My title is very misleading, as someone in the congregation gently pointed out to me earlier this week. There's NO WAY I'm going to be able to tell you ALL about love -- first, because I don't know all about it and second, because no-one does --the subject is inexhaustible. But the truth of the title is that my talk will be entirely concerned with love -- it may not be the whole truth, just nothing but the truth -- my understanding of love, with plenty of opportunity for you to think about your understanding, in true UU fashion. The Statement of Purpose for the congregation I served before coming here, in Olinda (near Windsor), says "This church was founded on the faith that love is a more positive force for good than fear."

Love -- a positive force, and such a powerful one that it outweighs fear, about which we probably all know the strength and the terror. Love, we believe, is strong, stronger even than death -- but apart from its power, what is this thing called love? Is it romance, or desire, or altruism, or commitment, or caring, or all of those things, or none, or something else entirely?

My conviction is that love can be any or all of the things I've mentioned, and that they're not completely separate. I think there are strands tying them all together; I think also that there are some wonderful stories which illustrate the many kinds of love better than any words of my own, so I shall share some of them with you today.

I mentioned five kinds of love -- not by any means an exhaustive list but the one I'll use as a framework. The first was romance, and it's the one we tend to think of most immediately in connection with Valentine's Day. Here's a romantic little story from the author Alan Cohen:

Once I developed a crush on a cute girl I met in a pet store. When I discovered her birthday was coming up, I decided to ask her out. I sat and looked at the phone for about half an hour. Then I dialed and hung up before it rang. A voice from hell kept telling me that she wouldn't like me and I had a lot of nerve asking her out. Finally I got up the nerve. She thanked me for asking and told me she already had plans. I felt shot down. The same voice that told me not to call advised me to give up before I was further embarrassed. But I was intent on seeing what this attraction was about. There was more inside of me that wanted to come to life. I had feelings for this girl, and I had to express them. I went to the mall and got her a birthday card on which I wrote a poetic note. I walked round the corner to the pet shop, and as I approached the door I stuffed the card under my shirt. After a long tussle with terror, I finally took it out again, walked up to the counter and gave it to her. I felt an incredible aliveness and excitement along with the fear. She wasn't very impressed. She said thanks and put the card aside without even opening it. My heart sank at the brush-off and I walked out of the store. Then I began to feel exhilarated. A huge rush of satisfaction welled up within me: I had expressed my heart and it felt fantastic! I had put my heart on the line with no guarantee of the results. In fact, I've hardly seen the girl since then, but that experience changed my life, as I saw the dynamics needed to make any relationship and perhaps the whole world work: Just keep putting your love out there. Romance doesn't depend on what comes back, but on what goes out!

Uh, oh: no payoff! I thought of telling a story where it worked out better but then I thought, what's the point? There are many sweet love stories, and if any of you have a sweet tooth for romance I encourage you to share those stories with one another, but sugar probably doesn't belong in a service. Romance is always worth doing, but if there's anything in it worth talking about it's surely Alan Cohen's point: Just keep putting your love out there. Romance is about what goes out from the heart, with courage.

Those of us who officiate at weddings probably see even more romance than those who watch a lot of television. But the romance we witness at weddings, even though it may be wrapped up in lots of frothiness, usually has a deep and even serious side to it as well. In fact, if you want to know some of humankind's most thoughtful ideas about love, you'll find them in most wedding services. Here are some that have particularly impressed me, such as these words supplied to me by a couple I married way back in 1983 when I was a Chaplain -- I'm not sure if they wrote them or borrowed them:

Falling in love is like standing at the rail of a ship which leaves some great city, late at night, for an unknown destination. As it passes the last remaining lights along the shore, then swings out into darkness, the heart is filled with longing and wonderment. There are storms and rocks out there; the ship may sink. Anything may happen, but there is no fear -- one has made a right decision. There is only a strange and beautiful serenity.

