Love is the Enduring Force
Rev. Peggy Clarke, Senior Minister
February 26, 2023
What would it look like if Love was at the center of everything?
What if Love was the organizing principle of your condo or coop board? What if Love was the organizing principle of your kid’s school? What if Love was the organizing principle of our city or state government? What would it look like if, when making decisions, Congress asked themselves what the most loving choice would be? What if corporations prioritized Love over profit? What if Love was the driving force, the central principle of every institution, every organization, of our lives? What if we recognized Love as the one constant, the critical reality that never loses value, over time? Millennia? The universal force for good, recognizable in every cultural context. What would happen if we put Love at the center of Everything?
I suppose, if that was a revolution we’d want to spark, the place to start would be religious institutions. And if we were starting with a religious institution, it may as well be our own. And if it was going to start with us, we may as well start now. But first, let’s look at how we got here.
It was the year 2009 and General Assembly, the annual gathering of UU delegates, was taking place in Salt Lake City. A lot of business is covered at these gatherings and thousands of people representing their congregations are there to learn and debate and embody the critical relationship between governance and theology. My husband, Graham, was there on behalf of our home church in Mt. Kisco, and there was an item on the agenda that had his attention. The language for our Seven Principles and Six Sources was potentially going to be altered and the new version, in his opinion, downgraded atheism. Graham wasn’t happy. My 15 hour days were over and I was done with GA, very much looking forward to catching a plane home, but Graham insisted we stay for this vote. He even went to the mike to speak against the proposed change. The debate was heated. Usually debate gets cut when one microphone- the pro or the con- has a long line and the other has no one, indicating that the gathered group was coming around to a conclusion, but this debate had long lines at both. When time ran out, people voted for more time, and the discussion was extended. There was no clear winner here, so Graham insisted we stay to make sure our votes are counted. Cutting our travel time very close, we remained in our seats with our pink voting cards in the air to ensure our opposition to the change was noted. With more than 4,000 people in the room, it came down to 13 votes, and two of them were ours. The motion to change the language failed. We ran for our plane.
I wasn’t as committed to keeping the language as my husband was, but I did find the whole process fascinating. The Seven Principles and Six Sources are written into the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association which is a collection of congregations who have committed to a loose relationship with one another, largely bound by covenant as expressed in these bylaws, while remaining entirely independent. When the text was first written and codified, it was 1961 and was done as part of the merger between two separate denominations, the Unitarians and Universalists. Because both groups were non-creedal, they were concerned about putting anything in such a document that might, over time, ossify. They were afraid if we outline our theology even in the barest of terms, people might grow too attached, ultimately not allowing the language or the theology to change over time. We do, after all, believe that Revelation continues to unfold. So, in addition to writing a brief statement of faith intended to hold these two historic groups together, they also built in an automatic deliberation of that statement every 15 years, forcing us to at least consider changing the language periodically.
In 1961, there were 6 principles which included “to cherish and spread the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers…immemorially summarized in the Judeo-Christian heritage as love of God and love to man” and another that said “to encourage cooperation with men of good will in every land”. I’m grateful we assumed regular revisions. Those statements remind me of the language you’d have found in many Unitarain churches in the first half of the 20th century that said, “We believe in the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, the Leadership of Jesus, Salvation through Character and the Steady Progress of Mankind Onward and Upward Forever.” Over time we’ve become more expansive, more inclusive, and generally more open to a larger variety of ways people connect to the world spiritually. We extended to 7 Principles and 6 Sources. We altered language first to include women, and more recently to let go of the binary altogether. We’ve also tried to do a lot of wordsmithing; the vote in 2009 was one example, but there have been others. I was part of a group hoping to alter the words “every person” to “all beings”, and we’ve all been part of a move to add the 8th Principle to encourage and support our commitment to anti-racism, anti-oppression work.
Honestly, this is why I hate bylaws. I think every set of bylaws should say as little as possible. You’ve all seen it here when we try to change a bylaw, a task I think we’ll take on at the next congregational meeting in a few weeks. Now imagine there are thousands of people in the room. Yes, it’s as bad as you think it is. With an equal level of frustration, someone proposed something new. What if, instead of having hundreds of congregations wordsmithing our Principles and Purposes and Sources, all part of Article II in our bylaws, what if we change it completely? What if we consider broad values we all share instead of trying to get so specific?
