Valentines Day Sermon 2022—Love is Hard

Sermon offered Feb 13

Susan A Moran

Love is hard, no matter what.  Whether we speak of platonic, erotic or even agape love, love demands almost everything from us.  Then we spend our lives wondering whether we have been or are right now this second, up to the task.

Most of us want to fall in love at least once in our lives.  For me, that was always the easy part, the falling. I am with Anne Lamott who thought her romances should be more Barefoot in the Park and less lifey.   It is the life-y part most of us find challenging. And the life-y part is difficult whether we speak of love between lovers, among family members or between and among friends.

In my experience and observation, loving is hard regardless of whether we are straight or gay, old or young, cis or transgender. Color and abilities matter not at all.

Most of us argue with our loved ones about the pettiest things.  I grew up fighting with my older brother over who got the first scoop of peanut butter, who had to rise out of their comfortable chairs and physically change the tv channel.  The dumber it was, the more we fought.  And yet, my brother and I are very close today so fighting can’t the reason love is hard.  Fighting can be the reason that love remains, and grows.

Couples who never argue leave me baffled—and then judgmental.  I just can’t believe they agree on everything.

Living with any another person requires compromises and adjustments, flexibility and to quote Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s mother in law—”being a little deaf.”  These constant adjustments, and compromises necessitate the erosion of our own selfish desires, and our big swollen egos take a hit.   This can mean a growing humility and compassion.  Or it can mean growing resentment and jealousy.   Anne Lamott’s confessions to her friend indicate that love is not all roses and candy and nice jewelry.

Love is messy and often painful and lonely. Love also brings out the loneliest sin of the deadly ones: Envy.  Envy has no upside.  One can’t be outwardly passionate about it, or be proud of it, the way one can with gluttony or sloth or even, well pride. It’s so painful.

David Sedaris, the often hilarious and poignant observational author of several books, tells a story of eating dinner with his husband, Hugh.  They had been married 23 years at the time of the conversation.  David made the mistake of asking Hugh how many partners he had before he met David.  While David ruminates about the men he is surely being compared to in Hugh’s mind, Hugh eats his spaghetti and keeps counting.

The 23 years matters not at all as David realizes he is jealous, then angry at the risks Hugh took, then realizes how lucky they both are to have survived AIDS.  Indeed they not only survived, but thrived.  Yet David ends the piece with a word used to describe women who sell their bodies for money.  And he’s talking about his beloved.

Love is hard when we are in love with another human being.  Love is hard between parents and children too.  No one comes under the unforgiving light of our life-long investigations more than our parents and the choices they made in raising us.  But at a certain point, we must all come to terms with where we came from.  If we cannot love our parents, and some are not worthy of love, we can try to love other people better than we were loved.  That really is the only revenge.

Then there is the love of parents towards children.  This may be the most complex as the ties that bind often include genetics.  Thus, how angry can I be that Katie is so incapable of harnessing her anger when her father had so little control over it.  It’s not her fault that she inherited this genetic trait.  But it is her work to make sure she doesn’t hurt anyone or herself.

For me, the love I feel towards my daughters is not remotely the same thing as the love I felt for my spouse.  First, there is the erotic component of romance that has no place in a parent/child relationship.  But for most people I know, there would be no hesitation to throw our bodies in front a moving train to save the lives or life of our child.  Not everyone feels the same way about their spouse.

James Salter, writes with insight about the love a parent has for a child:

“Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other, that sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one long for, envied, believed in, that was not life. But to be close to a child, for whom one spent everything, whose life was protected and nourished by one’s own, to have that child beside one, at peace, was the real, the deepest, the only joy.” (Light Years, by James Salter, 1975)

This is a man whose child is not throwing a temper tantrum at Stop & Shop because you are not going to buy her a ten pound box of cheddar goldfish with a juice box chaser.

Many of us choose not to have children and have lots of loving relationships in their lives.  Indeed, one of the features of the millennial generation is their lack of interest in marriage or childbearing. For obvious reasons, we need people to keep having babies.  But it’s not for everyone and our society must learn to be more loving towards those people for whom parenthood is of no interest. Or it is of interest, but it’s simply not possible.

Love is possible even if we are not married or partnered, even if we are childless and our parents are long gone.  Love is possible between friends and can be quite as enduring and sustaining as love between lovers. For a lot of us, the relationships we create with our friends are the most loving and sustaining ones we have.

The more intimate the friendship, the more cause for conflict and trouble.  But also, the more love, and more understanding.  Even married people save some conversations for close friends. It is rare for one human being to manage all of the needs (not to mention crazy fantasies) of one person.

Our friendships can be, in the end, the most sustaining and loving relationships we have. A betrayal by a friend can hurt just as much as a betrayal by a spouse or a partner. I used to think that it was only in romantic pairings that we grow emotionally and spiritually, but any relationship between two people can be a place of great emotional honesty and spiritual connection.

We do not stop growing if we are not in a romantic relationship, as I once thought.  We stop growing when we stop loving. Period.  No matter who we devote ourselves to on Valentines Day—our lover, our parent, our child, our friend, the day is about love and that is always a reason for celebration.

Keep on loving who you love. Know that the heart is capable of great expansion.  When I was pregnant with my second baby, I remember being nervous that I wouldn’t love the new baby as much as I loved Sarah. I loved Sarah more than I had ever loved anyone, and then Katie was born, and I loved her too.  The human heart looks quite small but it’s “vast enough to contain all the world.” (Joseph Conrad).  Keep on showing up for love.  Love is the answer, love is how you arrive at Heaven’s Gate*.

Happy Valentine’s Day! I love you all.

Blessed be.

*apart from the metaphor, it’s the name of song played at the beginning of the service