And words that I've also used in a wedding, at the request of the bride, one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnets (# XIV):

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile -- her look -- her way
Of speaking gently, -- for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" --
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, -- and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thy own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, --
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

So ..... romance ..... and then, desire. Now, if you thought we were on an ascending scale of good kinds of love, it might seem like a step backwards to go from romance to desire. But I don't think there is a scale of that kind, and desire, which tends to get rather bad press from moralists, certainly does have that strand of connectedness that links it with the other kinds of love, doesn't it? Here's a story about desire. I'm not sure it has any redeeming value -- you'llhave to decide that -- but as I get older I enjoy more and more any confirmation I find that desire has no built-in age limits:

Will Jones of Tacomah, Washington, outlived his third wife, to whom he'd been married for 52 years. When she died, someone said to Will that it must be sad losing such a long-time partner. His response was, "Well, of course it is, but then again it may be for the best."
"Why's that?"
"Well, I don't want to be negative or say anything to defame her wonderful character, but she kind of petered out on me in the last decade. She just never wanted to do nothin'. Ten years ago, I told her we ain't never seen nothin' except the beautiful Pacific Northwest. She asked me what was on my mind, and I told her I was thinkin' about buying a motor home and maybe we could visit all 48 of the contiguous states. She said, `I think you're out of your mind, Will. We'd be mugged out there. We'd die and there wouldn't be a funeral parlour. You'll kill us.' I'd like to make footprints in the sands of time before I check out, but you can't make footprints in the sands of time if you're sitting on your butt ..... unless your intent is to make buttprints in the sands of time."
"So now that she's gone, Will, what do you intend to do?"
"Well, I buried the old gal and bought me a motor home. I intend to visit those 48 states."
Will got to 43 of the states that year. His wife had only been buried for six months when he was seen driving down the street with a rather attractive woman at his side.
"Will," he was asked. "Who's the woman? Who's your new lady friend? She must be forty years younger than you!"
"Well," he responded, "I quickly discovered that man cannot live in a motor home alone."
"Yeah, I can understand that, Will. You probably miss having someone to talk to after having had a companion all these years."
Without hesitation Will replied, "You know, I miss that, too."
"Too? Are you implying that you have a romantic interest?"
"I just might," he said.
"Will, there comes a time in a person's life when you knock off that sex stuff."
"Why?" he asked.
"Well, because that kind of physical exertion could be hazardous to a person's health."
Will considered the question seriously and said, "Well, if she dies, she dies."

And the story as it's told in Chicken Soup For the Soul ends, "May the story of Will Jones inspire all of us to remain green and growing every day of our lives." Bert Christensen, a Unitarian friend of mine in Toronto who's a great source of funny stories, once sent me a piece about some of the strange laws which exist in the U.S. regarding the acting out of desire, otherwise known as sexual behaviour. There are probably similar oddities in Canada, but I don't know if anyone's collected them -- this might be a project for one of you! Here are just the first three of these laws:

No man is allowed to make love to his wife with the smell of garlic, onions, or sardines on his breath in Alexandria, Minnesota. If his wife so requests, the law mandates that he must brush his teeth.

Warn your hubby that after lovemaking in Ames, Iowa, he isn't allowed to take more than three gulps of beer while lying in bed with you or holding you in his arms.

Bozeman, Montana, has a law that bans all sexual activity between members of the opposite sex in the front yard of a home after sundown-if they're nude. (Apparently, if you wear socks, you're safe from the law!)

At the other end of the spectrum from desire, which is usually treated as a suspect form of love, there's altruism -- the pure and unselfish form of love which expects no benefits for itself. Anthropologists and biologists have struggled to explain why it exists at all, since its survival value is hard to understand, and they've come up with the idea that there's a kind of species selfishness involved: what looks like unselfish love may actually be a residual form of the self-preservation instinct. In other words, it still comes down to desire, in the end -- the desire to perpetuate our own kind, exactly the same thing which makes babies. This makes the kind of heroism involved in rushing into a burning building to save someone rather non-heroic after all, doesn't it?

Most of us are reluctant to give up on the reality of unselfishness, I think, and fortunately for us there are other possible explanations. Theologians have tended to see altruistic love as a proof of the existence of God: they ask what can explain unselfishness, if not for some Being who has implanted it in us. I find both these possibilities, biological and spiritual, interesting; perhaps in some way they're both true. As for a story about altruism, it seems to me there's none better than the one I heard from the UUA President, John Buehrens. Some of you may have heard it, too, but it certainly bears repeating.