A covenant, which is the language used to introduce these Principles, is not a creed or an unchanging declaration or the final word on anything. It’s a framework, a way of relating, an understanding between people that we are in this together, that we are partners in the work. It’s an acknowledgment of a relationship that exists regardless of how we behave. A covenant calls us to presence, to trust, and sometimes to sacrifice. It is humble, knowing change is required in response to an unfolding and unpredictable future. It is in movement, always being renewed, always seeking a new harmony with new voices. A covenant is also stable and stabilizing. It is the container within which we exist together, providing walls to lean on, keeping us within boundaries as we engage all the complexities of human relationships.
As members of this Association, we are all, technically and maybe just theoretically, in covenant with one another. One of the few ways we’ve articulated that covenant is when we say, “we covenant to affirm and promote” and then we list the Principles. And, we agree, the Principles aren’t a creed, aren’t perfectly reflective of our faith or our shared values, although they come close. And we agree that they should be reviewed and altered periodically.
To that end, the UUA Board appointed a team which was, at it happens, led by our own Rev. Cheryl Walker. There were, as you can imagine, focus groups and forums, both open and closed. There were rough drafts and first drafts and rewritings of all kinds. And what we have now isn’t done. It’s a proposal. They’ve created something they believe reflects who we are, across all kinds of boundaries and borders, mirroring what we believe.
It’s not linear. It’s not a list. It’s a dynamic image revealing so much of what we value, and at the center is Love. There’s a diagram on those handouts. I’m not sure if you have those and I’m pretty clear about the difference between a sermon and a lecture, so not having those is fine. When you get a chance, though, take a look. It’s almost a flower, or waves, or arms stretching out from the center which is the word Love and a chalice. Surrounding Love are the words that the writing team heard consistently during all the focus groups they’ve been holding. Our shared values include Interdependence, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Generosity and Justice.
At the center, though, is Love. Love is the heartbeat, the life-giving force that animates all these other values. In this new articulation of who we are, we are saying that Love is our organizing principle and from Love, or because of Love, we live big, hopeful, beautiful lives, and we promote choices that hold people up, that heal our planet, that support expansiveness, inclusion, and life in all its full and rich dimensions.
It’s often said that no one is going to recite the 7 Principles on their death beds. As a Catholic, I would recite the prayer often called the Our Father to myself whenever I was in need of strength or grounding. In times of grief or trauma or in times of joy, I would almost mindlessly repeat those words to myself because I found them comforting. As a UU, I don’t have something similar. I wonder, though, if the authors here have given us something, or at least a place to start.
I wonder if this might be our new mantra. “Love is at the center. I know Love is at the center. When I am afraid, when I am angry, when I am grieving, I remember Love, at the Center.” I think there’s something there. I’m even wondering if it might become our congregational covenant. “We know love to be at the center. When we are afraid, when we are angry, when we are grieving, we remember love at the center.”
Adrienne Maree Brown, in her book Emergent Strategy, wrote, “When we are engaged in acts of love, we humans are at our best and most resilient…If love were the central practice of a new generation of organizers and spiritual leaders, it would have a massive impact…If the goal was to increase the love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We would suddenly be seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of war, but through the eyes of love…We would understand that the strength of our movement is in the strength of relationships, which can only be measured by their depth.”
This brings us back to the beginning. What if Love was at the Center? What if Love was the organizing principle for our lives? What if we knew that our strength is in our relationships, that our power comes from the depth of our empathy, that our task is not to win but to commit to the transformative power of Love. What if we let go of the lists of things we are sure we believe in and instead leaned into a more dynamic possibility, centering Love and moving from there into the world. What would that do to our church? How are we different if we center love? What does that do to the covenant we have with all the other UU churches? Does that change the way we relate to them? Should it?
Imagine the witness we could become in the world if Love was at our center. As I was writing this, I couldn’t stop thinking about the shelter. With Lisa and Austin remaining committed even though they moved to Delaware. With the committee, with the staff pouring themselves out to ensure we can provide beds for people we don’t know, but who need to be safe and warm. Br. Zachary was here only a few weeks before he grabbed the directive with his whole being, fully engaged in doing whatever it took to get us open again. Love was at the Center. So, maybe this is who we are. At the very least, this is a peek into who we can be.
What will happen to this new language is unclear. The delegates at June’s General Assembly will vote on whether they want to move the process forward. If they do, we’ll spend another year tweaking and wordsmithing I’m sure. Then we’ll vote again next year. Regardless of whether anything comes of it, though, I think the challenge has been issued and we can’t pretend we haven’t heard it.
Can you let go of everything else and live into the grand question… What would it look like if Love was at the Center of Everything?
