"Love is Not A Feeling"

A Service for the Dublin Unitarian Universalist Church

Rev. Susan Ritchie Feb. 14, 1999

Note: This text intended as notes for oral delivery only. Please excuse resultant irregularities, and please do not quote without permission.

I know some of you have heard me complain before about Dr. Laura, the morning talk show host who takes calls from persons in one form of crisis or another, and who after doing usually a very poor job of listening to their issues, proceeds tell them exactly what they should do with their lives. As I have said before, and as I am sure I have already made clear, I am really uncomfortable with what Dr. Laura does. To be put in the position of helping someone is to be given an enormous trust and an enormous responsibility, and it only seems appropriate, when one finds oneself the recipient of that trust and responsibility, to tread very gently. But not Dr. Laura. She blasts in with heavy artillery, quickly mowing down anything or anyone that stands in her path.

But as it might have occurred to you, I have obviously spent way too much time consuming this thing I to which I am supposedly so morally opposed. And it is true, if I am in the car, and only if I am in the car, on a weekday between 9 in the morning and noon, I do often find myself turning to Dr. Laura. And so I have come to realize, that as with most phobias, my tirades against Dr. Laura are actually based on a secret attraction: there is something that she continually returns with which I find myself in complete agreement.

If you listen to the show, you know that Dr. Laura is on a rampage against feelings. When a caller goes on too long about something, Dr. Laura's retribution is swift-- "I hope you're not going to tell me about your FEELINGS. I don't care about your FEELINGS," she'll say. Dr. Laura is against feelings because she is convinced that somewhere along the line, anything and everything in our culture became permissible just so long as it were accompanied by the appropriate feeling. In other words, she believes we have become victims to our feelings, and that we follow those feelings even if they take us to places that both our senses of reason and responsibility would suggest are places we ought not go. And as poorly as this speaks of me, and while I would never suggest we stop express our feelings, I do think Dr. Laura's on to something about the way we can allow feelings to become an excuse for acting irresponsibly.

And I have heard people use their feelings as excuses for a whole range of amazing behaviors. I'll never forget the time I was speaking with a young woman--a long time ago and in another state, I better add (for otherwise I would never tell a story like this)--who was having a hard time making a decision about which of her two boyfriends she should marry. She had two boyfriends, neither of whom knew about each other's existence, and being, she said, unable to choose between them, she had continued relationships with each and finally become engaged to both. Obviously the moment of truth had arrived, and like the princesses of old, she was having a hard time picking between her two suitors. What amazed me, though, about this situation was that she did not seem to realize that her difficultly in choosing between these two men had something to do with her failure to make an earlier decision. Nor did she understand that the pain involved must have had something to with the fact that she was affectively living two sperate lives. When I asked her how she thought the situation had developed, she sighed, and looked up at me with this big-doe eyes, and said, "It's because I just have so much love."

Now, of course I believe that she indeed had feelings for both the men in her life. But does having feelings really justify the behavior? And were those feelings of love? And this brings me to my question for this Valentine's Day. Is love really a feeling? Just a feeling? Is it simply something that we follow, wherever it leads? Or is love precisely that thing that asks us to make commitments based on higher principles than our feelings? To paraphrase Raymond Carver's short story title, then, what I would like to do today is to consider what it is we talk about when we talk about love.

As I have already mentioned, I do know that sometimes when we talk about love, we talk about love as if it were something to which we fall victim--as if it were an overpowering emotion that comes from somewhere other than our own selves but which none the less takes us over completely. I call this cupid theory of love, for the image is that of Cupid with his arrows: one moment, there we are walking down the street minding our everyday business and living rational and exemplary paths when suddenly, struck by Cupid's arrow, we turned into slobbering and bundles of emotion who have no choice but to act on these alien, invader feelings that have for the time being taken over our body and our mind and for which, apparently, we have no responsibility. You may think that this is pure silliness--that cupid is ancient legend and that no one really believes this sort of thing anymore. Oh, but they do.

