On Love
Reading and sermon preached by Reverend Carolyn Patierno
February 10, 2008

From Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Generally speaking … Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.  Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one.  [W]hy must everything always have a practical application?  I’d been such a diligent soldier for years – working, producing, never missing a deadline, voting, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, etc.  Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty?  When you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after … dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt.  This is not selfishness but obligation.  You were given life; it is your duty … to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

The best we can do … in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally – no matter what insanity is transpiring out there. 

Dal centro della mia vita, venne una grande fontana …
From the center of my life, there came a great fountain … Louise Gluck

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First a story:  There once was a woman - reliable, responsible, practical - who made a commitment for an early evening conversation on citizenship with a group of children.  That reliable woman looked forward to the conversation, considered it thoughtfully right up until the agreed upon day arrived.  When late that afternoon, just prior to the agreed upon time, she thought she would do just a bit of work … bring down the height of her inbox.  She set about the task … and worked right through the appointment.  Horrified, she deeply apologized and set a new date for three weeks later.  Three weeks transpired.  And the same thing happened yet again.

Now an observation:  In the winter 2006 issue of CT College Magazine, there appeared an essay entitled, Memories of a CC Romance:  The One that Got Away.  Written by an alumnus who graduated in 1984, he waxed poetic on the nature of college romance and the fact that he would not be the person he is if it hadn’t been for his own 30-month college relationship.  He wrote this essay after he and the object of his affection had met for lunch 22 years after they’d gone separate ways.   I was so moved by that essay that I tore it out and saved it. 

Fast forward two years.   For as moving as this essay was, a front page article in last Sunday’s Work Day section of The Day was equally disturbing.  This article’s headline was, Where’s the love?  Students too busy for romance.  Here are a few quotes from this piece, “College life has become so competitive, and students so focused on careers that many aren’t looking for spouses anymore.”  One college senior was quoted, “We don’t want to bring another person into the chaos of our lives.”

I name the story and the observation both as cautionary tales.     These are classic examples of spiritual imbalance.  The woman who twice forgot what was sure to be a delightful and meaningful encounter with young children because she got sucked into her overflowing inbox? Spiritual imbalance.   College students who have no time, or rather, do not make time to open their eyes to love?  Spiritual imbalance.  

Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love, has created something of a sensation.   In brief, when she was in her early thirties and a bit over 10 years into her marriage, Gilbert hit the wall.  She experienced an emotional and spiritual crisis that ultimately propelled her out of the house she shared with her husband and onto a devastating road to divorce.  She emerged from this experience – and a tumultuous relationship that came on its heels – wrung out yet determined.  In the midst of all this ebb and flow, she was introduced to a Sidda Yoga spiritual practice and this faith community’s spiritual leader.  Gilbert gathered her newfound sensibility and began to consider how to recreate her life.  She determined that she is seeking a life that is equal parts pleasure and devotion.  Ultimately, it is balance that she seeks. 

She is in a position to travel for a full year.  She divides her time in thirds:  four months in Italy learning the language and, well, eating; four months in India studying, practicing meditation & yoga at her Guru’s Ashram; and finally, four months in Indonesia studying with a medicine man and learning balance.

Gilbert was lucky enough to get a book deal that funded her endeavor.  And the book she wrote was her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which is her account of her year abroad. 

I began saying that this book has created something of a sensation. Eat, Pray, Love, however, seems to have tapped into something deeper than the longing to break out of a life of quiet desperation.  Gilbert was determined to embark on the quest for meaning and balance.  For without that quest for meaning, it is so easy to be seduced by any number of things that actually have less meaning than does love.  And I’m not talking about romantic love exclusively.  I’m talking about the way that we each interact with our companions on the journey, from our family and friends, our neighbors, co-workers … the people who we see when we’re out doing errands.  The people we see on Sunday morning at All Souls.  If you’re spiritually out of whack your ability to love, to connect – to remember appointments – takes a hit. 

And so, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, let’s do a little personal inventory together.

Balance.  Elizabeth Gilbert is seeking balance.  To her credit, she begins by listening to her own still, small voice.   And that voice is telling her that she wants to learn how to speak Italian.  It makes no sense to her Yankee (born and bred in CT, actually) sensibility.  She says, “In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me pleasure right now?”  Pleasure.  We deny ourselves so easily.  We fool ourselves into believing that which is actually entertainment is pleasure.  But pleasure is quiet.  Pleasure soothes the heart and mind and yes, the soul.  It makes us stronger.  Last Sunday, the celebration that followed the service?  That was pleasure.  Watching the children run around Unity Hall, dancing the Macarena, the electric slide, the chicken dance:  pleasure.  Even if you weren’t dancing but were watching: pleasure. 

