“To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love.”
“To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love.”
These words of Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh
may well explain the mystery
of how we can profess love for one another
yet continue to experience pain.
And where there is pain, there is distrust.
While love may be thought to be one of the most
quintessential capacities of the human condition,
indeed, much of our faith leads us to believe
Love is the core of, and goal of, our existence,
yet, Love is also very much
a learned dynamic interaction that improves its quality
with deliberate practice and focused attention.
One song that has been echoing in my mind as I wrote this sermon
is Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy”
– in particular the last lyric that says:
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return”
When we learn to love and to love in return,
we become trustworthy
and build trusting relationships.
We have all most likely experienced
many emotions we attribute as Love.
And, I would even go so far as to say that most,
if not all of us,
have sought to experience the wonderful sentiment
of loving and being loved in return.
Yet,that loving is not a given
(not posit automatically when we feel affection for another),
but rather,
as Nat King Cole suggests: Loving is a Learning.
Hmmm….
Let us agree for the moment and for the duration of today’s exploration, that Love is active,
it is a communion,
a covenant.
And to achieve it requires mutual understanding and trust.
Can we agree on that, for now?
Now let’s unpack this a bit.
Let’s start with trust.
Research professor Dr. Brené Brown has provided us with
The Anatomy of Trust in which describes Seven Elements of Trust.
Seven elements of being able to be Trusting and Trustworthy.
She calls it by the acronym Braving. And the words making up the acronym are:
- Boundaries
- Reliability
- Accountability
- Vault
- Integrity
- Non-judgment
- Generosity
Boundaries. Boundaries are crucial.
And, spoiler-alert,
this is where we go beyond
many assumed definitions
of the altruistic interpretations of “unconditional love”
and move towards mutually beneficial“undoubted love.”
Lack of adequate boundaries can destroy relationships.
Lack of clarifying conversations
about what each partner’s boundaries are
can compromise the foundation
and set in motion for a relationship to fail.
Boundaries are important.
Clear understanding of,
and agreements about,
each others boundaries,
are necessary in the blueprint of a healthy relationship.
Why?
Because boundaries are the default touchstone
to confirm or deny
Trustworthiness in both positive and negative circumstances.
For contained in our Boundaries are the things we want,
and the things we don’t want.
We know these things in our hearts and minds.
We cannot assume our partners can read our hearts and minds,
nor assume that their boundaries are the same as ours.
Boundaries need disclosures and mutual agreements.
And, because we are not static creatures,
but rather ever evolving in our values, philosophies and spiritualities,
these are not one-time conversations
established at the beginning of a relationship
or as a result of a crisis
and never to be spoken of again.
No.
They need to be updated over time
to assure that our partners are aware of
subtle and significant shifts in our perceptions, priorities and desires,
and that we are aware of theirs.
New awarenesses may lead to the need to update
our agreements with each other.
Reliability. To build trust in a relationship
we need to be mutually reliable.
We need to be able to count on each other
to do what we say we will do.
Consistently.
Accountability. Own your mistakes. We all make them.
Apologize and make amends,
for in making yourself vulnerable in this way
creates avenues for trust.
Lying, side-stepping, or blaming someone else for your mistakes
creates distrust.
Vault. A vault is a place you can keep what is most valuable to you.
So this element of trust equates that you
keep the confidences
that are told to you.
They are placed with you for safe-keeping,
not for sharing with anyone
other than the person who gave them to you.
Most especially is this important in your most personal relationship,
your partner, your spouse.
They need to be able to trust that you will not gossip about them.
Integrity. Similar to reliability, integrity means
our actions align with our words.
Practice what we claim are our values,
not merely professing them.
Non-judgment. Non-judgment in a trusting relationship
allows room for each partner
to be able express their feelings
or to ask for help without feeling judged.
Now, this can be a tricky one,
because it is not an “out” for someone to breach a boundary
or behave without accountability.
No.
A space of non-judgement in a relationship
means to not place your values as sacrosanct over someone else’s.
Non-judgement is accepting someone else’s truth
even if it is not your own.
And – not making them feel guilty about it.
Which leads us to the next word in the acronym:
Generosity. Generosity draws upon Rousseauian philosophies
of believing in the best intentions of others.
If, and more likely, when,
our partner says or does something that hurts or upsets us,
be generous with your interpretations of their possible intentions.
Do not assume the worst.
Do not assume nefarious intentions.
Rather, be open to discovering their actual intentions.