I know that I have been to wedding ceremonies, for one, built on the cupid theory. These are the services that depict the couples' coming together as if it were a random and senseless act marked by the sudden discovery of a love that seems to appear without warning from the wings. You can always recognize this sort of wedding by paying special attention to the vows. The vows usually ask the couple to promise to each other something simply impossible. They are not asked to share sickness and health alike with each other, they are not asked to make a commitments to each other that will endure the changes that persons and relationship inevitably go through. No, in these sorts of services, the couples promise to each other the impossible: they promise that they will remain in a state of heightened feeling forever. George Bernard Shaw must have seen more than a few cupid weddings in his life time, for he once explained weddings by writing that "when two people are under the influence of the most violent insane, the most delusive and transient of all passion, they are then required to swear that they will remain in that excited and abnormal and exhausting condition continuously until death."

The cupid theory also, interestingly enough, seems to linger on in some popular pseudo-scientific discussions about love. A UU chat line on the Internet to which I subscribe has gotten very interested of late in the issue of the chemical composition of love. This chat group has been talking for weeks now about a new book (the name of which I have thoroughly repressed) which claims to have discovered for once and for all the exact biochemical mixture of hormones and adrenaline that constitutes love. What has amazed me about this discussion is how many people have decided that this means we now know what love really, truly IS. And of course, we do not. Now, I have no doubt whatsoever that we might indeed be scientifically sophisticated enough to identify the biochemical components that accompany the state of love. Its just that unlike my fellow subscribers to the chat line, I am not sure that these facts explain anything. Indeed, I would suggest that facts are precisely in need of explanation. And these facts without explanation, tend to lead to a cupid-like scenario for love: its as if this chemical composition of love might occur spontaneously, or even by accident: and this really then does put us right back into the world of Greek mythology. There you are, walking down that street again, when your biochemistry conspires to create some love chemicals, thereby prompting you, I suppose, to fall madly in love with the next person you see. No, I'm afraid I don't see the biochemical explanation as an adequate one. If the right combination of exercise and chocolate ingestion can cause love, if it were possible to develop a love pill, how interesting would love possibly be?

Today I would present today another description of love--an understanding of love as something other than a feeling.. Rather, is a love is a choice and a commitment. Carter Hayward, in our reading, gave us a good start along this path, by suggesting that we are "not automatic lovers of self, others, world or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, nor are we puppet on the strings of a deity called "love." Love is a choice, not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to fully humanity--a willingness to participate with others in healing. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as a alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh." Love then is a decision, and because it is a decision, it obligates us to certain behaviors and responsibilities.

Although, if love is a decision, it is not a decision we can make once. It is a decision you make over and over again. Ann Morrow Lindbergh has written amusingly about people who seem to think that love is a single decision. She says these are the people who, in her words, give away love as if it were an armful of flowers, by which she means they just dump it down on top of you, and then quickly disappear--leaving you with a short-lived and strongly scented burden.

No, there are many tales in folklore making it clear how dangerous it is to think you can simply decide about love and then move on. On of the best of this genre is a story about Nasrudin, the great hero Middle Eastern folklore. A friend of Nasrudin's is telling Nasrudin about his difficulties in finding a suitable wife. There was the woman from his hometown, the man explained, who he knew during his boyhood. She was sweet and kind and they were good friends, but the prospective groom decided, not really sophisticated or beautiful enough. So he arranged an introduction to a woman of a distant providence, known to his cousin. He met this woman, as was quite taken with her. She was sophisticated and beautiful and intelligent, all the things that the woman from his hometown was not. But she seemed a little hard to relate to, and so he tried again. And again, and again. He went through many prospective brides, until finally he found the perfect bride. But at this point, Nasrudin becomes confused, and interrupts. What do you mean, he asks his friend, that you found the perfect bride? You're not married today, what happened. Well, his friend sheepishly responded that while he had found the perfect bride, it turned out that she was waiting for the perfect husband!

And so love is a serious of decisions: a serious of decisions made from your own personal violation, but ironically, a series of decisions in which you decide through your will to open yourself up to forces beyond that of your own individual will. And in this way, love and religion come to look a lot like each other. Indeed, I think that love and religion can be frightening for exactly the same reasons--its scary when love or religion works, and one begins to feel those forces change your understanding of self.

