Delivered at UUP by Jan Ogren on November 18, 2007

Once upon a time there was a traveler. Every time she would arrive in a new place she would walk around exploring it. This day she came to a town similar to Petaluma. It was about eleven o’clock and she was starting to get hungry. As she walked through a neighborhood she noticed a particularly wonderful garden. She stopped to admire it. It had the prettiest looking pepper plants. But the couple who lived there quickly hurried out and pointed the sign on the fence. "No Trespassing" they told the traveler. "Keep out." The couple glowered at her until she moved down the street. She asked some people where she could get something to eat. Several suggested some nice restaurants. "But I have no money," she responded. "Well then you can’t eat in this town." She was told.

"Then I guess I’ll have to make some stone soup for everyone." She told them.

"Stone soup?"

"Yes, I have my magic stone right here." She patted her backpack. "Now all I need is a place for a fire, a pot and some water and I’ll make soup for everyone."

The people thought she was kind of strange, but they were curious and she was promising free soup to all so they led her to a park where there were fire pits and someone brought out a pot.

"Oh, no no. that will never do. We must have a huge caldron. I see there are many people in your town and I want to be able to feed everyone."

So finally one family found an enormous kettle in their basement and they cleaned it out and brought it for the traveler. Then others brought gallons of water to fill it.

"Not too full. We want to give the stone room to expand." She instructed them. So they stopped when the cauldron was about 2/3rd full. Then the traveler carefully unslung her backpack and slowly undid the straps. She reached inside and carefully drew out a large smooth flat brown stone. She held it right at the waters level and let it slide in. it sank to the bottom and laid there. Everyone took turns looking in to see it. "We’ll have a while to wait. The water needs to get hot first. Then we’ll have the best soup you’ve ever tasted." She looked in the pot and sighed wistfully. "This will be good stone soup, but I do love onions with it."

"I have onions," exclaimed a man from the back of the crowd and he ran home and got a bag and then they cleaned off a picnic table and several people helped him chop them up.

After they plunked the onions in the traveler said, "ah yes, this will be tasty, though I do like a few potatoes in it. It just gives it a nice flavor."

"I’ve got potatoes," offered a woman. "So do I," said another. And soon there were people cutting up potatoes on the table.

After the potatoes were added the traveler took a deep inhale. "This smells wonderful but you know what really makes a good stone soup? (turn to the kids) what do you think she asked for?? And people brought (food mentioned by kids) --what else? --and someone brought _____. (add in 4-5 items from the kids.

Now the soup was almost up to the rim. She noticed the couple with the beautiful garden had come to see what the crowd was doing. "Welcome, have some stone soup with us." And the couple moved closer and looked in the pot. "I do keep thinking of your pepper plants. Yes, they are the finest I’ve seen in a long while."

The couple smiled "we’ve got plenty, we’ll go get some." And they did.

Then there was the hustle and bustle of finding bowls and spoons for everyone and ladling the soup up and the baker thought he had some extra bread everyone could use and some others brought drinks and soon the picnic tables were filled with happy people eating. More and more came until all the soup was eaten and only the stone remained at the bottom. A young boy looked into the pot and yelled, "Look the stone is glowing. It really is a magic stone!" And it was true it had gotten so hot it glowed.

"You won’t be able to touch that for quite a while," one man told the traveler.

"Oh that’s my gift to this town. You’ll need that stone so that you can make stone soup again. I’ll create another one. It’s not too hard if you know how."

So the town kept the magic stone and used it many times to create a wonderful soup for all.

I’ve got stones for everyone here --while you are picking them out what do you think you need to do to make this a magic stone like the one the traveler had?

What do you need to add to the stone --(encourage them to find words like: friendliness Love generosity cheerful, hope)

The first line of the affirmation, read here every Sunday, has always intrigued me. It proclaims that "love is the doctrine of this church." In my visits to different Unitarian Universalist congregations, this is one of the most commonly used readings. I’ve seen it hung on walls, written in the order of service, used for opening words and chalice lightings. But what does it really mean for a faith that has no creed and no dogma to proclaim that its doctrine is love? and how do we practice our doctrine? These are the questions I want to explore today. First we’ll need to define love and explore it a bit -- look at its history and what has happened to it over the years. Then we’ll come back to why it is so important to UU. Then we’ll finish with a bit of practical practicing and a poem.

