I could be wrong, but I rather suspect that Valentine’s Day is the most widely despised holiday in the country. Really, unless you’re in the small minority of people who are in the throes of romantic passion, what’s to like? You don’t get a day off of work, there’s no religious ceremony or significance, and for weeks ahead of time the stores are filled with a boatload of pink and red crap that nobody needs, and hardly anybody actually wants. Jewelry store commercials aside, the number of lives that would be improved by the gift of a heart-shaped diamond is, I suspect, shockingly small.

Worse than that, for many people the holiday is an affront. If you are single, it’s a reminder that society expects people to pair up, and a suggestion that you are probably a loser because you’re alone. If you’re in a long-term relationship that has become more centered on helping with homework and making sure that there is milk in the frig than on lust and making googly eyes at one another, it’s a reminder that popular culture is obsessed with passion and falling in love, and no one will ever make a blockbuster movie that looks anything like your life. If you’re gay or lesbian or in any kind of non-traditional relationship you know that there probably isn’t going to be a card in the drugstore that is in any way designed with your kind of love in mind. And if you’ve recently been through a break-up, or your relationship is going through a rocky period from which it may or may not recover, or your spouse has died, well, then Valentine’s Day is pretty much designed for your own personal torture.

So here’s my suggestion: Maybe a better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than by buying candy and flowers would be to embrace the fact that love is often difficult. Rather than a day about romance, why not a day for concentrating on loving something or someone that makes you uncomfortable?

You might want to start by loving your crooked toe, or your stretch marks, or the flabby skin on the back of your arms. Anoint them with lotion, and a long, loving look, and consider the possibility that they really don’t need to be any different than exactly what they are.

You could try loving your neighbor who plays loud music and leaves his RV parked so that you can hardly get in your driveway. Maybe the music is his only stress reducer after caring for elderly people all day; maybe the RV is the only place his son has to live; maybe he’s so busy trying to hold his life together that he forgot to consider what would be most convenient for you.

You could work on loving your daughter’s crappy fourth-grade teacher who doesn’t appreciate your child’s unique gifts and has failed to teach her the structure of a paragraph. Chances are good that there are too many kids in the classroom to give each their due and the teacher is exhausted simply from trying to maintain some semblance of civilization until the bell rings.

You could try to love the person ahead of you in the line at the grocery store who has 27 items in the express lane, or the punk who cut you off on the freeway, or the customer service representative from the cable company who does not appear to have the slightest idea what “service” might mean. Just for today, since it’s a holiday.

You might even go all out, and work on loving your ex, or the person they left you for. Not necessarily forgiving, and certainly not forgetting, but just a little warmth, a little bit of an open heart for someone who, like everyone else in the world, is trying to find happiness in the best way they know how. Which isn’t necessarily a good way, but there you have it.

Just for this one day you could practice love not so much as a feeling but as a choice, a discipline, a practice. You could start with the conviction that everyone certainly needs love, and the possibility that everyone deserves it. Not because they have earned it, not because they are loveable, but because each of us is capable of being an instrument of grace, which is another name for the love that we don’t have to earn or deserve.

Happy Valentine’s Day. And good luck.

Rhoda Morgenstern changed my life.

As a chubby, opinionated, smart and mouthy teenager in Akron Ohio in the early 1970’s, I had never seen anyone on television who remotely resembled me, anyone I might be someday, or anyone who might be my friend. Rhoda changed that.

For those who weren’t born in the1970’s, Rhoda was the best friend of Mary, the lead character in the Mary Tyler Moore show. Unlike Mary, who was willowy, strove to be perfect in all things, and was never loud, Rhoda was a mirror that reflected someone much more like me and my friends. We loved her.

Another history lesson: In the 1970’s, you either watched a TV show when it ran or you waited for reruns. Mary Tyler Moore ran on Saturday nights. While it didn’t cause any males to weep that my girlfriends and I never missed it, we did choose it consistently over movies, driving around, and the other boring activities we had previously done on Saturday nights. We would either go to one anothers’ houses to watch it or we would call each other afterwards to discuss. (#Nohashtag)

First of all, we had never experienced a show that had as one of its central plots the friendship between two single women. This just wasn’t done! Marlo Thomas had blazed her way as a single career woman, so that wasn’t new. But if she had girlfriends, I sure don’t remember them. She had Her Donald (boyfriend) before there was The Donald!

So there were Mary and Rhoda, fighting about things girls fight about, helping each other out, upstairs/downstairs neighbors in an apartment building. I knew that Mary would never have been Rhoda’s friend if they hadn’t been in such close proximity, and she would never have been my friend in high school or after. A popular girl, if a single one.

So, how did Rhoda change my life? First, by accompanying me through those last miserable, lonely years in Akron, Ohio, making me laugh and feeling like a true friend. But then, after college, a friend asked if I might want to move to Minneapolis for a while to live. I’m not saying that I literally believed Rhoda would be here—even if I were that delusional, Rhoda had spun off her own series and moved to New York—but the fact that Rhoda HAD been here made it feel more like home; less scary to move. Sure, I said. That was 1978. Though I’ve lived other places in the intervening years, Minneapolis is still my primary home.

And now, Valerie Harper, the beautiful actress who says that Rhoda was her friend, too, is dying. She’s been on the cover of People magazine and made a very moving video saying goodbye to us all. I have wept, reading the article and watching the video. (Watch the video: http://broadwayworld.com/videoplay.php?colid=474142) As she is dying, she wants to remind us ‘no one is getting off the planet alive…we’re all terminal.’ In the video, besides saying goodbye, she is wishing everyone had the quality of healthcare she has. These things tell me yet again why Rhoda such a good friend to me. The actor inside her is also a good friend.

I imagine myself, on my deathbed, thinking, “Well, Rhoda’s already gone through this gate, so I guess it’s not so scarey.” Bless you, Valerie Harper, for all of the chubby lonely girls you have befriended, and for the love which surrounds you still and which will be stay alive until the great-grandchild of the last person to watch a Mary Tyler Moore or Rhoda show rerun has died.

You Got People

This Public Service Announcement brought to you by a Unitarian Universalist minister who has just been creatively reminded by the universe of this important truth.

Beloveds, in the crush of this season of holidays, remember that YOU GOT PEOPLE.

Contrary to the images of loneliness and unworthiness being projected onto us during this commercialized season – you are intimately and ultimately connected to all of creation.
Whether you buy or receive holiday gifts, send cards, light menorahs, kinaras, or bonfires – during the longest nights of the year and during the longest days and every time in between, you are not alone.

The myth of our culture is one of worth based on stuff and perfection.
The myth of our culture says you have to earn grace.
The myth of our culture is deeply isolating and numbing.

These are not life affirming myths.
These are not myths to live by.

Sister Joan Chittister declares that “The paradox is that to be human is to be imperfect but it is exactly our imperfection that is our claim to the best of the human condition. We are not a sorry lot. We have one another. We are not expected to be self-sufficient. It is precisely our vulnerability that entitles us to love and guarantees us a hearing from the rest of the human race.”

In this season of need and greed remember:
You are enough.
You belong.
You are not alone.

You got people.

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