Opening Words

by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that — just dump it down on top of you, a useless strong-scented burden. I don’t think it is anything you can give love is a force in you that enables you to give other things. It is the motivating power. It enables you to give strength and freedom and peace to another person. It is not a result: it is a cause. It is not a product: it produces. It is a power, like stream or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it.

Hymn

No. 10 “Immortal Love”
from Singing the Living Tradition

Children’s Story

“The Reverend James Wilson Bailey and Mrs. Eliza Whitcomb Bailey: A Jaw-ful Experience”
by Denise D. Tracy, from Living in the Wind

The Reverend James Wilson Bailey hitched the horse to the buggy and drove it ’round to the front of the house. He hopped down and helped his wife, Mrs. Eliza Whitcomb Bailey, into the buggy. Then he walked back ’round, got in, took the reins in hand, snapped them against the horse’s back and clucked, “Giddy-up.”

This particular Sunday night was crystal clear. The moon shone over the New Hampshire mountains and created shadows of white and silver where the dew lay heavy against branch, leaf and flower. Rev. and Mrs. Bailey held hands as they rode along in silence.

Tonight Rev. and Mrs. Bailey were undertaking an adventure. They had been traveling each Sunday night to the towns of Hinsdale and Winchester, New Hampshire, to preach the news of the goodness of God to these two tiny churches. From 10 to 20 to 30 people, the churches had grown. In enthusiasm and joy, people were becoming members of these two tiny churches. Tonight for the first time, the two tiny congregations would meet together as a sizable group at a school house half-way between their towns. The Rev. and Mrs. Bailey were excited and nervous. These two tiny churches had grown to be one very good congregation.

About ¼ mile away from the school house, the buggy crested a hill. The smell of the spruce forest was strong. The dew had settled on the fragrant pine needles and the air was heavy with the smell of spruce.

The needles shone with dew and moonlight. Every needle glowed silver. Rev. Bailey stopped the buggy .Together the two looked at the bounty of the universe. Dew, silver, moonlight, spruce, perfume.

“God’s joy surrounds us,” said Eliza. “Yes, let us hope we can share it with the congregation tonight,” replied James. When they arrived at the little school house, its windows were brightly lit. The little building was full to overflowing with excited new Universalists. Rev. and Mrs. Bailey entered, and a tall, awkward, bashful, kindly fellow welcomed them and offered each of them a piece of spruce gum to chew. “No,” said Mrs. Bailey, “I do not chew gum, but I will happily take it home to my children who will be very glad of it.”

As Rev. Bailey began to preach, he realized that he and Mrs. Bailey were the only two people in the congregation not chewing gum. Apparently as people had walked or driven in the moonlight to the little school house, they had stopped in the spruce forest and picked the gum off the trees to chew at church. As Rev. Bailey fervently preached, the congregation’s jaws fervently worked – as excited as he became, those jaws worked in equal excitement.

The minister could not look at his wife for fear of giggling. The people who were new Universalists truly loved the sermon and at its end sang the last hymn joyfully and loudly.

On the way home, Rev. and Mrs. Bailey laughed and talked about the new church. The moon shone brightly, the scent of spruce filled the air. “Well Eliza, we had a different kind of communion tonight.” “Yes, we came to give them the joy of God and the wonders of the universe and we learned a lesson too.” “Yes, we surely did. We wanted them to have a joyful experience and they did. They are joyful, exuberant Universalists. But they are also jaw-ful! Have you ever seen so much gum in anyone place!” And the two of them laughed and laughed. Finally Eliza said, “Oh James, would that all Universalists have such a fervent response as we did tonight.”

And so it was that Rev. and Mrs. Bailey learned about being both joyful and jaw-ful.

Reading

by Anna Quindlen, New York Times columnist

I have been married almost 10 years to the same person. Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe. Neither of us was sure that any human being could be expected to live over the long haul with anyone as stubborn, opinionated and difficult as the other. Somehow it has worked, and it is not a gross exaggeration to say that this is partly because I am a much better cook than he is, and he tells much better jokes than I do.

A lot of people don’t understand how important these little things are to a marriage. I realized this when I was reading a magazine article about bachelors, many of whom were participating in organized sports instead of having relationships with women, just as their football coaches told them they should do when they were 17.

