The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

 

 

Show your love. I got it wrong. Back in May or June, when we proudly agreed to provide the ‘official’ worship service for Peterborough Pride, I checked their website so that we could match the theme of our service with that of this week’s festivities. Show your love. 

 

But this past week, when I printed a copy of the Rainbow Coalition’s Pride newsletter, I saw that the theme was in fact, “Show ME love.” Did I read it wrong? Did the theme change? It doesn’t really matter, because Show Your Love is the theme I want to preach on, and in this rainbow world, it matters not if we match themes, right? We are not and cannot expect to always match. 

 

As you know, we are a Welcoming Congregation, but while our community includes many LGBTQ folks, few would call us a Gay Congregation. Few would call us a Queer Congregation, at least not in that more modern meaning of the word ‘queer’. Mostly, we are a Straight Ally Congregation, and while we are all in need of receiving love, in the context of Pride, we are the ones who need to show our love to those who call out for it. We are the ones who must respond when a brother or a sister suffering from discrimination and hatred calls out, “Show me love.” We are the ones who are required to show our love. Even for those of us who are sometimes on the receiving end of discrimination...we are the ones required to show our love. 

 

Okay, I gotta admit right now that sometimes I stumble all over myself to use the ‘right’ language. I’m afraid that if I say ‘we’, I am not including everyone, or that there are those who don’t want to be lumped into the collective. I’m afraid that if I say LGBTQ, I am leaving out the other “Q”s, the questioners, let alone the “I”s, the intersex people. I worry that someone will think I am not current enough or sensitive enough or politically correct enough. On this one little language issue alone, it sometimes seems it would be easier if everything weren’t so complex or if there weren’t so many stumbling blocks. Why can’t we all just be more alike? Wouldn’t it be easier to love everyone if everyone was like me?

 

Well, we all know that this is not true. Love is rather funny that way. It’s often actually easier to love someone else than it is to love ourselves, and it is even harder to love someone who reminds us of ourselves. I mean, when we feel disgust or hatred for someone else, the first question we need to ask is how that person reminds us of ourselves. What is that thing in me that I am unwilling to face? We are told to love our neighbour as ourselves, and yet, in truth, we don’t like ourselves so much, and somehow that gives us license to also not-like others.   This is a hard truth. The thing in ourselves that we are so unwilling to face is a fear that we are unlovable.  

 

I’ve often heard it said, and apparently it was said by Elie Wiesel, (ellie Veesel) that the opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference. Others have said that the opposite of love is fear, and I’d like to explore this a little bit. 

 

David Benner, a professor of Spirituality and Psychology at the Psychological Studies Institute in Atlanta, GA, says, “Fear works in such a way that the object of the fear is almost irrelevant.  When fear arises, we harden our bodies and our hearts, closing inward to protect ourselves. We build walls, call up armies, and pay governments to protect us from danger as we try to minimise the risks of being human.”[1]

 

We harden our hearts and we build walls. Seems to me that under such conditions it is pretty hard to express and to feel love.   In my own personal work, this has been an ongoing learning...that while building walls serves the important purpose of protecting me from hurt, they also make it more difficult for love to make its way through...in either direction. Walls of protection built out of fear also make it pretty challenging to be known and to know others, even to know ourselves. 

Parker Palmer, a Quaker educator, says “one of the deepest fears at the heart of being human is the fear of having a live encounter with alien ‘otherness’.” He says that fear of ‘otherness’ is based in being afraid of differences that might challenge us, being afraid of conflict, being afraid that we will lose in the competition, and a fear of change. He says that “even if we accept the promise of unity in diversity, the prospect of conflict being instructive, and the possibility of “win-win” solutions and even “winning” through “losing”, we are still scared of the pain in the challenge to change our lives.”[2]

Using our super Unitarian powers of deduction, it is not difficult to see that if we want to be less fearful, if we want to be more loving, if we want to break down walls between us, we have got to be willing to change who we are and how we live. I would contend that the imperative to “show” is the operative word in today’s theme. For something to show, there must be some outward sign, some movement, some difference, something out of the ordinary, something noticeable. For our love to show, we have to do more than say the words or quietly sing the songs. For something to show, we’ve got to rock the boat, make a little turbulence, cause a ripple. We’ve got to do something that changes something, and yet we’ve just heard that change is one of our greatest fears and that fear is one of the greatest obstacles to showing our love. It’s like a crazy hamster wheel! How do we get out of this cycle? 