Footnote: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) was a French philosopher and writer of the Age of Enlightenment. His Political Philosophy, particularly his formulation of social contract theory (or Contractarianism), strongly influenced the French Revolution and the development of Liberal, Conservative and Socialist theory. Jean-Jacques Rousseau strongly believed in the innate goodness of man and in basic human rights founded upon universal natural law; in addition, he believed that both rulers and the citizens have natural human rights as well as obligations to each other which should be bound in a social contract.
Boundaries
Reliability
Accountability
Vault
Integrity
Non-judgment
Generosity
BRAVING
Braving. For certainly Trusting requires vulnerability and learning the unknown.
Learning how to love and be loved in return,
also means learning how to trust and be trusted in return.
For as long as we have had words to speak,
we have used them to capture subjective definitions of love.
In Hebrew, two pertinent words for love are:
- Ahav and Racham
- Ahav (to mean: love),
- Racham (more specifically translated as: tender mercies – a romantic love
Footnote: During the Babylonian exile, Aramaic became the language spoken by the Jews, and Aramaic square script replaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. After the Achaemenid Empire captured Babylon, Aramaic became the language of culture and learning. ((In Aramaic (the Aramaic Bible) is the word Chav ))
In Aramaic we find the word Chav
which is similar to the Hebrew word Ahav
to mean love.
except, their definitions are unique in nuance.
The key difference is that:
The Aramaic Chav is a love that is not necessarily returned.
Chav is speaking of a love that flows from just one person
and is not completed.
(akin to the oft spoken Unconditional Love)
For love to be completed, it must be returned.
Love can be lonely and painful if it is not returned.
The Hebrew Racham is a completed love.
This is true love, undoubted love.
The Ancient Greeks had six definitive kinds of love
– and within some of them, even more discreet definitions….
….ranging from erotic to friendship,
playful to self-sacrificial.
Today I want to lift up what the Ancient Greeks called Pragma Love.
Pragma meant longstanding love.
This, the mature love – the deep understanding that develops
between long-married couples, long-time partners.
Pragma was about making an effort to give love
rather than just receive;
it is making compromises to help the relationship work over time,
and showing patience and tolerance.
Humanist Philosopher Erich Fromm observed that
we expend too much energy on “falling in love”
and need to learn more how to “stand in love.”
Pragma is the awareness and practice of standing in love.
In his book The Art of Loving, Fromm tells us:
Love is primarily giving, not receiving.
Love is a decision… it is a promise.
If love were only a feeling,
there would be no basis for the promise to love.
A feeling comes and it may go.
Mature love requires
discipline,
concentration,
patience,
faith,
and the overcoming of narcissism.
Love isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.”
Love is active, not a passive affect;
it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.”
Love is not a resting place,
but moving, growing, working together;
when there is harmony or conflict,
joy or sadness
Mature love is union
under the condition of preserving one’s integrity,
love overcomes the sense of isolation and separateness.
Fromm continues to claim that:
“Infantile love follows the principle: “I love because I am loved.”
Mature love follows the principle: “I am loved because I love.”
Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.”
Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”
What of the practice of loving?
A key is to understand
the importance of knowing how the person you love
wants to be loved,
and having the person you love
know how you want to be loved,
and somehow,
together,
learning how to love each other
so that you both feel loved.
This takes commitment.
It takes understanding.
It takes practice.
And when this is achieved:
Trust is fortified.
But how?
How can we learn to love our partners
in a way that they will feel our love?
How can we teach our partners to love us
so that we feel loved?
Gary Chapman in his book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
describes five ways humans express and experience love.
According to his theory,
each person has primary and secondary love languages.
These are our preferred ways of experiencing love.
Of receiving love.
The five love languages are:
- Words of Affirmation
- Acts of Service
- Receiving Gifts
- Quality Time
- Physical Touch
Each of us assign priority ranking to these love languages.
We are happiest, and feel most loved,
when we experience love regularly
by way of our primary love language preference.
Our joy seeps away when we do not receive
love in the way we need it most.
Most of us are familiar
with the studies that point to babies who do not receive love
do not thrive. Some of us know of the “silent nurseries”
where babies born into war-torn and poverty-stricken locales
living in orphanages without sufficient staff to care for them
…they learn in infancy – there is no sense in crying
because no one responds.
All of them.
What an eery sound of silence that must be,
encompassing the absence of Loving attention.
In similar ways, as adults, when our needs for love go unanswered,
we shut down.
If, for instance, our primary love language is Physical Touch
and we go days, or weeks or more without a hug,
or holding hands, or a caress, or physical intimacy,
our heart wilts.
