{"id":26,"date":"2014-12-04T13:18:40","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T13:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=26"},"modified":"2014-12-05T19:56:07","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T19:56:07","slug":"love-in-plain-clothes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=26","title":{"rendered":"Love in Plain Clothes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"loveinplainclothes_logo\"<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Sermon #2 (14th February 2010\u00a0at\u00a0Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

What kind of a fool volunteers to lead the service on Valentine\u2019s Day?!? It seemed like such a good idea at the time\u2026<\/p>\n

I want to set the scene for this sermon with a quote from Jacob Needleman.\u00a0I think it says something that anyone who sits down to write about love\u00a0(or stands up to speak about it) had better take on board. \u00a0It\u2019s from a book entitled \u2018Is the meaning of life to be found in love?\u2019 He says:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe divide love and classify it: we discriminate between physical love and spiritual love, between erotic love and personal love, mother love, father love, the love between friends. \u2026but the truth is that we remain confused by it. Everyone talks about love, but the truth is that our labels are pale efforts to deal with an overwhelming force, as far beyond our control as the wind, the lightning, and the sea. When we are in love, we are in a tornado of forces, and all we can do is try to hold on to our chair.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is perhaps not going to be an entirely standard Valentine\u2019s Day sermon\u2026 The slightly unconventional picture on the front of your service (a heart-shaped potato) might have given that away already. \u00a0In the next ten minutes or so, I hope to reflect on some fairly high-falutin’ ideals about love\u2026 and bring them right down to earth to make them more real in the context of our everyday lives.<\/p>\n

Along with the potato, on the front of your order of service, is a quote from the author Charlotte Kasl which sums up the message I want to get across to you today. If this is all you take away from the service I\u2019ll have done my duty. She says:<\/p>\n

\u201cLove is the energy at the centre of all life. Loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God are inseparable, for all life is interconnected and sacred.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I guess this notion is the foundation of not only this sermon but also my own life philosophy. Essentially, it is closely related to the \u2018golden rule\u2019 which turns up in so many religious traditions and cultures around the world, but I am particularly fond of the Christian expression of it\u2026 so I\u2019ll treat you to a bit of the King James Version seeing as we don\u2019t have bible readings all that often!\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>In Mark\u2019s Gospel, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, and in response he says:<\/p>\n

“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In Luke\u2019s gospel, Jesus follows this with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which illustrates the point (I think) that to love our neighbour means to love all people everywhere\u2026 anyone who is in need\u2026 and also that loving God and loving our neighbour are just two sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n

So, to summarise and recap where we\u2019ve got to so far: Love is the greatest thing, the ultimate good, and there\u2019s nothing more important for us to do in life than love ourselves, others, and God (which, as it turns out, are all interconnected and inseparable anyway).<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s pursue that last point a bit further. Our own personal, direct, worldly experience of love might just allow us to catch a first-hand glimpse of that cosmic truth of \u2018oneness\u2019 which all the mystics keep trying to tell us about. Forming a deep connection (of any sort) with another human being has got to be one of the most significant things we can ever do in our all-too-brief lives. When we fall in love, there can be a great sense of urgency about it all. \u00a0We do all that we can to maintain and deepen our connection with this \u2018significant other\u2019. \u00a0We might behave in ways that seem quite out of character or which suggest that we have taken leave of our senses altogether. In fact, if you\u2019re prone to getting a bit carried away \u2013 like I am \u2013 you might even see your relationship as some kind of mystical union of souls.<\/p>\n

If we are lucky enough to know this sort of sense of \u2018oneness\u2019 (or something that approximates to it) with another human being then maybe the closing lines of the Rumi poem we heard will make some kind of sense to you:<\/p>\n

\u201cLove, a little shell somewhere on the ocean floor, opens its mouth: You, and I, and we, those imaginary beings, enter that shell as a single sip of seawater.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

To me, this seems such a beautiful statement of the underlying unity of all-that-is. Two lovers might just get a sense of \u2018oneness\u2019 in a relationship – they are as one in that sip of seawater – but at the same they are just a drop in the mystic ocean. Like we said before, \u201cLoving ourselves, loving others, and loving God are inseparable, for all life is interconnected and sacred.\u201d The experience of love can awaken us to the oneness of everything: the underlying unity of all-that-is.<\/p>\n