I have a friend who works as a spiritual director, who tells me that when he first set up shop he expected that people would want to come to him to talk about all the ways in which they were failing to find a successful spiritual practice. And yet, the most common experience of persons undergoing something like meditation for the first time is that they become frightened not by their failures but by their successes. They do learn to hold themselves open--to their own selves and to that which is holy--and it can be terrifying. Terrifying because it might involve a new conception of the self, and terrifying because it reveals new responsibilities. To truly enter into an empowering relationship, whether it be with a friend lover or with the holy, is to realize the extent to which we are responsible for bringing that relationship, that love, and ourselves to life with hard work, dedication, and even struggle.

Which is why I would like to propose to you today, then, is that we might both see and practice love best if we can come to understand it as a spiritual discipline. Fortunately, there is some precedence in the world for doing so.

Next week I am promised to talk about the lessons I have learned about my own faith in studying Hinduism, but I can't resist giving you today a quick preview. One of the attractive things about Hinduism is its unflagging acceptance of human difference and human diversity. Hinduism, far from prescribing any one spiritual path for all, recognizes that given our individual differences and our individual gifts and abilities, we need to undertake the spiritual journey in different ways. Indeed, Hinduism offers its practitioners four separate yogas--four very different spiritual paths. The yoga that is thought to be both the quickest and the steepest path is the yoga of the intellect--where one learns to approach the holy through a combination of education, thinking, and strict practices intellectual discernment. But it is well understood that there are persons whose talents do not lie with theological or philosophical abstraction, and so there are other options. There is the yoga of karma (sometime called the yoga of work)--which is the yoga of responsibility--here one pursues one's spiritual journey through a strict devotion to fulfilling one's social responsibilities and in the performance of a valuable and suitable work. Or there is raja yoga--which are the psychophysical exercises intended to promoted meditation that we in the West often simply call yoga. Or, there is the yoga of Bhakti--the yoga of love, and of devotion.

And in the yoga of love, it is the task of the worshipers to cultivate and deliberately develop their capacity for love. One of the best known practitioners of the bhakti yoga was a sixteenth century mystical poet by the name of Tulsidas. Tulsidas was fond of telling the story of how he came to practice bhakti yoga during the early years of his marriage. Tulsidas was very devoted to his wife, and could simply not bear to leave her for any amount of time. One day, his wife took leave of him to simply spend the day visiting her parents. Well, before the day was over, Tulsidas had shown up at her parent's door, unable to bear even a single day's separation from her. And at this his wife remarked, " attached to me you are, if you only if you could shift that attachment to God, you would reach him in no time!" Well, Tulsidas thought this over and tried it, but he felt somewhat disloyal thinking he should talk the love he had for his life and simply move it over to God. What about, then, the love that was due his wife? And it was then that he came to embrace bhakti yoga, and to realize that the love he had for his wife WAS the love of God. And so in bhakti yoga, one loves the eternal in the form and the presence of the beloved. In bhakti yoga, one takes those persons to whom you are already emotional tied, and makes a spiritual discipline out of loving them. In this ways the yoga of love is quite accessible, for it is possible to practice it without changing much the context of your life. Hinduism understands, then, that especially when one is at the stage of being a householder--especially when one is living a complicated life marked by many responsibilities, extensive time out for spiritual practice is not very practical. But bhakti yoga, the yoga of love, is performed simply by assuming responsibility for the ties of love that connect us to our everyday lives.

The spiritual discipline of love, then, requires that we move through life while intentionally holding ourselves open . For to understand that love is a choice and a commitment is to understand that it is a choice and a commitment that must be renewed daily. It is not enough to simply coast along on the crest of a feeling. We cannot take for granted the work--the alchemy, really, of love. We must agree to look deeply into the eyes of every person we encounter in the course of our day--we must be intentionally present to those with whom our lives intersect. And this means a certain sacrifice. It means for one giving up all those many ways in which we find to secretely withdraw. So when we talk about love, let us not talk about gifts or feelings or overwhelming passions. Let us talk instead about the responsibility we have to create mutually empowering bonds. So look at your friend. Look at the faces across the breakfast table. Look at your colleagues. Look at the flower. Truly look--look with attention, and look with appreciation. For love is not a feeling. Love is a being, a being which lives as a possibility within us. And as a being, love cannot give birth to itself. We choose to bring love to life.