"Is Love Alive?"

a sermon by Erin Margit Dajka
January 23, 2011
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Yesterday morning, as I left my house in the still-bitter cold, I admired the delicate, fluffy layer of new snow that had fallen the night before. I marveled at how the flakes could be so light, as if they had danced on the air as they fell to the ground. This was the kind of snow that can only fall when it is so cold that some question whether it is even possible for the snow to be falling.
The world outside seems as if it is dead. How can anything be alive in these depths of winter chill? And yet, in that new layer of unexpected snow, I discovered a fresh set of rabbit tracks, making their way down the sidewalk and under a car. These tracks, a simple, small pattern – they are a sign of the life that somehow still hangs on despite winter’s every effort to leave the land truly barren.
I often find it difficult to recognize such signs, however. As my body reacts to the lack of sunlight, I notice an encroaching sense of despair and sheer alone-ness. It can be as though the freezing temperatures seep into my skin, chilling my spirit. How can love survive such cold?

Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles’ “Winter Song” expresses the sadness of a lost love and the desolateness of winter, struggling to identify the hope of spring and love regained. It returns always to the single, plaintive question – “Is love alive? Is love alive?”
As the world appears dead in the cold winter months, the ice of loneliness encroaches within, as well. Even if you are not despairing the loss of a loved one, you may feel isolated and be left questioning in the same manner as the voice of the song.
“Is love alive?”
Am I alone?
Will the light and warmth in my heart return with the promise of spring?

What is love?

Maybe love is the experience of fully losing yourself in relationship with another person. Falling in love. Romance. Valentine’s Day. Love-making. The sheer joy and elation when nothing else matters but being connected and physically close to that special person. You know deep in your bones when this kind of love is alive. Its life fills you with life. Its vibrations run through your being in ways that cannot be ignored. Its aliveness is so vibrant that the answer to the question “Is love alive” resounds and bounces off the walls. And, its absence resounds just as loudly, forcing the question of the song – Is love alive in the presence of such a loss? If I cannot feel it, can it still be breathing?
Maybe love is a force in the world, something that can be felt and not seen, that touches your life through the actions of others and the outpouring of your soul. The Spirit of Love. You can feel love’s presence in momentous occasions and tiny moments of truth. The image of love in this sense affirms that the world is imbued with goodness and comfort if you are only open to recognizing its presence. Love is alive because you can see it at work around you. Its goodness almost seems tangible despite its ethereal nature. This love is dead to you if you become closed off from it and unable to recognize it at work.
Both of these images of love can be real. Romantic love is an embodied love. It rushes with hormones and chemicals and physical connections. It is about physical and emotional pleasure. Over time in a relationship, though, the feeling of romantic love invariably fades. The Spirit of Love identifies that mystery and wonder at the beauty in the world and in those around us that seems impossible to fully explain or describe. It is not here, however, and its ethereal nature prevents it from being enough.

A love that can be truly satisfying and life-giving must somehow incorporate elements that are both embodied and spiritual. This truth sits out front in the title of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book. Note the order: Eat, Pray, Love. It is only after she enjoys the physical pleasures of attending to her body and finds spiritual meaning through meditation and prayer that she is ready to truly experience love. The love she found was not only for her Brazilian lover – she found the ability to love herself through her newly expanded sense of self.

Love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
Central to M. Scott Peck’s definition of love is the concept of spiritual growth. The process of extending one’s self is, in of itself, an action of spiritual growth. Therefore, there is a circularity to the definition. By extending your sense of self to nurture yours or someone else’s spiritual growth, you have, indeed grown to a larger state of being yourself. Peck eloquently puts it this way: “It is through reaching toward evolution that we evolve.” The more you reach out in love, the more personal growth you experience. With more personal growth, it gets easier to reach out in love.
In some ways, Peck’s attention to including both self-love and love of others in his definition demonstrates a Humanist slant. About this, he writes: “Since I am human and you are human, to love humans means to love myself as well as you. To be dedicated to human spiritual development is to be dedicated to the race of which we are a part, and this therefore means dedication to our own development as well as ‘theirs.’” The spiritual growth that he indicates is fully within the realm of people nurturing themselves and each other toward the desired spiritual growth.
This type of love requires intentionality and effort. Loving another person cannot occur without your explicit attention to who they are and an understanding of who they might be able to become. Your actions make you loving. You choose to love. You choose to invest. You listen carefully, taking a piece of the person you love into yourself. These pieces of those you love, as you absorb them into your very being, are what makes your spirit grow. There cannot be room inside of your smaller self to hold everything that those you love leave inside of you.

Elizabeth Gilbert writes of an oak tree, telling of a Buddhist interpretation of growth. The oak is at the same time the acorn and the full-grown tree as the potential of what the tree will be causes the acorn to grow. Love works in the same way. In many ways, your sense of self must already be aware of the potential of its own growth to be able to take the risk of reaching out to another, the action of which causes it to grow.