Now: it is one thing to form a deep connection with lovers (or friends, or family, people we – mostly – feel an easy affinity with) but we are really called to go much further than that\u2026\u00a0(and this is the point at which I start to leave behind the high-falutin’\u00a0mystical pronouncements and bring our manifesto of love back down to earth).<\/p>\n

As we just sang in our last hymn, \u2018Break not the Circle\u2019, we are challenged to keep on extending the circle of love just a little further, and a little further, until it embraces all the living\u00a0(which is almost certainly going to include some people we don\u2019t find all that easy to love).<\/p>\n

Some years ago I came across a very short quotation which lodged in my head: \u201cKindness is love in plain clothes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

To be honest, it turns out I\u2019d misremembered the quotation \u2013 in fact it was respect, not kindness, in the original version \u2013 but it occurs to me that love is probably going about its undercover business in all number of plain-clothes guises\u00a0(kindness, respect, caring, compassion, generosity, and so on).<\/p>\n

And I suppose this is what the title of today\u2019s service is really getting at. On Valentine\u2019s Day we are usually reminded of idealised, romantic love\u2026 but it seems to me that 99.9% of the work of love in this world – the love that \u2018makes the world go round\u2019 – is of a distinctly plain-clothes variety and has got much more in common with the \u2018maintenance\u2019 described in the poem by U.A. Fanthorpe.<\/p>\n

What does this plain-clothes love look like? At home, it might manifest itself in the humblest of ways, in showing extra care and sensitivity for the people we live with. In community, it might include looking out for people you barely know, building deeper connections and taking an interest in their well-being. In the wider world, it might be expressed by speaking out against injustice, or taking steps to live more sustainably. All of these things \u2013 and much more besides \u2013 are the work of love: not particularly sexy or exciting\u2026 but it\u2019s what life is really all about.<\/p>\n

Before I conclude there\u2019s just one more thing I would like to share with you\u2026 In January I went to see an exhibition by the artist Rob Ryan (who does a lot of beautiful and often rather poignant papercutting works). One of the more unusual items on display was a pendant entitled \u2018Everything I Love that Lives in My Heart\u2019 and there\u2019s a picture of it on the slip of card in your order of service. As you can see he mentions his mum and dad \u2013 many other boxes are filled with apparently quite mundane things or experiences: \u2018the sun on my face\u2019, \u2018swimming in the sea\u2019, \u2018playing my records\u2019\u00a0and the one which really made me smile when I first saw it: \u2018mashed potato\u2019.<\/p>\n

If you turn that piece of card over now, you\u2019ll see I\u2019ve given you another version of the design\u2026 slightly wonkily drawn\u2026 with the spaces left blank for you to fill in with the people, places, things, experiences that YOU love and that live in YOUR heart. I encourage you to fill in the blanks quickly, instinctively and spontaneously \u00a0\u2013 nobody\u2019s going to hold you to this for all time \u2013 it\u2019s just a snapshot of this very moment and of course you\u2019re not obliged to share what you\u2019ve written BUT it might be fun (and a starting point for connection) if you choose to chat about it over a cup of tea after the service!<\/p>\n

I did fill one in myself last night and amongst other things I listed: mum and dad, Simon John, Iceland, Adam and Joe (my favourite radio presenters), Ken Livingstone, my duvet…<\/p>\n

I would suggest that everything that we love (even things that initially seem a bit trivial or silly) points to something greater or more universal than itself. I would therefore encourage you to spend a bit of time reflecting on the meaning of the things that come up for you… SO\u2026 there\u2019s some homework for you!<\/p>\n

I\u2019d just like to end now with one more quote taken from a favourite website of mine (Spirituality and Practice \u2013 run by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat):<\/p>\n

\u201cLove of self, love of neighbours, and love of God are the foundation stones of the world’s religions. Spiralling out from the core of our being, our other loves <\/em>are also cobblestones on the spiritual path: love of family, of partner, of friends, of community, of animals, of nature, of things, of hobbies, of work. Love is not just something that you fall into, as the romantic songs suggest. Love is a spiritual practice. It is through loving that we experience the love of God.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Amen<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sermon by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\n

An audio recording of this sermon is available:<\/strong><\/p>\n\nhttp:\/\/www.kensington-unitarians.org.uk\/podcasts\/KU_jane.blackall_sermon_14.02.10.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sermon #2 (14th February 2010\u00a0at\u00a0Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians) What kind of a fool volunteers to lead the service on Valentine\u2019s Day?!? It seemed like such a good idea at the time\u2026 I want to set the scene for this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}