Many of these bachelors seemed to think that both partners would have to compromise and change a lot to stay married. Nothing is farther from the truth. One touchstone of marriage is security, and nothing makes you feel more secure than knowing exactly what another person is going to say or do at any given time. If my husband just cut into a slightly pink pork chop and scarfed it down — instead of holding up a piece at eye level, looking at it as though it were a murder suspect and saying, “Is this cooked enough?” — I’d become pretty suspicious, I can tell you that.

I felt this sense of security just the other night. It was cold and wintry , and I was getting ready to go to sleep when my husband said, “I don’t like that nightgown.” Once again I felt that magic little thrill you always get when you realize that some things in your life are immutable.

It was a flannel nightgown, one of those little numbers that looks like a fallout shelter and is designed to reveal only that the body beneath possesses ankles. It’s warm and comfortable, but I’ve always suspected that the only person who would consider it seductive would be Buddy Ebsen. Every year my husband looks at one of these things and says, “I don’t like that nightgown.” I guess if I were what my grandmother used to call a dutiful wife, I wouldn’t wear them. But just think how out-of-kilter my husband’s whole existence would become…

It’s a little late for me to fall in love with a man who likes cotton flannel and the allure of the dowdy… Besides, I know all his little winning ways, and he knows mine. I believe this is the secret to a successful marriage…

I like a certain reliability in a man, and I’ve got it. I put a plate of radicchio salad on the table, step back and count to five. “What is this stuff?” my husband says suspiciously, poking it with his fork. It warms my heart.

Love and Marbles

in Just-

spring     when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it’s

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far     and     wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s

spring

and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan     whistles

far

and

wee

e.e. cummmgs

Sermon

Love and Marbles
by the Rev. Jane Rzepka, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading, Massachusetts

Do you remember? Do you remember the days when you were ten or eleven or twelve or so, the days of jump ropes and marbles? Remember? You’d just gotten it together, more or less …you knew how to operate your body; you knew how to operate your parents, your younger brothers and sisters; you knew how to operate your teachers, especially your substitute teachers. And you had friends, many of you, you were bonded togeher, it was “eddieandbill,” it was “bettyandisbel.” They were the days the movies “Stand By Me” and “My Life as a Dog” remind us of, the sweet and simple days just before the guys got cute and the girls got coy and complications all too quickly set in.

Bob Doss, one of our ministers in Wilmington, Delaware, tells a story (and, by the way, on a weekend that includes both Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day, it wasn’t easy to find just the right story — but this is a love story, and it’s about a boy named George and a girl named Martha, so I think I deserve extra credit.)

The boys, all about ten years old, says Bob Doss, were the marble shooters. The girls had more important things to do then, one imagines. But the boys seemed to play marbles all the time when the weather was dry and not too hot, but not too cold… marble season — in a place where the earth was packed hard and flat and a good ring could be drawn in the black dirt. Sometimes, the girls would deign to watch. And the boys, in training for free enterprise, accumulated great numbers of marbles — both by playing to win, sometimes by trading them for picture cards that came with flat, red pieces of bubble-gum, and sometimes by saving their pennies for more marbles.

George Markovitz was the best marble player. The others used to think it had something to do with his shooter. For, you see, George had a “moonie.” It seemed a little heavier than other marbles — the moonie. It was very smooth, but not glassie; pearlie looking and translucent… You could not see through it. They said it was made from moonstone and it did look like that — white, or pearl-like with a blue tinge, cool but not cold. A beautiful moonstone — a perfect sphere.

Everybody wanted one. But they did not sell “moonies” at the store where the marbles usually came from. George had the only one around. And what a shooter it did make. It was just about perfect.

Martha Bell, it so happened, had a birthday party. Her eleventh. And after the indoor games, and the cake, came the gift opening. And at the end of the gift opening, a small package was left, the smallest of the packages, a present from George Markovitz, and as Martha opened it, he started to blush.

She unwrapped the tissue inside the little box, and there was the moonie. just quietly glowing there, pearlie and bluish, cool and beautiful . . . George had given his moonie to Martha. Martha became very quiet, and sort of warm and smiling-like. And she looked into his eyes – eyes so deep she was afraid she was going to fall into them. And George sat there, melting in the presence of the great thaw. For a moment, everyone hushed. What was happening?