Loving is growing. Growing requires you to be open to being changed. Change is risky and terrifying, especially as you acknowledge that the change is dependant on another person. The image that comes to my mind involves my standing on an expanse of very slippery ice while wearing Teflon shoes. If I stand in one place, very carefully not moving for fear of losing my balance, I will probably be okay and not fall. I will, however, never get anywhere and spend all of my time crippled by fear. Honestly, it doesn’t sound like much fun.
But, what if I carefully raised my eyeballs from the ice to see you standing a few feet away? I might notice that you, too, are wearing Teflon shoes on the ice and that there is a look of utter terror on your face. If I am in a place of being particularly self-aware, I may recognize in your face the same fear that cripples me. Maybe, if I reach out to you, you will reach out to me at the same time, closing the gap between us so that we might grasp hands and offer one another stability, support, and comfort. We might even be able to move around and explore the wonders of our shared expanse of ice.
But, what if you don’t reach out toward me at the same time that I reach out to you? I will have disturbed my own balance and have come crashing down in a dismal heap. Can I, in my effort to support you and relieve your fears, count on you to do the same for me? What happens if you do reach out, and we achieve the joy of stability, but you suddenly let go or disappear? I could, very well, be worse off than I was trying so hard to simply stand still.

This is the risk of loving. You extend yourself with no guarantee that the person toward whom you extend will be interested in the growth that you offer. Rejection. Or, circumstances may change where that person can no longer be a part of your life, growing with you. Loss.

These are very real risks. Here lies the difference between romantic love and the action of loving. Romantic love – the experience of falling in love – is effortless. It just happens. You meet someone with whom things just spontaneously click. Hormones kick in. It feels wonderful. But, the basis of the relationship lies in these chemicals and not intentional actions of caring and growth. And, over time, the hormones die down. That feeling of love fades. Yes, it is painful to face such a situation, but because you have not engaged in the spiral of spiritual growth with the person and given them pieces of yourself, you have not actually lost those pieces.
The risk is much greater if you do engage the spiral of spiritual growth. However, the rewards are also much greater.

I believe that there is a connection between this element of extreme risk and our society’s obsession with romantic love. One could even say that our society romanticizes romantic love. According to society, romantic love promises happily ever after with exactly no effort and no risk. Think of Sleeping Beauty. He sees her, falls in love with her beauty and causes her to awake. In that very instant, she falls in love with him and they ride off into the sunset. This is what we learned to hope for. Why would we want to seek relationships that require work and do not necessarily feel as good? We are so attuned to romantic love as an ideal that sometimes when we are in a committed relationship based on active loving, we begin to wonder if there is still love in the relationship because the feeling of falling in love has faded. Maybe if we try finding someone new, we can have the feeling of falling in love again. We are taught that the feeling of falling in love is how it is supposed to be. Anything else, even if it can offer so much more, seems second-best.

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The expansive spiritual growth that is so integral to this action of loving is also central to our Unitarian Universalist faith. Truth lies in the experience of taking risks to become larger, more caring people. The more we love, the better we connect to the world around us and become aware of its intricacies and universalities. Reaching out to others is the work of practicing this faith.

James Vila Blake wrote:

Love is the spirit of this church,
and service its law.
This is our great covenant:
To dwell together in peace,
To seek the truth in love,
And to help one another.

Here is my attempt to update his language: Nurturing our own spiritual growth and others’ through expanding our sense of self is the spirit of this church, the logical outcome of which, service, is its law. This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth by intentionally risking loss in efforts toward personal growth, and to help one another in this challenging work. The work of loving.

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But is love alive? I remember learning in middle-school biology class that life possesses specific characteristics that include: the ability to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce, and adapt. Love that is a process of growth does, indeed, possess these characteristics. It is based on growth and adaptation. It is able to respond to stimuli and change without experiencing compromise. Loving will consistently reproduce, and with this I am not referring to the creation of offspring through sexual activity. The choice to love, to reach out seeking spiritual growth for oneself and another, need never be limited to only one other person. It is a rewarding enough venture that you may just find yourself expanding in all directions toward any number of people. The possibility of expansion need never be limited. This love is truly alive. It breathes and sighs and grows just as you grow through your actions.

Love cannot live, you cannot grow in love, if you never take the risk to reach out. Yes, it could upset your balance, but if love is not alive within you, life never feels like living. Even in the coldest days of winter, you can encounter fresh rabbit tracks. Evidence of life is there to see if you look for it. The potential inherent in the spring will someday bring forth new life and beauty to bask in the warmth of the sun. Just so, the seed of love rests inside of you, waiting for the call of the oak tree you some day will become. And, as you recognize that seed, nurture it, and open yourself to make room for it to grow, you will, someday, look back as the oak tree and know that who you became was always the one encouraging you.

Is love alive?

Find within yourself the acorn of the answer that will grow out of your soul.

Is love alive?

Yes.