyway?
Love is the active two-way expression of human worthwhileness.
In its simplest form, love is defined as "mutual affirmation of existence".
What this means is this:
Every child born needs affirmation. Needs reassurance that it's okay to be here, on this planet, in this time. Every child gets (or ought to
get) that reassurance right from the beginning of life.
Those of us who don't get that reassurance right away (or who don't get enough of it) usually have problems with life. We lack self-assurance. We are always looking for that reassurance from the people around us.
The simple fact is that we need love. We need affirmation. We need that reassurance that we're okay. All our lives long. It never ends.
Every human being needs to be affirmed in the existence every day of his or her life.
That's why love is so important. Love keeps us emotionally and physically healthy. If we don't get it, we can sicken and die.
But the form of reassurance, of affirmation, we need is important. It isn't really love if it isn't life-supportive -- if it doesn't affirm our
humanity. Real love carries the message: "You are a total valuable human being."
This is why supporting or protecting another person is not love. If I make it unnecessary for you to meet your own needs (because I
meet them for you), I am saying that you are less than a full human being.
In Ibsen's "The Doll House", Nora at one point tells her husband of eight years: "You didn't love me. You enjoyed being in love
with me." What she was saying was this. Thorvald enjoyed the pretense of love. He showered her with gifts -- he provided all her
needs -- he acted as if he was in love with her. BUT the reality was that he failed to give her what she really needed: acceptance as a
human being, acknowledgement that her opinions counted, reassurance that she was important. He didn't love her.
The message of love is that the loved one is a valuable human being, of importance on their own right and not because of their relationship to someone else. Love is saying "you're okay" through one's actions.
There are four stages of love:
STAGE ONE:
Hi! (You have a right to be here.) This is the casual kind of love between strangers and acquaintances.
STAGE TWO:
I like you. (I'm happy that you are you.) This is the love of friendship when two people share time and feelings together.
STAGE THREE:
I love you (I want to share your world.) This is the deep feeling between very close friends and lovers, when two people feel totally "at
home" in each other's company.
STAGE FOUR:
I'm in love with you. (I want to be one with you.) This is the "in love" process within the functioning primary relationship.
All of these are love. All of these are life affirming. And all of these are mutual experiences.
Remember, my definition of love above? Love is the active, two-way expression of human worthwhileness.
Love has very little to do with verbal expression. It has a lot to do with action. Only the actions count.
Love only works when our actions toward the loved ones are life affirming. If I say, "I love you" and treat the person like a non-person, you
are not acting lovingly. Such a state can be called "Archie Bunker" love. This character in TV's 'All In The Family' would say he loved his
wife, Edith, but he always acted as if she were some kind of moron.
Regrettably, All In The Family, (like The Doll's House a century earlier) simply reflected the way families have functioned in most
civilizations for the past four thousand years. Women have been treated -- in law and in religion -- as non-human beings.
As long as a person is being treated sub-human, there can be no love -- no reassurance of human worthwhileness. First, because the
non-human person can get no affirmation. And conversely, because the "love" of a non-being is valueless as well. If a man doesn't
consider his wife fully human, how can he rely on her to affirm his own humanness?
This is, I believe, the root cause of so much mental illness in the world today: We are merely seeing the natural result of four thousand
years of non-loving. Husbands and wives could not love one another simply because society denied the humanity of the wives. Nor
could they truly love their own children for they hadn't truly been loved themselves. And children saw role models not of love, but of
slavery and abuse.
Love is an active principle. If you want to love someone you must act as if that person were a valuable human being (which of course
every person is).
Love requires then three elements. Miss one of these elements and you don't have love.
The first element is: affirmation of life. This is the reassurance we all need that it's okay to be here, in this time and place.
The second element of love is: action. Words don't count, only actions which are in themselves life-affirming.
And the third element of love is: mutuality. This is the main topic this morning. For love to function it must be mutual. A two-way street.
Martin Buber defined love as "mutual affirmation of existence." Two beings saying "I-Thou" to each other simultaneously. We meet. We forget all the adjectives we know about each other, that define ourselves as separate, alien creatures. We recognize -- if but for an
instant -- the unique "thou-ness" of each other. We fuse. In that moment we find our own identity as a unique human being -- through
finding the other's unique identity.
Two strangers meet. One smiles and says, "Good morning." The other smiles back. For an instant, they are one. Then the moment
passes. (Hi! -- "You have a right to be here.")
Two friends meet. Share a few moments together. They obviously like each other. For a moment or two, they are one. (I like
you! -- "I'm happy that you are you.")
Two long-time friends come together. Share deep feelings -- sorrow or joy -- with each other. For a while of tears or laughter,
they are one. (I love you. -- "I want to share your world.")
Two lovers agree to share their lives together. They respect and care for each other. They share times of total togetherness --
legs and bodies intertwined in physical fusion. For these whiles, they are one. (I'm in love with you -- "I want to be one with you.")
All three elements are necessary: life-affirmation, action, and mutuality. We might then define the state of love as:
The wordless dialogue two people can become when each act as if the other were important.
It's important to remember that the state of love, at whatever level, is a fusion -- a coming together into something that did not exist
before. We become a dialogue -- a conversation. We don't have a dialogue. Quite the contrary! We become one.