Seasons of Love
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
Sunday, February 14, 2010


Readings

Legacies by Nikki Giovanni

her grandmother called her from the playground
“yes, ma’am”
“i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old
woman proudly
but the little girl didn’t want
to learn how because she knew
even if she couldn’t say it that
that would mean when the old one died she would be less
dependent on her spirit so
she said
“i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”
with her lips poked out
and the old woman wiped her hands on
her apron saying “lord
these children”
and neither of them ever
said what they meant
and i guess nobody ever does

The Hug by Tess Gallegher

A woman is reading a poem on the street
and another woman stops to listen. We stop too.
with our arms around each other. The poem
is being read and listened to out here
in the open. Behind us
no one is entering or leaving the houses.

Suddenly a hug comes over me and I’m
giving it to you, like a variable star shooting light
off to make itself comfortable, then
subsiding. I finish but keep on holding
you. A man walks up to us and we know he hasn’t
come out of nowhere, but if he could, he
would have. He looks homeless because of how
he needs. “Can I have one of those?” he asks you,
and I feel you nod. I’m surprised,
surprised you don’t tell him how
it is – that I’m yours, only
yours, etc., exclusive as a nose to
its face. Love – that’s what we’re talking about, love
that nabs you with “for me
only” and holds on.

So I walk over to him and put my
arms around him and try to
hug him like I mean it. He’s got an overcoat on
so thick I can’t feel
him past it. I’m starting the hug
and thinking, “How big a hug is this supposed to be?
How long shall I hold this hug?” Already
we could be eternal, his arms falling over my
shoulders, my hands not
meeting behind his back, he is so big!

I put my head into his chest and snuggle
in. I lean into him. I lean my blood and my wishes
into him. He stands for it. This is his
and he’s starting to give it back so well I know he’s
getting it. This hug. So truly, so tenderly
we stop having arms and I don’t know if
my lover has walked away or what, or
if the woman is still reading the poem, or the houses –
what about them? – the houses.

Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it
to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button
on his coat will leave the imprint of
a planet in my cheek
when I walk away. When I try to find some place
to go back to.

Message: Seasons of Love

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. If you want to hear what was actually said, you can listen to sermon visit our website at www.uurockford.org. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2010.

January, sometime in the first week.
Back to school and work after the break,
the leftover chips and salsa all consumed,
the new year begun.

A woman –Joanne –
and her husband, Robert,
they sit down at their table.
Their children are grown now,
the youngest off to college a few years ago,
the oldest working the bottom rungs
of a company in the big city.
Joanne and Robert sit at their table.
Robert says, the money is a little tight –
we don’t want to spend it all,
with retirement on the horizon,
but we have enough to make a little trip.
Maybe a long weekend.

Joanne suggests something close –
maybe Galena or Madison.
They imagine together the time:
packing, a little drive through the hills,
a little motel, a meal at that place they heard about.
Robert thinks of some time at the bookstore.
Joanne thinks of a walk on the river, or the lake.
They look at their calendars and decide to go in May.

Neither of them said what they meant,
and I guess nobody ever does.

What they meant was:
I love you.
I enjoy time with you,
away from our routines and habits.
Time when we can eat together and walk together
with nothing on the agenda but each other.

Seasons of Love, seasons of life.

February.
Winter hanging on,
and everyone wondering how much longer this will go on.

Ally and Jacob keep a nervous eye on the weather.
Ally is due with their first child any day now,
and they don’t want to get caught in a storm.
They are nervous and excited and ready for this.
The labor and delivery go fine,
not as they expected, exactly,
but everyone is healthy.
And Jacob sticks out his pinky finger,
and the new baby grabs on,
his little hand barely reaching around.
Part of Jacob knows that this is the evolutionary impulse:
that monkeys and apes are born knowing how to grab
onto tree branches:
and another part of Jacob knows
that this is the most holy moment of his whole life.

Ally and Jacob go home with the baby,
start living their new life,
full of exhaustion and wonder.
Ally remembers, barely,
the songs she was sung when she was little,
and sings those to her child.

When the baby wakes,
one of them gets up,
and says to the other:
my turn.

Neither of them say what they mean,
and I guess nobody ever does.

What they mean is:
I love you,
I love our family.
This is hard, and I’m tired,
but this is precious and worthy
and my heart is full to bursting.

March.
A crocus starting to pop up.
Wet, soggy grass.
March, and Debbie is on the phone,
catching up with Sally.
Debbie, divorced a year ago,
a teenage daughter causing trouble,
but not too much.
Sally is a generation older,
they know each other from the neighborhood,
and Sally’s husband has been sick.
Today’s an OK day,
but life is a one-way ticket,
and Sally’s husband’s track is growing shorter,
and everybody knows it.
Debbie listens.
Sally speaks.