We know what was happening. We were there. We remember how it was when the little goat-footed balloonman came whistling into our lives and changed them forever. e.e. cummings’ poem is about just that, of course, about the Greek god Pan, playing a reed in the distance — Pan, the god of fertility, god of lust, — Pan, the root of our word “panic,” Pan, who did his best to rearrange eddieandbill in favor of eddieandbetty, and bettyandisbel into isbelandbill. When that moonie was passed from George to Martha, romance was born.

Romance. You know the kind of romance I mean. The “flames of love.” “Waves of passion.” “Wounded by Cupid’s arrow.” Valentines. Suffering. Queasy stomachs, weak knees, dry mouths; broken hearts, bursting hearts, aching hearts, lonely hearts, pounding hearts. Noble love, love between any two people, gay or lesbian or straight; love, which we consider the most enriching of human experiences; love, which at the age of twelve and probably a time or two subsequently, takes the form of moping and giggling and gazing. It is the “love and marbles” stage, when, as one wise Greek named Affines said, “the rocks in her head seem to fit the holes in his.”

Judy Blume, the popular author of novels designed to appeal to children of just this age, received the following letter: “Dear Judy, I first started a kind of relationship with a girl in a movie. We just saw each other there by coincidence so we sat together. The next thing you know we were holding hands. Before we left the theater she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me. I’d never been so red at the face in my life. But if that’s what falling in love feels like I hope it happens to everybody! Greg, aged 12.”

Early love, new love, young love, it seems to me, literally takes a medieval form. In the Middle Ages, the height of romance was its impossibility. Romantic love was unconsummated love. The more hardships endured, the more romantic it was. Unrequited love, or insurmountable obstacles were terrific. The only thing even more romantic was a situation where the lovers could no longer stand to live without each other and they killed themselves. Now that’s romance! Those of you with good memories or who have watched your children go through episodes of first true loves may recognize the melodrama of the love and marbles stage.

It is, first of all, the stage not of the “long run,” but the “short run,” the time of life when infatuation is mistaken for enduring love, and new true loves blossom with dizzying rapidity.

Remember Romeo? One day in love with Rosalind. The next day, talking now about Juliet, he goes on and on, “See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!” The pattern is no different from the one we hear about in another letter to Judy Blume: “Dear Judy, I’ve liked this guy, Jeff, since the beginning of the year. He used to like me but he’s not allowed to like girls anymore. Now, even though I still like him, I am going with Bill. But I kind of like this other Bill, too, and also Kevin. The Bill I’m going with is thirteen, the other Bill is fourteen and Kevin is sixteen. Still, I like Jeff the best, even though he can’t like me. I feel that I’ll always like him a lot. I think about him all the time. I’m all confused. I don’t know what to do anymore. Do you have any advice for me? Morgan, age 13″

You may remember that this aspect of the love and marbles stage is torture. While it may be exciting, romance begins to eat away at life, and before long, it is life, having devoured the jump ropes and marbles and every kind of childhood normalcy. Breathing itself seems to hinge on a smile from Martha at the lockers or an affectionate punch on the arm from George, and nothing else matters, not the history quiz, not the baby-sitting commitment, nothing else matters. And then, a month later, the existence of the world as we know it rests on a smile from Bill or a punch from Betty. The enduring love of pinkish pork chops and flannel is completely unknown.

In our society, the stereotype is that over the years, we move from the pattern of constantly changing partners to a settled pattern of happy monogamous love. Of course this is only a stereotype, sometimes it happens, often it doesn’t. Our happiness might just as well be found in singleness, or in a series of partners, or any number of varying lifestyles. Or, through no fault of our own, we sometimes face an unfulfilling marriage, or the death of a partner, or divorce, or no marriage. But this morning I’m going to go with the stereotype — the map most of us were given as children, the progression from young love to enduring love.

No contemporary writer that I’ve read talks about “happily ever after.” Actually, I don’t know why that is — I think, with luck, a lot of people really do get to live happily ever after, without having to put up with too much, without having to work at it too hard, without having a lot of difficult circumstances intervene, enjoying one another’s mind, body, and soul over the long haul. And that’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.

But, one gathers from reading popular columnists, a number of couples appreciate being reminded why it is they’re still married after all those years; they want someone to recall for them what it was about the love and marbles stage, the romance and excitement and variety, that they aren’t supposed to want anymore.