The words to The Rose perfectly capture the trap we’re in...

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance

It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance

It's the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give

and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.

 

Easy for her to sing, eh? How do we move from one to the other...from the fear to taking the chance? How do we move from fear, to allowing ourselves to be loved and to show our love in return? 

 

I’m afraid I don’t have the answer. All I know is that we have to keep trying. All I know is that living in hatred and fear is not what I came into this world to do. All I know is that with your help, I can continue to try to change. All I know is that I have committed myself to helping you to do the same. 

 

So, there’s step one. We can show our love by choosing it over fear.   But back to the more familiar quote...the one about the opposite of love being indifference. We can show our love by making those ripples, by being engaged and proactive in the battle for a loving and just world. To show our love is to ‘out’ our differences and love each other for who we are rather than being ‘in’ different. To show our love is to come out courageous and strong to stand by those who struggle for the right to be ‘out’ just as they are. To show our love is to be ‘out’ ourselves...to claim who we are, even when we’re not sure if we’re loveable, so that others might benefit from our example.

 

One of you said to me the other day that he thought sexual/gender identity and preference is the last frontier of human rights, a frontier we are crossing. Maybe so. But I’m afraid that while Trudeau said the there was no place for the government in the bedrooms of this country, there appears to still be room for hatred in the hearts of many. We have not yet, as a human race, crossed this frontier. Indeed, Canada is far ahead of most of the world is offering equal rights to lesbians and gays. And yet, as I’m sure many of you are aware, the hate crimes continue. CBC News reported last year that there were nearly 900 hate crimes reported in 2006, the majority of them racially motivated, which goes against the common perception that Canada is a country that knows how to coexist in diversity. The same news report said that hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation had the highest quotient of violence, and, disturbingly, that teens were the most likely age group to be accused of committing hate crimes.[3]   Teens. We have not yet crossed the frontier. We have yet to arrive in a place of love and understanding. 

 

On September 4, Jake Raynard was brutally assaulted in one of many violent attacks that have been occurring throughout the city of Thunder Bay.  A week later, he spoke at a vigil that drew thousands of people, including folks from Lakehead Unitarian Fellowship, who proudly carried their banner in solidarity. Raynard made his experience public, in the hope that other people who have experienced violence, will come forward to unite in response to violence. In doing so, he showed his love for himself and for all of us. In rallying with him, those gathered showed their love. When a sister or a brother calls out for love, we are the ones who are called to show OUR love. 

 

Showing our love may take courage. Showing our love may stretch us way beyond our comfort zones. Showing our love may be uncomfortable. We might not always get it right. We might sometimes stumble and unintentionally hurt one another. But showing our love is the only way we’re going to move beyond hatred and fear and indifference. We have got to ‘out’ our love in the interest of justice. 

 

We were not made for hatred. We did not come here to hold love hostage.   We came here to be human, with all its associated risks. We came to experience ever and ever more deeply, our profound ability to show our love. 

 

We have not come here to take prisoners,

But to surrender ever more deeply

To freedom and joy.

 

We have not come into this exquisite world

To hold ourselves hostage from love.

 

Run my dear,

From anything

That may not strengthen

Your precious budding wings.

 

Run like hell my dear,

From anyone likely

To put a sharp knife

Into the sacred, tender vision

Of your beautiful heart.

 

We have a duty to befriend

Those aspects of obedience

That stand outside of our house

And shout to our reason

"O please, O please,

Come out and play."

 

For we have not come here to take prisoners

Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

 

But to experience ever and ever more deeply

Our divine courage, freedom and

Light!

 

Take your light and your courage, and use them freely to bring more love into this world.