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Earth’s The Right Place For Love7

With the familiar strains of “O come, O come, Emmanuel,” we are reminded that Christmas is just around the corner. Christmas is many different things. It is not just a Christian holiday; it is a festival, a midwinter festival, of many religions.

Yet, in our culture, it is a time of year that should have something to do with Jesus. For us as Unitarian Universalists, it is a time of year when the teachings of Jesus have particular import. As the manger scenes appear about our city, and angels and magic stars materialize around us, we think not of the supernatural Jesus—divinely conceived, supernaturally resurrected. We think about the miracle of how anyone could be born as such an innocent, helpless baby, and through the nurture and care of his parents and friends, become such a great man as Jesus was. It is a time of the year when we should pause amidst the commercialism of the season and wonder at the wisdom and simplicity of his teachings:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . . (Matt 5:38–39 RSV)

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. . . . Judge not and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. (Luke 6:27–38 RSV)

A new commandment I give to you that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (John 13:34 RSV)

Yet, wonderful as the teachings of Jesus are, we are sometimes forced to ask the question, “Are they really applicable to twentieth century America? Are they practical?” What place does love have in a land torn by racial hatred and strife? How can we turn the other cheek, when literally, it would mean submitting to communism? We ask is this the time, is this the place for such love? In Robert Frost’s phrase, “Is earth the right place for love” (Frost 1969, 122)?

As we approach another Christmas season, it seems to me that is vital that we reaffirm that such love is possible, that earth is the right place for love. We must not despair of our ideals. Perhaps when the evidence is most overwhelming that we lack values, is the time we need them the most. Albert Schweitzer once said, “Truth has no special time of its own. It’s hour is now—always, and indeed most truly it seems most unsuitable to actual circumstances” (Schweitzer 1947, 30). At this Christmas season, then, we reaffirm our belief in the value of love.

What is love? There is no word so misused or misunderstood. What are we talking about? For a definition of the kind of love we are talking about I turned to the psychologist and author, Erich Fromm; “Love is the productive form of relatedness to others and to oneself. It implies responsibility, care, respect, and knowledge, and the wish for the other person to grow and develop” (Fromm 1947, 110). Such love is not an easy thing. We do not always want the other person to grow and change. Change can be threatening. We sometimes want others to remain the same passive or aggressive selves (as the case may be) that we feel more comfortable with—or if they are to change, we want it to be in the direction we choose. The kind of love we are talking about, the kind of love I think Fromm is referring to, is the kind that is concerned with what is best for the other person, what is really best and not just what we prefer. And this may mean accepting a change in others that may be uncomfortable for us. By discomfort, I’m not speaking about the sacrifices that really give us satisfaction, I’m talking about a major shift in the other person in the relationship which may require change and growth on our part as well. And this is always difficult. We say we want to change and improve, but we really believe we are pretty good as we are. It is hard to change, and it is an insecure and anxiety-producing process.

This is all a little abstract. Let us be more concrete and talk about the forms of love that are open to us. One of the most immediate types of love is that for our own family. It is a kind of love for which we give our all. And it is a situation in which making sacrifices that satisfy us may be confused for the real love that permits the other person to become who and what they want to be. We pride ourselves so much about giving up things so our children can have what we didn’t, that we sometimes refuse to respect the kind of things they really need and want. We sometimes refuse to accept the kind of person they are becoming.

It is only long after they have grown up that we recognize the fact, and then we are amazed that “we no longer know them.” Yet, we do not realize that by keeping them as our children, we are restricting ourselves as well as them. By acknowledging their personhood, we not only give them a gift, but give ourselves a whole new lease on our relationship to them, the relationship of person to person, not just parent to child. It is a wonderful thing for a parent and for the child, suddenly realizing that they can relate as persons.

Such love in our family means bringing out the best in each other. The great magician, Houdini, felt this kind of faith in his family. When his father was dying, Houdini recalled, “His eyes were turned to the door as I hurried in. When he saw me, he lifted his hand feebly and reached out toward my mother. ‘Dear wife,’ he said, ‘Never worry. Harry will pour gold in your apron.’ Those were his last words.” The incident made such a great impression upon young Houdini that he later testified that the greatest thrill of his life was not any of the dramatic escapes for which he was so famous—not being thrown into the sea chained and locked in a box, not escaping from a straitjacket while suspended from a tall building. He tells of the greatest thrill of his life:

I received a cable from the old Palace theater in New York. The cable offered me a week’s engagement at a thousand dollars. I sent my answer: “Yes, if you will pay my salary in gold.”