So what is love? It gets 102 million hits on Google. It’s the most common theme of art and music. Love can refer to a simple experience of pleasure, like loving a meal or a good book, or to something one would die for, like love for a partner or a child. Love can be present in the best of times and the worst. It hangs around children, puppies and kittens a lot. It is usually found at births and also at deaths -- and in between it often gets mistaken for sex.

Poor love -- it is such an overused word and such an underused concept.

Wikipedia states: "Love is essentially an abstract concept, much easier to experience than to explain." Well, who am I to argue with Wikipedia? So instead of trying to find more definitions, I decided to go directly to the source and consult a group of experts on love.

- Yes, I am looking at all of you. Where better to find a group of individual experts than at a UU congregation. You’re all used to exploring and not getting fed the answers from the pulpit, so it saves me from having to find one definition for such a complex experience.

So I invite you to think of a time you have felt love. A time when love is inside you, filling you and overflowing. It could be shared, when you were also loved, but make sure it includes the experience of loving from within. Take a minute and think. Try to find the purest example you can imagine: maybe a time with a child or an animal or out in nature. If you think of a lost love remember to drink in some of the nurturing aspect of love for the tender space where love and grief mix.

What are you aware of now inside your body? How does love feel? What happens to your shoulders? Your face and jaw? -- when you feel love. What texture is love? Is love warm or cold? What color is it? What images come with it? -- There are no right answers - these questions are to help you feel the sensation of love more clearly. And if you are having trouble feeling love, maybe we can help each other and do a free association with love -- some words that come to me are caring, open, warmth - if you feel comfortable -- share your own words aloud with the room. Call them out and don’t worry if you talk at once or don’t hear exactly what others say -- I just want to fill the room with words related to love. --

(time to let people call out words)

Thank you. Now that we all have a definition of love I want you to remember these feelings, words and sensations. We’ll come back to them later -- but first let’s explore what has happened to love over the years. Erich Fromm writes about love in his book: The Art of Loving. In the Victorian age marriage was arranged based on social considerations and love was supposed to develop once the couple were married. A great change occurred in the twentieth century when people started searching for ‘romantic love’ which is suppose to then lead to marriage. This new concept of freedom in love has changed love from an ability to use once in a marriage to an object to pursue in order to obtain a marriage.

In books and movies today, the common romance plot is: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. Or variations on that theme: boy meets boy, girl meets girl. But it is all about the tasks of love: to search for the "right" love and to make yourself worthy of someone else’s pursuit, to deal with being unlucky in love and then to strive to win the love object back -- then of course to live happily ever after with no further work required.

Unfortunately the theme of practicing love does not seem to be popular: I seldom see a movie about two people meeting, where they get to know and respect each other. Love grows and they both do work on themselves and meditate daily so they are open to share more love with each other. That’s not a common love story.

Along with this romantic quest is the tendency to want to save love up -- for the big one! Don’t bother practicing with friends, neighbors or strangers -- it’s your soul mate who will really bring love into your life and once that occurs you’ll just naturally have the capacity to love. That makes about as much sense as saying I’m planning to run a marathon, so I’m going to save up my energy for the big day and I’m not going to run at all until then .

Our culture is inundated with myths about love. We refer to finding love -- as though it was a separate thing, and not a resource within us. Then there are the concepts of winning and losing love -- as though it were a contest or competition. Of course my favorite is falling in love, as though it was a mud puddle. Or a dangerous myth that says love can cure all -- and if you just love your partner enough everything will be fine. And there always seem to be more references to being lucky in love than skilled in love.