If, our primary love language is Words of Affirmation,
and we rarely if ever receive affectionate words,
and are not told,
“You are important to me,”
“I adore you” and “I love you,”
our heart carries aching wounds.
If Quality Time is our primary love language,
and the person we love is too busy with work and other distractions
to honor our need for dedicated time together,
our hearts become sorrow-filled.
When our needs are not met
we experience feelings of rejection,
betrayal,
sadness,
and loneliness.
We feel unloved.
And, even unlovable.
It erodes our trust we have for those we love.
And, the reality is that many times this is not an accurate reflection,
for our perception of their failure
to love us in the ways we wish to be loved
does not mean they do not love us.
Rather, it is that we collectively
do not understand the need to understand each other.
And the importance of acting according
to what we discover about each other
in order to create trust.
We need to trust each other
to be able to love each other.
We build trust in each other
by how we choose to love each other.
This is not a paradox.
Trust is built in large and small moments,
large and small actions.
So too are feelings of betrayal built in both large and small ways
if loving is not attended to thoughtfully.
An obstacle for us
is that our default way of loving our partners,
is by loving them
the way we want to be loved.
By giving the kinds of attention to them
that if we were to receive it,
we would feel loved.
For instance,
If we feel most loved with words of affirmation,
we may find ourselves writing little sticky notes
with “I Love You” on them
and placing them in locations where our mate can find them.
Or placing proclamations on our social media pages
about how proud we are of our spouse,
or how beautiful or handsome they are.
Alternately, if our partner’s primary love language is Acts of Service
they often are doing things for us
large and small
to ease the tasks of our day
such as taking care of the dishes, doing laundry, yard-work,
errands, fixing things,
or any of the many things that need attending to in any given day.
In each of these scenarios, we and our partners
recognize love in a certain way
and act upon love in ways that resonate with us as individuals.
Which works well if we have the same love language as our partner.
And not so well if we have different love language preferences.
Unless we engage in a discovery process
about how our partner wants to receive love,
we can begin to assume our thoughtful demonstrations of love
are valued by our spouse in the same way we value them,
when in fact they are not.
This can lead to us feeling disappointed
if our spouse does not respond in gratitude,
or in like-kind,
to our displays of affection.
More than that,
we can begin to feel like we are doing all we can
to demonstrate our love to our partner
and come to the false conclusion
that they are not doing all they can
to show their love for us.
When, most likely, the opposite could be true.
When we take time to discover
what the love language is of someone we love,
and respond to this knowledge
by consistently loving them in the way they want to be loved,
this builds Trust.
And it erases doubts.
But – we may wonder –
What if the primary love language of the person we love
is difficult for us to express?
Perhaps we are not good with words,
but our partner craves words of affirmation?
Or what if we have residue from past experiences
where we felt taken for granted,
perhaps we did the lion’s share of the work,
and now the idea of doing even small tasks for our partner
is not something we wish to do
for reminds us of echoes of the past,
yet Acts of Service is our partner’s preferred Love Language?
We need to remember that
Love is not merely a feeling,
Love is an action.
And loving is not only an ideal,
Loving is a covenant.
As Unitarian Universalists, we are a people of covenant.
To be in covenant
is to be in mutual respect and mutual promise.
To be in covenant
is to hold to our promises
even if we have to stretch beyond our comfort zones.
Love is beautiful.
And, loving takes work.
Work.
Sustained effort for a purpose to produce a desired result.
To be in covenant
also means to forgive each other when we fail,
even if we fail a thousand times….
…and we will.
And,
even in the wake of failure,
in the face of discomfort,
unwavering faith can be achieved
when partners commit to one another.
I encourage you to find ways to stretch into Love and Loving.
To take time to become familiar with each other’s love languages,
and recognize the love your partner is extending to you,
even if it is not your primary love language.
I encourage you to be tenacious in your efforts
to demonstrate your love for each other.
One final note about the aspects of love and trust
is given to us again, by Thich Nhat Hanh
and it is one of the 96 words for love
in the Sanskrit language of ancient India:
Karuna,
related to the word karma, is translated as “compassion”
Karuna is described as the “quivering of the heart”
we experience when we are open and able
to truly see suffering and are moved to do something about it.
Knowledge and understanding are always at the root of the practice.
Thich Nhat Hanh tells us
Deep looking is needed,
“directed toward the person you love.
Because if you do not understand this person,
you cannot love properly.” And trust cannot exist.
“To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love.”
May we learn how to love and be loved in return.
Undoubted Love, It’s a Matter of Trust.
Amen.