Imagine yourself in Germany in the late 1930s. A bus is carrying an assortment of people home from work in a large city, stopping frequently to pick up and set down passengers. At one stop, two uniformed security police board and start going from seat to seat asking to see the passengers' identification documents. Towards the back of the bus, two people, strangers to one another, a man and a woman, are sitting together.The woman starts to tremble and is obviously very agitated. "What's the matter?" asks the man. "Are you worried about getting home late? They seem to be moving quite quickly." "It's not that," says the woman, and begins to weep. "If it were only that ..... but I don't have the right papers. I'm a Jew. They'll take me away."

The man stared at her. After a few seconds, he took hold of her arm and started shaking it and talking very loudly, his voice rising to a shout as the S.S. men came nearer. "You stupid woman!" he yelled. "Why do you do this every time? Isn't it enough that you're a rotten cook and always so jealous, but you have to keep forgetting your papers!!" People were turning to stare at the couple now, slightly embarrassed but a bit amused at the scene. The S.S. were at their seat now, and the woman was crying pitifully. "Sorry, officers," said the man, lowering his voice a fraction as he showed them his I.D. "You see what I have to put up with? This useless woman does it all the time, comes out without her papers no matter how many times I remind her!"

And the officers laughed, and moved on. ....................................

If that isn't altruism, I suppose there's no such thing. I pray that none of us ever has to discover whether we're capable of that kind of love. But we do have to discover, probably almost every day, whether we're capable of the other two kinds on my list -- commitment and caring. These come into our everyday lives in various forms, ranging in seriousness. Commitment can mean anything from the words "till death do us part" or "as long as we both shall live", which are still spoken, and nearly always meant most sincerely, at most weddings, to the words, "Yes, I'll be at the meeting if I can," which are spoken, and meant, many times in the context of our congregations. The words which are spoken, though they may sound the same, can be as different in their meanings as the people who speak them.

For some, "till death do us part" is absolutely literal, and no disaster short of death will ever change the commitment. For others, equally sincere, the words express an intention to give their best to the commitment, knowing that their best may well fall short of perfect fulfillment. What seems to me to matter most is the intention to go beyond what's easy and undemanding into the realm of that which stretches our ability and determination. Let's be kind to ourselves and each other when our commitments become too much for us, recognizing that it's better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all. But perhaps it's also good to keep in mind that ideal of promising love unconditionally, till death, no matter what. Shakespeare put it this way:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark
Which looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although its height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Beneath his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out, even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no-one ever loved.

That's a wonderful ideal, but few of us can live up to it. Most of us find it hard to look on tempests without being shaken, or to keep our promises even to the edge of doom, but that doesn't mean we're unable to love. All of us can care; all of us can care a little more for each other than we presently do. If this thing called love ranges, as I have suggested, from romance to desire to altruism to commitment to simply caring, all of us can find a home on that range, because all of us already do care. In order to be also romantic and passionate and altruistic and committed, we only need to go a little further, even a teeny tiny step further, with our caring -- to spread it out to one more person, or to take a little larger risk in expressing it, or to do one small thing more for the one we love most or the one we love least. Here is an eloquent plea for such small, risky steps, from a member of our congregation who gave me permission to use it.

How many know that many Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender people have never heard or known or felt the word 'welcome' in a community setting? .......
How many GLBTs were born, raised, belong to and are members of a loving family, yet still because of who or what they are, are not truly a 'part' of their families?
How many have lost, been thrown out of or segregated from their families of birth and society?
Can we be a 'part' of the UU family?
Then tell us so!
Then show us so!
Let everyone know!
So that those who know us and love us can share with us, and those who will take notice of the
open show of humanity, will say "I too want to be a part of that UU Welcoming family".

Thank you, from my heart, to Roberta Robinson for those words. And I want to give the last word to St. Paul, who was a terrible chauvinist but whose writing on this subject, from I Corinthians XIII, is perhaps the closest anyone has ever come to really telling us ALL about love:

And now I will show you the best way of all. I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
I may have the gift of prophecy, and know every hidden truth; I may have faith strong enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing.
I may dole out all I possess, or even give my body to be burnt, but if I have no love, I am none the better.
Love is patient; love is kind and envies no-one.
Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence.
Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other's sins, but delights in the truth.
There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.
Love will never come to an end. ..... In a word, there are three things that last for ever: faith,
hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.