These myths encourage us to feel that the only control we have is to make ourselves socially and physically perfect so that we are lovable. And if we are not loved it is our fault, rather than a lack of loving skill by the other person. There’s a book in my office called "Talk to me like I’m someone you love." It’s a set of flash cards for couples to use when communicating. Just the title alone is a wonderful reminder for people. - "Talk to me like I’m someone you love."

I want to bring up one more concern about love. This is something I learned last April at District Assembly, when people from different UU congregations come together from all over our Pacific Central District to celebrate for a weekend. A keynote speaker, Rev. Peter Morales from Golden Colorado talked about an aspect of love that was mentioned when we were defining love represented by the words (sharing, trust, connection . -- use words spoken during the exploration period before). Peter shared with us the results of a research paper published in the American Sociological Review in 2006. This study measured the number and type of close, personal relationships a person has. They asked in an earlier study, done in 1985, how many people do you feel close enough to confide personal information to? The most common response then was three. When that same question was asked in 2004, the most common response was none. 25% of the people now said they had no one they felt close enough to share intimately with. To me these numbers represent a decrease in of love. To be able to share with a person, to confide in them that I’m hurting I’m in pain, is love -- self love and the gift of love because I’m sure you have experienced when someone honestly confides in you -- it’s a gift of trust, of themselves, of love. When I heard that 25% of the US population have no one to share love with and 62% now have less than 3 people - I felt a deep anguish inside as I thought of all those people, more alone now than 20 years ago. Love is becoming a less common experience for people, and I fear for what that means for all of us.

So that’s the bad news. The good news is we can do something about it -- because our doctrine is love.

Doctrine refers to a set of beliefs and teachings -- with an emphasis on the teaching (docere to teach). So how can we Unitarian Universalists teach and practice love? We have many ways of increasing and encouraing being open minded and accepting. We help others, work for social action. We are a good denomination when it comes to doing -- but what if we practiced being more loving?

What might it look like -- classes, workshops, meditations on love?

Maybe when you first come in and put your name tag on you would also take three breaths, filling yourself with love. Maybe when the affirmation is read every Sunday it is a conscious reminder to fill this room with love.

Since last April I’ve been consciously practicing expanding my capacity for love. I want to share some of what I’ve been trying. Go back to when we defined love before. Breathe into the feelings and sensations that represent love for you and see if you can expand your experience of love right now. It might help to think of more examples of love. In nature, with children, remember the feelings, the words. Several times a day I’ve been taking 30 seconds to expand love -- that’s the time for sitting at a red light, or a stretch when I’m at the computer. I feel it in my chest -- an openness and a lightness, often I notice I end up smiling.

I also began paying attention to the questions that ran my daily life -- Usually they sounded something like: is it efficient? Will others approve of it? Is it the right thing to do? Then a friend suggested asking myself the questions: is it kind? Is it loving?

I like those questions and I’ve wondered what a Sunday morning would be like with those guiding us: is my action kind? Are my words loving? What if we expanded that to all UU gatherings: board meetings, finance meetings, all the phone calls we make getting things done for this congregation. Am I being kind? Am I being loving?

Thich Nhat Hanh suggests another simple question to carry around to increase love: am I sure? Too often I see with myself and others how absolutes and judgments speak to being right and power- not love. I’ve tweaked "am I sure?" a bit and ask myself -- is there more? So that when I say -- this is what I know to be true, I also ask myself: is there more? -- I crack the door of certainty open so that there is room for love to slip in.

While I am still in the experimental stage of practicing love I have already noticed a few changes: especially my driving. It’s easier to stop for pedestrians, to not get upset when a car cuts me off or there is a traffic jam. I admit there used to be a part of me that enjoyed being righteously angry at stupid, unknown drivers. But love actually feels so much better. And it feels stronger too. Which contradicts the myth that says love is weak. I’ve noticed the more love I feel; the easier it is to stand up for myself.

I used to wait for love -- hope I’d find enough. Get enough. Be lucky enough to have it when I needed it. Practicing love is like discovering I have a stream of love inside me that I can turn on at any time. When I’m angry -- I open up the self love. When I’m hurting, struggling - I drink of love. All my efforts before to be lovable didn’t create nearly the amount of love I have experienced in the last six months.