After a while, Sally needs to hear about something else,
and so Debbie talks about the book she just read,
and the date she went on –
not so great, but you keep trying, she says.

Neither of them said what they meant,
and I guess nobody ever does.

But what they meant was:
I know life is hard,
but you are not alone,
and I love you.
I love you,
and I’ll stay in touch with you,
and you don’t have to do this alone.

A little permission is a dangerous thing,
but you want a hug to be real,
to be a masterpiece of connection,
and we all stand in need of love.

We stand in need of love,
we stand in need of being loved
and we stand in need of loving others.

Maybe we are the ones standing there,
at the poetry reading,
listening,
and maybe we are the one who comes up,
who needs,
and asks.
But whoever we are,
we are the ones in need of love.

April.
Rain.
Little green buds on the trees.
Warm enough for a walk to the park, even.
In the season of Easter and spring and possibility,
Marc and Dan decide to go to church.

Marc was raised southern Baptist,
with an emphasis on the southern,
and has mixed feelings about this journey.
Church was hard place to be for a young gay man.
And yet church was a place of so much love.
Overpowering, enveloping love.
Not just horizontally, either,
love between people gathered together,
but vertically –
it was a place that you felt the love of God.
They would stand and sing,
arms raised,
out loud –
sing without hesitation or apology.
And you felt love,
your love of God and God’s love of you.

Marc still knows that God loves him.
He’s just trying to figure out how to love God back.
He’s trying to find a place
where love is the spirit of the church,
trying to find a place where they preach those old words:
if we love one another, God lives in us.
Those who abide in love,
abide in God.

He’s found a place where he and Dan are welcomed
as gay men,
and he’s found plenty of places where he is welcomed
as someone who searches for a way to love God,
but he’s still looking for a place to do both.

Neither of them said what they meant,
and I guess nobody ever does.

What they meant was:
God is love,
and God loves everyone,
and everyone can love God,
everyone, if they can put aside their baggage,
put down their blinders,
put down their creeds,
their creeds of both theism and atheism,
everyone can let love for love into their hearts,
everyone can love life, the universe, and everything,
everyone can love what is holy,
what makes them tremble in awe before the wonder of the world,
everyone can love the God of many many names.

Seasons of love, seasons of life.

All our lives, we are in search.
All our lives, we are in search of love,
the love that heals and restores,
the love that brings together the sundered
and softens the fires of hate
with its own, more gentle light.

We search for love,
and love is always around us,
always around us and among us,
waiting to be spoken aloud,
waiting to be called into being by our own activity.

No one has ever seen God,
so says the ancient preacher.
Likewise, no one has ever seen love.
No one has ever seen love –
I mean that.
Love – that word – it is abstract.

I’ve never seen love, but
I’ve seen people walk down the side of a river.
I’ve stuck out my pinky and had my child grasp it in her hour-old hand.
I’ve had a long chat with a dear friend,
and been restored.
I’ve come to church with a longing in my heart.

Love is expressed and discovered,
in everyday acts between real actual people.

Seasons of Love, Seasons of Life.

In May, Joanne and Robert take that trip.
They sit at a table in a nice little restaurant,
clink their glasses together,
say something simple, like “to us.”
Walk, hand in hand, along the water.
It’s just barely warm enough,
but after the long winter,
it is lovely.

Neither of them say what they mean,
and I guess nobody ever does.

But they mean,
I love you:
I’m glad I’m spending my life with you.
It hasn’t always been easy,
we’ve had good days and bad ones,
and I’m glad I spent them with you.
You are the love of my life.

In June, when school lets out
teenagers are making promises of undying affection.
Some of those promises will last actually,
last a whole lifetime,
as some of you in this room know well.

It is also in June that Sally’s husband dies.
Debbie brings over a casserole
and they sit and hug and cry together.

It was a long time coming,
and life will go on,
but today, they weep.
Sally did say what she meant to say,
and so did her husband –
before the end, I mean,
they said what they meant to say:
it isn’t always true that “nobody ever does” –
they said,
I love you, I love you, I love you, and I will forever,
and that was all they needed to say.

Seasons of love, seasons of life.
Love knocks and waits for us to hear,
love comes to heal the broken heart.

Love knocks and enters at the sound
of welcome from within.

It’s July, and starting to get really muggy and hot.
The grass needs to be cut again,
but Jacob and Ally are too busy.
The baby can hold his head up,
and smile,
and they’ve got a bit of a routine now.
But the days just fly by.
Someone said to Ally, a few weeks ago,
that with young children
the days are long and the years are short,
and she can see that now.
It goes so fast,
and every once in a while,
she has a vision of her little boy as a grown man,
packing for college or off to his first job –
and she knows that it is just around the corner,
so the lawn grows longer and longer,
as she plays peek-a-boo and reads Good Night Moon.

Neither of them said what they meant,
and I guess nobody ever does.