Ellen Goodman, the Globe columnist, confesses to a passion for romantic movies. She loved, for example, the movie Falling in Love, where Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro ride off into the “happily ever after” on a commuter train. But at this stage of her life, Ms Goodman can’t seem to help but ask herself what happens after Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro stop “falling in love” and actually “land.” She imagines them when money is tight, when the refrigerator needs cleaning, and finally asks herself if she was just losing her taste for romance the way she once lost her taste for Sugar Smacks. Had she lost her interest in stories of quick romance in favor of the epic tale? Was she now more interested in how people stay together than how they get together, in “being in love,” rather than “falling in love?” She concludes that romantic movies “miss the kind of love that’s been around long enough to include friendship and trust and a whole lot of gratitude.” “As a love-story buff,” she says, “I know this is not what people write scripts about. It’s not on valentines. But it’s the surprise in the chocolate box, the happy non-ending, the stuff on which you build a life.”

If you have moved from the frantic pace of pre-teen romance to the stability of longer loving, you are aware of another change in your life. You no longer have to worry about “how to kiss.” Hours of agony, you may recall, can be spent on that one — here’s another letter to Judy Blume: “Dear Judy, I need some advice. I’m a big romantic but so far I’m convinced that there is no such thing as ‘true love.’ I’ve gone with a lot of boys over the last two years and I’m really confused. For one thing, in movies they make kissing look so perfect, but it’s not for me. In fact, we slobber all over each other and we always end up getting the flu… I wish I could have true love… I am fourteen years old. I want you to help me. Krista, age 14 “

For “Krista, age 14,” true love, as they say, is “in the kiss.” But Krista will no doubt get kissed a lot over the next few years, she’ll get the slobbering under control, if not the flu, she’ll probably run into boys who in her judgment are very good kissers — and even so, it’s doubtful that she’ll find her true love anytime soon.

It will be a long time before Krista changes her focus from kissing, from sex, to the intimacy required of the true love she’s after. Post- marble-stage seekers of love want to listen to the other and be heard, they want to tend each other and be tended, they want to relax in each other’s presence and be wholly themselves, they want to be loving and loved, and yes, they want good kissing too. When Krista finds all that, she can bet that the kissing will work out fine.

One last aspect of pre- teen love that is soon dispelled is the desperate search for the perfect girl or boy, the person who will make you happy your whole life long. “Dear Judy, I am thirteen-and-a-half years old and my problem is, I can’t seem to find the right boy for me… The right boy for me would have pretty eyes, dark hair, a nice build and soft skin. He would show me love and he would respect me, himself and others. He would have his license. But boys like this don’t come around here. I really need help… Sasha, age 13.” (p. 193)

Sasha has an appealing thought: that somebody has been placed on earth, custom made to her order, essentially to make her happy. Sasha will probably spend a long time searching for this perfect creature who’s devoted entirely to her happiness, and then she will grow up. She will, like most people, grow up and get married. She will have her ups and downs. She may admit, as the columnist Linda Weltner did, that “at times I’ve hated this man, blamed him for my unhappiness, been convinced that sticking with so much pain was a mistake, and wanted out. Yet every morning of our lives, both of us made the choice to stay married to one another, and most of the time we’re glad we did… Marriage is no safe harbor. Over the years, I’ve contemplated murder and known true contentment. I’ve felt trapped and liberated, challenged and defeated, in despair, yet determined to keep this love alive… The decision to marry means having faith in your own power to create the life you want with the person you have chosen…”

I’m not sure how much happiness has to do with one’s marriage partner. I know that people can be happy with their spouses, but are they happy because of them? If Sasha gets married, a marriage I suppose of the 1990s, I hope that she has first learned how to be happy on her own. She will need to know herself pretty well. She’ll need to know what accomplishments will make her happy, what, at the end of her life, she herself will enjoy pointing to with pride. She’ll need to know what kinds of friendships she’ll need to maintain, and how it feels to stand on her own. Before she gets married, Sasha will need to know who she is at her most self-centered just to be sure she has a self. Without that, no lover, perfect or not, can make her truly happy.