I haven’t found a situation yet that wasn’t helped by adding some love to it.

Love is amazing;y versatile -- it’s like the perfect set of clothes you can wear anywhere and they are always in style. For example: visualize being a guest coming here for the first time (for some of you this will be very easy since this is your first time). I’m not excluding members or friends, but sometimes it is easier to imagine a new person, someone coming here because of the grief of losing a parent or life partner, maybe his/her child is ill. Love would make the perfect setting for them to bring their pain, sadness and fear. Or imagine a couple is coming because they are planning to get married or raise children. One of them believes this, the other that -- someone told them you should go check out a UU congregation. Love is the perfect feeling for them to be greeted by. Or, someone is dealing with personal or global crises, prejudice, ignorance; they are hurt, angry, frustrated -- the love they feel could be the sustaining gift they need to continue the struggles they are facing in life.

Now if you did decide, individually and as a congregation to increase the amount of love and the capacity to hold love here, I think two things might happen. First, this congregation could become even more precious to you because you would love it more.

Second you would probably grow, and faster.

Then you might have to confront another myth about love. And that is the myth of scarcity and the fear of losing the love you feel here. -- and I want to be honest, there is a possibility that you could actually lose some of the love as you grew larger -- because of the tendency people have to forget the stone. Remember the story -- the stone that started the soup. Imagine you are there in that town and the soup has gotten so popular you need to start another kettle to feed everyone. Being rational, logical humans, you theorize that the stone didn’t really add anything. So you don’t bother creating another stone for the new pot of soup. But some how it’s not the same. So you try to fix it, maybe create instructions on who is to do what jobs. And soon creating the soup becomes a task. And the stone, which started it all, is forgotten.

Ironically I’ve actually seen this played out in two ways at different UU congregations. Once I overheard a conversation at a UU Church where they were discussing whose duty it was to greet visitors during the coffee hour. Who should be responsible for making them feel welcome? Some thought the membership committee should be in charge. Or that they should assign people to do. Others advocated that all members should contribute to the task of welcoming visitors. But the problem to me was for this Church, being friendly and loving had become a task. And I could feel that when I was visiting.

And love is not a task. Love is a joy, a caring, a simple smile. I don’t think love works as well when it is put on a to-do list.

The second thing I noticed at UU congregations ironically involved meals: potlucks. There seems to be a time when, without any organization, people bring food and there is a feeling of generosity and an abundance, there’s always enough to eat. Then changes can happen. Often the congregation grows -- and ironically there isn’t enough food, even though there are more people. The solution is often to organize and give instructions on who brings what. And I am not saying there is anything wrong in being organized -- especially considering what a blessing good volunteers are for a UU congregation. But I think what gets missed is the stone. Life gets busy and we forget that it was the stone that went in first to make the soup for everyone to enjoy.

The stone represents not only love but faith, the corner stone of religion. For UU faith is not about an agreed upon belief in God, but a faith in love -- our doctrine. Whenever we start something new, expand or renew together the stone of faith must go in first -- it’s our foundation.

Just so you don’t forget the stone -- like I did for the kids -- I have baskets of stones I’m going to pass around -- take one so that you will never go hungry for love. And this congregation will always have love at its heart because every time you gather here -- I bet someone will have a stone in her or his pocket so that the love is never forgotten. As you choose your stone, I’m going to finish by reading a poem.

I Love You Because

I do not love you
because of what you have done for me in the past,
nor for what you will do for me in the future.

I love you
because loving you fills my heart with joy.

I love you because
by existing in my life
you offer me the opportunity to love.

I do not mean to belittle who you are or what you do
but they do not determine my love.

loving you is about me - not you

I am the one who must exercise my love:
stretch it, strengthen it
water it with tears so that it will grow
nourish it with happiness so that it will endure

You can not lose my love: by what you do or do not do.
You do not risk my love by being honest with me
You do not jeopardize my love by being you

I will love you always
because I love
to love you always.

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