It doesn’t always need to be said, though.
Love. That’s what is happening,
and it happens regardless of what we call it.
Love offers life.

August.
Days for iced tea, emphasis on the ice,
or cold beer, emphasis on the cold.
But here is Debbie and her teenage daughter,
lacing up their walking shoes.
Getting a bottle of water to carry –
for they are marching today.

There is a big rally
against the war
for the poor of the world
for the children
for a politician who promises things will be different
and they are going,
to be with the crowd,
to sing to the power of hope within,
They know that the work of justice and mercy in the world,
the work of change and transformation
is a long and difficult struggle.
They know that the system is stacked against them.
But they put on their shoes and out the door they go,
because the work is long,
and the work is hard,
and so it requires folks who show up, time and time again.

Neither of them said what they meant,
and I guess nobody ever does.

But they mean, they love the world.
They love human beings,
near and far.
They love peace,
love it knowing it isn’t always possible,
but you keep working,
keep trying,
keep loving.

September, a little crispier in the air.
A few leaves start to turn.
Marc and Dan are still going to church.
It isn’t quite all they hoped for.
But the church is talking about the future,
and the new minister is talking about spiritual power,
and using words like faith and soul,
forgiveness and redemption,
and Marc and Dan are starting to find their way around.

They enjoy, actually, being around folks
who have lots of different religious ideas,
although they wish everyone would be a little less Scandinavian,
and loosen up a little.
They keep longing for the church that lifts their souls,
as much as it welcomes their minds.
But they see glimpses of what they long for,
so they keep coming.

Neither of them says what they mean,
and I guess nobody ever does.

But what they mean is,
they are discovering that the horizontal love –
the love of people among people –
is the manifestation of a vertical love –
the love of the holy among life itself.
We love what is true by loving what is real,
we love what is infinite by loving what is finite.

October. It starts getting dark earlier,
and pumpkins appear on front porches.
Debbie’s teenage daughter goes to a Halloween party,
and falls for Bella Swan,
or someone dressed like Bella anyway,
they dance and steal away to the backyard
to sit and talk for what seems like days.
Walking on cloud nine the next week,
they pass each other in the halls and grin
like Cheshire cats.

Neither of them said what they meant,
and I guess nobody ever does.

Love is what they mean to say,
physical and clumsy and exhilarating,
for we are embodied beings,
and the whole of who we are is who we are,
the whole of who we are is holy,
and we are born for joy,
not into sin,
we are born for love,
not for fear,
and love is what they might learn to say to each other.

Seasons of Love, seasons of life.

November,
Joanne and Robert have their children home for Thanksgiving.
They play monopoly and watch football,
Robert makes the turkey
while Joanne works her magic on the pies.
It is snowing outside – winter come round again
but it is warm inside,
and the windows steam up.
There is some laughter, plenty of food,
the oldest child quietly asks his mom for some money
to try to make ends meet –
times are hard, you know –
and she writes out a check.
The kids stay up late and sleep in,
and only barely get back to the airport in time.

None of them said what they meant,
and I guess nobody ever does.

But they meant love.
It’s why they made the trip.
Maybe they felt it,
or maybe they only longed for it,
but they traveled and they ate together,
and they meant love,
they meant,
I need some love
to try to make ends meet –
times are hard, you know.

They meant, we need one another.

Seasons of love, seasons of life.

December. More holidays, more travel.
There is a cold snap.
The baby is almost a year,
able to stand but not yet walk.
Ally and Jacob wonder where the time went.
Sally faces the first Christmas without her husband.
She grieves, and knows she always will,
and she makes plans to travel to see her family,
and is glad for their mercies.
She loves her husband still, and always will.
That love remains gives her solace and peace.
Debbie goes on a date, to a holiday party –
not quite right, but she’ll keep trying.
Her daughter remains infatuated and giddy.
Robert and Joanne think about getting away for another weekend –
maybe Santa Fe.
They are starting to get excited about retirement.
Marc and Dan are found
flipping on the gas fireplace,
thinking about all they have gained
and all they have lost
and the life which awaits them.

Love. Love is what they mean.
It knocks, it waits, in enters on your welcome.
There is no such thing as love,
not in the abstract,
but love is real.
It is how we speak to each other,
and how we touch each other.
It is laughter and tears.
It is laced-up marching shoes
and a longing in the heart.
It is every day, all year long.

Love is what makes us who we are
and helps us be more than we are today.
It is wondrous.
It opens the soul.
It is quiet and noisy,
busy and still,
always already present,
transforming our hearts from the inside out.

On this day,
in this season of love,
I hope you will do more than let love in your heart,
although I surely hope you will do that.
I hope you will let love out of your heart,
and into the world.
Into the hearts of others.

On this day,
may love guide our way,
may love guide our way,
in every season
and through all the years of our lives.