Sermons

I thoroughly considered this concept and turned it over in my mind.  I turned it over again and again,  for over a month. My consideration—what is a liberating love, how precisely does such love appear? How does it show up in our lives? I think I carefully grappled with this term for so long because of the fact that it is such a valuable thing. Liberating love is not a love you keep contained,  nor that one can even necessarily always physically embrace. Rather it is in the absence of direct contact,  in the spaces between that enables such a force of love to be.

In my exploration of this type of love I dug into the earlier read poetic excerpt by the late writer Maya Angelou, proclaiming that “love liberates”. In the poem she points out the concern of distance in which some acts of love are not directly feasible, yet she reasserts, “But that’s not possible now, so I love you. Go.”

And this made me think specifically of loves that encompass separations, whether in space, time, and even with the passing of a lifetime. In awe of such a thing, I wondered, what exactly is this love that transcends in such a way? In what ways does such liberating love show up for us each?

As I further explored this, I came to see the complexity in that it is wide ranging in how it appears. But to better understand the common thread in such a diverse display I named some pieces of what I find a Liberating Love may include. From my perspective, Liberating love is

Love that allows you to find and be your true self;

Love that does not hold you in place, but celebrates and admires your growth and unique being;

Love that does not expect perfection, and allows for grace;

Love that acknowledges and accepts that we each will make mistakes;

Love that recognizes the inherent worth of the individual;

Love that challenges us to recognize this worth in others and in self;

Love that strives to respect and uphold right relationship;

Love that respects individual autonomy;

Love that wishes us each to find and to be at peace;

Love that sustains despite separation, distance, or time;

Love that is despite challenges faced.

And that is where I settled. Liberating Love includes “Love… despite”.

As expressed in the Maya Angelou quote I began considering love from even the Divine in this way, a liberating “love… despite”. Divine love, as that from the universe, Spirit, a spiritual guardian;  one that may be ever on-looking, but allows us each to independently tread, albeit shakily through life. Like children we each beam in our own pride (and even disbelief) that we are each doing this living thing. And then we fall, in some capacity or another.  Stunned, embarrassed, hurt the Divine remains there but does not always seem to intervene. Sometimes we will be angry, at this entity-- where is my comfort,  my warning, or my praise when needed?

I too am subject to such criticism of the divine,  of the workings of the universe. It often may take time to come to terms with this disappointment.  But after the tears have dried, and the shock has subsided, it’s easier to take the lack of instant intervention for what it may be for us. It is at times a teaching moment. And this teaching moment of letting us explore and fail as we try is in part experience of liberating love. It is Love not because this parent is taking a hands-off approach. Moreover I would even further criticize the Divine as neglectful were it not for the simultaneous existence of other creations going through the very same process. In community we feel and experience the divine attention and comfort we need and crave from and through each other. It is in the existence of community that the liberating love of the divine is actualized.

In community we may directly experience the “love… despite”. In community we have shared characteristics that bring us together,  but also differences that root us, and intertwine us in unique interdependent relationships. And healthy community is not just an echo chamber of approval. Rather it is accepting and loving of the individual,  and helping hold a mirror to the person, to their own growing edges. In community, comfort and reflection, of self and the whole are necessary.

And no it is not easy. But liberating love isn’t. It is freeing, but not easy.  It makes us feel deeply, come to hard realizations, make difficult decisions, and while tending to the garden of community,  also implores us to let go of trying to control and balance everything by oneself.

…

I recently left Pennsylvania. I was born there, and I moved from there with my family when I was very small. But I moved back there last year to be with family and tend to my own well being,  a Sabbatical of sorts, after several years of seminary training. When I left Pennsylvania I left behind my mother, who now tends to the family home, that was built by my grandparents, and where she was raised. It was bittersweet parting,  I made my way back to the familiar coast of New England, where I grew up.

My mother was teary eyed, but told me she knew this would come to be eventually. And she never fought it, this reality coming to pass. But rather supported me in making thought out plans to head back East. She has an empty nest again. And my heart was heavy going,  but I knew there is currently limited growth for me back there. I am grateful. And in leaving I felt my heart strings pull, knowing this is the feel of a liberating love at work. “A Love… despite”.

My mother made a similar trek when I was small, to Boston where she and my father would reside together with us kids. I know the move was not easy for her, or her parents either. And the unknowns of having ones child, ones beloved so far away are difficult.

And this is in part reason for my return to Maine. There are a myriad of compositions of families, some of which involve separate households.  Miles,  states, even countries apart. Mine is one of them. I feel like a lot of guilt goes into having a family that may have been distanced by separation or divorce. I will not glamorize the reality of such separation,  they are hard. These separations can be confusing and painful. But what I know to be true, is that the love of a loving parent, guardian, or relation, no matter the distance is of the liberating kind. The kind that says I love you even when I do not get to be near you everyday, nor if I don’t see or hear or embrace you every single day.

It is the kind of love that vows to give space and time, and yet in an instant if needed willing write, call, or even to drive clear across country to be right there for you.

And though I have used parents and family as examples for liberating love this may not always be the case, nor are these the only exemplars of liberating love. This kind of love is the kind where we each may not be around or even near each other often, but upon reacquainting it is as if no time has passed, and distance has not mattered. This kind of love can be between close friends, beloveds, whether distanced by space, time, and even in death.

This is Love, love despite; a liberating love that says you may go your way, and I go mine, both free in our individual existences, but our care for each other is never in doubt, and remains… despite.

…

Alas, I also consider liberating love in my own coming to be here in this sanctuary. I was welcomed and loved into ministry, starting with this very Congregation as ministerial intern,  between 2020 and 2022. Then, as my set time eclipsed, I made my departure, with a year long delay before allowed renewed contact. And I am not the first,  nor likely the last to have this unique experience of being held and grown in ministry by this congregation. To open up, mutually vulnerable, to develop this relationship and then to set the intern off into flight, off into a lifelong formation is a unique and blessed gift that this congregation gave. And so I am here, returned, in a different capacity,  but still reflecting back the care that was bestowed upon me. For this I am ever changed, and grateful. This relationship is yet another example of the vast diversity of prismatic glowing displays of the presence and beauty of liberating love at work, in and despite space between.

…

Dear ones, I pray

May you each be guided, sustained, and have faith in liberating love that is despite; despite challenge, distance, time, all the many spaces in between. May you be comforted and motivated by awareness of the presence and power of the gift of liberating love within each of your own individual lives. May this love be to you apparent, beautiful, and ever bountiful.

May it be so.

Amen.