That decision changed my life. That week was the first time I can recollect being conscious of the fact that people are extraordinary, and that they have things to teach me. I had stumbled into a gathering of youth who were wholly committed to creating community with one another. They led immersive week-long morning workshops digging into deep subjects, one-shot afternoon workshops designed to be more light-hearted and impromptu, evening family groups where everyone checked in, and where youth kept an eye out for anyone who might be struggling. There were people playing guitars on rocking chairs, laying out on blankets talking in the sunshine. Hikes around the island, hours-long games at tables in the lobby. Dance parties and coffee-houses, and worship every night- with candle filled lanterns leading the way to the tiny stone chapel at the top of the hill, that we would pack full, bodies draped across one another, occupying every window ledge and even sometimes sitting on the steps in the entrance. Singing harmonies, and testifying about love, and sharing poems written with the raw, wide open eyes of teenagers who have just discovered so many things.
My friendships with UU youth were among my first experiences of love for people other than my family. As teens, we seek to trust, and love, and lean on others, as we move through the process of separating from our parents. If we are lucky enough to find people who treat us well, we often fall into one another deep and fast during those years. We love hard. We soak up energy and inspiration from each other, and we move with ease from grief to laughter, from hard truth to goofy humor. It can be a beautiful time of exploration and growth.
My friends and I would travel hundreds of miles back then to be with one another. A pod of them would sometimes come for overnights at my house. We would celebrate the new year in a pile on my living room floor or move in a pack through my family’s Fourth of July celebrations. We would invade my mother’s kitchen to make meals together, or just to lean on the counters, throw darts at the dart board and talk about our struggles and our dreams.
If you asked my parents to describe us in those days, they would point out that we were almost always attached to each other- our arms draped around one another as though each were an essential appendage to the other. We shared a deep joyful connection; giddy loving friendship, swimming with admiration. In my eyes they could do no wrong- everything about them filled my heart and gave me energy.
As I’ve aged, most of those friendships have endured, and those people are woven so deeply into who I am that I suspect I wouldn’t recognize myself without the things I’ve learned from them. How I love has become a little less intense these days. I’ve grown more comfortable with myself, and a bit more cautious of others- but I still flutter at the magic of people.
Just as suffering makes us wise for future challenges, loving makes us better at loving.
I don’t know how many of you watched the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle that happened about two weeks back. It was a spectacle to be sure, and Royal Weddings aren’t really my cup of tea, but I happened to come across a recording of the sermon that was offered by Bishop Curry—and it was a sermon. His message was about the power of love, and he dropped some hard truth into that message. He took hold of the opportunity to speak to the world through the words he shared during that wedding, and he did not waste that moment.
There's power in love. Don't underestimate it. Don't even over-sentimentalize it. There's power, power in love.
If you don't believe me, think about a time when you first fell in love. The whole world seemed to center around you and your beloved.
Oh there's power, power in love. Not just in its romantic forms, but any form, any shape of love. There's a certain sense in which when you are loved, and you know it, when someone cares for you, and you know it, when you love and you show it - it actually feels right.
There is something right about it. And there's a reason for it. The reason has to do with the source. We were made by a power of love, and our lives were meant - and are meant - to be lived in that love. That's why we are here.
[Bishop Curry told the world]
When love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again.
When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook.
When love is the way, poverty will become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary.
When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside, to study war no more.
When love is the way, there's plenty good room - plenty good room - for all of God's children.
"Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other, well... like we are actually family.
You hold that power. We hold that power. Here. Right now. We have all the ingredients to change the world. We have extraordinary people to learn from, we have a commitment to change, and we have the ability to inspire. We have gifts to give.
There are never guarantees, but none of this happens without us committing to creating community- here, or wherever we find ourselves in the world. Try as we might to find the perfect words to decry an action playing out 4 states away, it is really right here, where we need to begin. Everything that is dark, or misdirected in the larger world, it lives right here. It lives inside of each of us, it lives in our families, it lives in our community, it lives in our church. We all have bias, and blind spots, and ways we could do better. We are all at times (most times) seduced by this culture of domination that is threaded throughout our history and right up to this very moment. Where we strive to be at the top so that we don’t have to be at the bottom. Where we think more about the things we want, than the people we know- That is the antithesis to the love of which Bishop Curry speaks, and to the covenant of our shared faith. We all have healing to do, and apologies to make. We all need to be loved and to be held, and we all need to know that someone will catch us if we fall, and we all are responsible for catching one another. No matter how much money you make, you cannot outsource the job of being in relationship with people, and you cannot fast track the process, but when you commit to that work, with all of its challenges, and sacrifice, there is something right about it. Something inspirational.
Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other like family.
May it be so.
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