On the payday of my first week at the palace I received a handful of golden coins. I carried them, tight in my hands up to my mother’s flat, where I found her in her rocking chair and I swallowed hard as I said to her: “Hold out your apron, mother.” And I let the golden shower fall. That was the greatest thrill I ever knew. (Mullin 2007, 78–79)

A second kind of love is that of the deepest friendships. This is part of what the marriage relationship should be (although of course it is more). This is the kind of relationship that in our heterosexual culture we are usually only free to develop with someone of the same sex. It is not always understood that is possible to have a genuine friendship with some of the opposite sex—but it is and should be.

What is such a friendship? What does love in this sense mean? It usually means that throughout our lives we are able to find only a very few such friends. These are the few we consider “real people,” who we know and who know us better than anyone else, who will do anything for us, with whom we feel utterly comfortable and can be our true selves. George Eliot expressed it this way:

Oh, the comfort the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away. (Goodman 2001, 35)

This kind of friendship was discussed in an article in Redbook magazine by Robert Graves, who said:

[I have about 20 real friends.] All my life I’ve been sort of picking these people up and sorting them out and being aware of their existence. . . . They become your friends, and so much so that if they said to you, “Fly to the North Pole tomorrow because I need you there,” then you’d go. And you’d know that it wasn’t for any wrong reason. (Graves 1989, 59)

All through our lives we are searching for those few people who will be our closest friends. We find one when we marry, but we should feel we need more—and our wives and husbands should encourage us to do so.

We have talked about the kind of love in our families and among friends. There are broader examples of love. Several of the most creative expressions of love in our time include democracy and nonviolence. Democracy is in itself, to my way of thinking, an expression of love. Democracy is based upon the presupposition that we are equally worthy of respect and care. This is love expressed in political terms.

The resurgence of nonviolent resistance is one of the most promising forms of love in our time. We are witnessing a revolution, not so much in any one area such as civil rights or peace, but in the tactics that men are using to win their objectives. Within the past century, for about the first time in history, large blocks of humanity are resorting to nonviolent measures and proving their practicality. This happened in India, it is happening in America, it may yet happen on a global scale. As Gandhi said:

Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality, for it increases hatred. The duty of human being is to diminish hatred and to promote love. (Gandhi 1947, 352)

And there is a final kind of love that is not of our families or immediate friends, yet it is more immediate than democratic or nonviolent action. I’m speaking of the kind of love that is represented in kindness and good-will that we can show those around us who we come in contact with every day. This is the kind of thing that is stressed so much by other churches that we Unitarian Universalists sometimes forget to mention it altogether. It is a simple but powerful truth that we should do something good every day, doing a “Good Turn,” as Boy Scouts call it. Our love is proved not just the big issues and our most intimate relations, but in how we live each day, and how we meet each moment and relate to each person. It is too easy for us to be loving at home or church, but indifferent or rude to those we have business dealings with, or who are driving in front of us. We have a responsibility to all whom we meet. It is said that this is a creedless church, but I think this is one of the chief doctrines of life, the responsibility of circumstance.

An elderly man and his wife entered the lobby of a small hotel in Philadelphia. The couple had no baggage. “All the big places are filled up,” said the man, “can you possibly give us a room here?” The clerk replied that there were three conventions in town and that there were no rooms available. “But I can’t turn a nice couple like you out at this hour of the morning. Would you like to use my own room?”

The next morning, as he paid the bill, the elderly man said the clerk, “you’re the kind of manager who should be the boss of the best hotel in the United States. Maybe someday I’ll build it for you.” The clerk laughed. And he laughed again when two years later he received a letter containing a round-trip ticket to New York and a request a call upon his guest of that rainy night.

In the metropolis, the old man led the young hotel clerk to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street and pointed to a vast new building there, a palace of reddish stone, with turrets and watchtowers, like a castle cleaving the New York sky. “That,” he declared, “is the hotel that I have just built for you to manage.” The young man, George C. Boldt, was stunned. His benefactor was William Waldorf Astor, and the hotel the most famous of its day, the original Waldorf-Astoria (Amazing Real Life Experiences 2014, 1).

Love may not always hold such dramatic or lucrative rewards, but its rewards are sure enough. Through love we find our way to becoming greater persons. If, at times, “life’s too much like a pathless wood where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it and one eye is weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it open,” and we think we’d “like to get away from earth a while,” let us not forget our conviction that “earth’s the right place for love” (Frost 1969, 122).

7. Sermon delivered by the author at the Church of the Reconciliation Unitarian Universalist, Utica, New York on December 15, 1963.