In the journal Christianity and Crisis, Will Campbell relates this conversation: “‘Would you say you’re happily married?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t say that,’ he answered. ‘Happiness is an elusive and illusive thing, generally not provided for one spouse by the other.’ He said he had never understood what happily married meant. ‘I suppose if I am happy and I am married one could say that I am happily married,’ he went on. ‘But I haven’t been happy every day for 40 years running. Sometimes I have been happy. And sometimes I have been sad, mad, depressed, and a time or two almost crazy. Was I sadly married, madly married, almost crazily married? Or just married all that time?’ As we talked I estimated that I had performed 500 marriage ceremonies. I recalled that I had never asked the parties to make one another happy. Nor did my friends promise each other that. [They only] promised to love each other”

We are, all of us, past the marbles stage, past the medieval stage, though there are days when, no matter how old we are, we seem to be thirteen. We have made progress. We’re better off. No matter how lonely we may be, it’s better than the desperate isolation felt by the child left out at the dance. No matter how bored we may be, it’s better than passions pounding us north and south and east and west. No matter how insecure we may be, it’s got to be better than the agonizing logistics of kissing with braces on your teeth. We have grown up, and it’s a blessing.

My oldest child is eleven. I would like to spare him the marbles stage of love. I would love to tell him that he could freeze the moment, that he and his buddies will talk with happy excitement of computer game cartridges forever and ever; that passion and uncertainty will never enter that world. I would love to tell him that he will never suffer over love, that pain will not consume him, that the hormones in his body will not command his every thought and move for the next decade. I would love to tell my son that for him, there will be no cause for moping, or wandering, or staring; that he’ll be spared the falling in love and breaking up and falling in love and being ignored and falling in love and being trapped and falling in love and being dumped. If only I could tell him that everyone will see what a wonder he is, that he’ll know he looks good, that everyone will treat him fairly and with kindness, that he will always know what to do, that he will never feel like an idiot, never feel unloved. But I can’t.

But I can say this: Someday, you will grow up. And your life will be filled with good things. Count on it. On some days, the sun will shine, and you’ll feel warm. Sometimes you will do an honorable day’s work, and you’ll feel proud. You will hear music now and then that grabs you and makes you dance or touches you and makes you cry with the tears of all people. In the woods you’ll find a tree you like to sit with. You’ll talk someday to a friend and feel a bond forever. You will wonder at the mountains, you will laugh at the silliest things, you will figure something out and be pleased with yourself. Your life will be filled with good things, and one of them, one of those things I think will be love. And this love, this grown-up love, will be easier, and nicer, and you won’t have to worry about doing it wrong, and you will talk together when you feel like talking, and sit quietly when that’s what you want. And you’ll be over- come with passion and overcome with tenderness and overcome with steady joy, and you will love. You will love.

But for now — but for now

in Just-

spring     when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it’s

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far     and     wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s

spring

and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan     whistles

far

and

wee

 

Amen

Meditation

by Kenneth Sawyer

And the most embarrassing statement,
the hardest thing to say, is this:
I love you.

I love you for who you are.

Perhaps you worry in the night because
it comes to you that you are different:
I love you because you are different,
and I love your differences.

Perhaps you have known yourself unworthy of love,
a spotted, flawed creature;
I have, too, and yet have been loved.
And I love you, spotted and flawed.

Perhaps there come voices, the callings of evil, the knowledge of an
inner nature less noble than we would proclaim;
Yet I proclaim you, waverings and all;
I know them, too,
and I love you.

A noble race, God’s very chosen,
Or pathetic, cruel, destructive, and hopeless?
Yes, you are both.
Yes, I am both.
Yes we are both.
and I love you.

Perhaps you are less than you would have yourself.
Perhaps the glory ends up inevitably mixed with shame
and the greatness with pettiness.
Perhaps you feel at times unworthy of the blessing that is life.
Yes, so do I.
In the end it comes to this: you are human.
Yes, so am I.
And I love you for it.
And I love you for yourself

Hymn

No. 18 “What Wondrous Love”
from Singing the Living Tradition

Unison Benediction

by May Sarton

Return to the most human,
Nothing less will nourish the torn spirit,
the bewildered heart,
the angry mind:
and from the ultimate duress,
Pierced with the breath of anguish,
speak of love.

Return, return to the deep sources,
nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
to carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
and still that ancient necessary pain preserve.

Return to the most human,
nothing less will teach the angry spirit,
the bewildered heart;
the torn mind,
to accept the whole of its duress,
and pierced with anguish
at last, act for love.

Questions for Discussion

1. What are your memories of the eddieandbill or the bettyandisbel
   time of your life? Can you recall the dawning of what Jane Rzepka
   calls the medieval love stage as it happened to you?
2. As you watch the young people today, how do they seem different from yourself at their age? How do they seem similar to the
   way you were at their age?
3. What in your opinion would constitute an ideal long-term relationship?