And apparently, unlike New England culture, Italian culture needs no excuse or justification to relax, slow down, and engage in some pleasure. 

So, personal inventory question #1: 
When was the last time you did something for the sheer pleasure of it?  There was no real reason for it other than to crack open your heart and rest with a smile upon your face.  When was the last time you listened and allowed yourself to be led by your still, small voice?  When was the last time you behaved as though you were in Italy? 

Let’s continue …

Gilbert’s quest was one of a devotional nature as well.  She felt a spiritual void in her life and in the depths of her despair she began to reach beyond to something she came to name as God.   Never particularly religious, her account of her first encounter is very funny.  But she is dead serious.  She reaches to find meaning because her life is spinning out of control and she is losing sight of who she is and who she wants to be in this life.  Eventually, she comes at her devotional life from a position of strength.  But what her learning offers is a depth of forgiveness.  She forgives herself as she forgives others.  She learns that in the grand scheme of things, there is very little that we control other than the manner in which we personally live our lives.  She quiets her mind through meditation and sets out to learn about all matter of theological consequence.  This is in part, why I think so many UUs have been drawn to Gilbert’s account of her journey.  As we do, she draws from and inspired by many sources.  As the song goes, she “chooses her religion.” 

And in doing so, she forgives herself for her own trespasses.  I found that so      refreshing.  First, that she admits her wrongdoing.  But then that she finds a way to forgive herself.   Oh Lord, we are so bad a forgiving ourselves.  But she, of the quiet mind, of the determined and new understanding of what it means to pray … what it means to settle into a life of seeking, she forgives.  And so much more.

I believe that another reason this book has been so much read in our congregations, is that Gilbert takes on – head on – the meaning she assigns to theological terms such as “God” and “prayer.”   It’s a fruitful description that sheds light on pastures where some UUs don’t dare to go.  Go there.  It’s interesting.

Personal inventory question #2:
Are you pursuing the ongoing and search for meaning that our third principle encourages of us?  Have you taken a look at the adult RE selections for this spring?  Have you made time to read a book on or talk about topics that somehow nurture your faith journey?  Have you considered participating in small group ministry?  The Christian Fellowship?  The meditation sangha?  The Humanist Discussion Group?   Are you feeding your mind and by so doing, feeding your heart and your soul?  Are you?

When we accept pleasure and cultivate beauty; when we tend to our spirits, we are more likely to strike a balance albeit an ever delicate balance.  It needs consistent tending, this balance, because it is vulnerable, we are vulnerable.  More than anything, we get in our own way when we suffer from inflated egos.  We suffer from too much emphasis on our heads while our hearts lie bleeding. 

Eat, Pray, Love has touched so many so deeply because we intuit that to have such balance would bring a depth of meaning and joy.  The phrase, “I’m crazy busy” may never again pass our lips. What does that mean?  For one thing, it means our lives are out of balance.

I’ve worked so hard to resist the demented badge of honor that “crazy busy” seems to carry with it now.  I’ve made changes in my life that have brought me closer to the balance I crave and that I know is so important.  But I know of that vulnerability of which I spoke.  For, alas, I am that reliable, responsible, practical woman who not once, but twice, missed my date with, yes, a local Girl Scout Troop.   I tell you true: I have never been so embarrassed in my entire life.   But in that mistake, and in my own understanding, God offered me a not-so-subtle message.  Something is out of balance.  Temporarily.  Because I know what I must do in times such as these (beside make amends, of course). I need more quiet time for reflection.  I need to reflect on what I need to let go of.  I will look to my spiritual director as a partner in unpacking this so that I will return to the path.  But I, just like all of you, must be diligent for there is no easy way to the balanced life.

Said Gilbert, “The best we can do … in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally – no matter what insanity is transpiring out there.”

When Gilbert first arrived in Italy, she went to the library and took out a volume of poetry by the American poet, Louise Gluck.   Randomly, she opened the book and the lines that began this sermon greeted her:

Dal centro della mia vita, venne una grande fontana …
From the center of my life, there came a great fountain …

There is a fountain of love within all of us waiting to be let loose.  Imagine, if you will, that fountain.   Which brings us to …

Personal inventory #3:
Is the fountain within the center of your life running like a trickle or bursting forth in all its beauty and glory?  (Just in case:  The latter is better.)

During a week when we celebrate love in all its forms, we must also consider the way to love.  We tap into this center of our lives through the diligent and ongoing quest for a balance between mind, body, & spirit. 

My prayer for you is that these words:  Dal centro della mia vita, venna una grande fontana … come to have meaning for you as your continue on your journey.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Friends.                 Amen.  Blessed be.

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