If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

(I Corinthians 13:1-13)

This passage from Paul's letter to the Corinthians is often taken to be the ultimate description of unconditional love. I may inspire, I may show great generosity, I may possess wisdom, my faith might be strong, but unless I am motivated by love, all of these are nothing. Because love abides kindly, steadily hospitable to the other, no matter what. And human love? The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, thought that such love recognizes the almost infinite distances that always exist between people and such love can grow into a wonderful living side by side as we see each other whole and against a wide sky. Love works unconditionally when it extends a welcome for the other, as well as for the self. When it is accompanied by acceptance, openness, respect and kindness.

One gives up all one has for this. This is the love that resides in the self, the self-love out of which all love pours. The fountain, the source. At the center. One gives up all the treasured sorrow and self-mistrust, all the precious loathing and suspicion, all the secret triumphs of withdrawal. One bends in the wind. There are many disciplines that strengthen one's athleticism for love. It takes all one's strength. (Mary Caroline Richards)

The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm put it this way, albeit less poetically: Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence...Only in this central experience is human reality, only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love. Love experienced thus is a constant challenge; it is not as resting place, but a moving, growing, working together: even whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experiences themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are one with themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized.

Everyone says that love is the answer, but to me, love is the question. From the poet e.e. cummings:

  love is a place
  &  through this place of
  love move
  (with  brightness of peace)
  all  places

  yes is a  world
  & in this world of
  yes  live
  (skillfully curled)
  all  worlds
  

Does he mean that love lies at the core of life? Is this what the Beatles meant when they sang - All you need is love?

Is there an unconditional love in a place of yes, in the center, in the heart of the universe, that gives birth to us and to all life, that holds us and receives us again after death? Is it God? Goddess? Spirit? Parent? Is it you? Is it me? Is it scientific? Is it unnameable? Ultimately unknowable? Too much to speak of at all? What do you think? What do you believe? Have you ever felt such? As friends or lovers or parents we have possibly experienced our love as the nurturing soil in which and from which miraculous growth has occurred. Love on this level provides a world of yes in which we can soar. I'm still not sure I can define what unconditional love is, but as Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote, "Words are uncertain and speak uncertain things. But speaking this or that, they speak us. Love is an equivocal word, like all words. It is not a word, said the Founder: (love) is a vision." Unconditional love, for me, is expressed in these words by Rumi, the 14th c Persian Sufi, as used in our hymnal. Come, come whoever you are: wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come yet again, come. Or through Philip Booth's poem "First Lesson", a poem I love and which I have shared with you before.

  Lie back, daughter, let your head
  be  tipped back in the cup of my hand.
  Gently, and I will hold you.  Spread
  your arms wide, lie out on the stream
  and  look high at the gulls. A dead-
  man's-float is face down. You  will dive
  and swim soon enough where this  tidewater
  ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
  me,  when you tire on the long thrash
  to your island, lie up, and  survive.
  As you float now, where I held you
  and  let go, remember when fear
  cramps your heart what I told  you:
  lie gently and wide to the light-year
  stars,  lie back, and the sea will hold you.
  Lie back, and the sea will hold  you.
  No matter what, the sea will hold you. 
  Lie up, and  survive.  That is the nature of life.  
  Come, yet again, come. 

Perhaps this can be called unconditional love. Does unconditional love exist between people? Maybe no and maybe yes. The notion of unconditional love at the core appeals. It appeals to our pain, it appeals to our fear, it appeals to our loneliness. It is important to know that we are loved. I think of unconditional love and I think it means love no matter what. It can exist in any type of love relationship: romantic love, passionate love, philanthropic love, parental love, friendship love. I think of love that has a more conditional quality, be it romantic love, passionate love, philanthropic love, parental love, friendship love, and I think it means love as long as certain conditions are met, and my hope is that they will be met forever. Thus, I will love as long as my feelings remain the same and I hope they will, as long as yours do and I hope they will, as long as we are happy and I hope we are forever, as long as everything goes according to plan, as long as you behave yourself, and so on. It's only human to want love to last, especially on our own terms. Why else would we risk our hearts and lives into someone else's keeping. To love is to take a chance and it is reasonable that we would be protective, or conditional, about our love. Aldous Huxley agreed with the biblical notion that - Love casts out fear. But, he added, conversely, fear casts out love. . . Fear, he went on, also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thoughts of beauty and truth. In fear we isolate ourselves. In fear we become immobilized. In fear we judge others. In fear we distrust. In fear we blame others. In fear we seek out punishment. In fear we see endings. In fear we withdraw. In fear we cause what we fear to come about.

In my experience people can behave in ways that forfeit our love, or that make it too hurtful or unsafe for us to continue loving them. Fear is often a big part of this. It is a vulnerable enterprise to feel deeply and I may not survive my affections, said writer Terry Tempest Williams. Sometimes people are too embroiled in their own problems to keep love going; or have substance abuse issues; or are too narcissistic, too in love with themselves to extend their love to another; maybe sometimes they just don't know how. Human love is conditional because human love must be mutual to sustain relationship. So is there such a thing as unconditional love between people? I think there can be. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Unconditional love, love no matter what. Love with no protection, no holding back. The trick is not to be dependent on any outcome; not to rely on such and such a thing happening; to expect changes; to be willing to be disappointed by love, knowing how to take care of oneself around that and remain committed to keep on loving anyway. Have you ever experienced that? As a mother, I think I have, and do, experience such a love for my son. I would like to experience it with all the people I have loved deeply. Such love shows itself. Such love leaves its footprints on our lives. We don 't see love itself, but rather its tracks. They are distinctive and complicated tracks, sometimes appearing in conjunction with other tracks, sometimes even covered over by other tracks. But we know love is here by the markers it leaves. One of the markers of unconditional love is a love of the separate preciousness of the other. It is such a gladness that he/she is alive that nothing, no amount of difficult, hurtful behavior, can erase it. I will love you, no matter what. I won't always love what you do or say, I may not always like you and I will set limits when necessary, but I will always love it that you are alive. Such love allows us to see the precious person underneath the facade offered to the world. This is love that will not be broken; that always holds the possibility of return and reconciliation. This is love stronger than the strongest. It is love to delight in. It is a kind of love that many of us want to know, need to know. It is a love that requires forgiveness. Forgiveness and forgiveness.

Another marker is that unconditional love doesn't depend upon anything in return. It may want something in return but it does not depend upon it. There' s a difference between wanting and depending. There's not a lot of ego involved in it. The person we love unconditionally doesn't have to meet our expectations, doesn't have to come up to our standards of who or what he/she should be or how he/she should live in order to gain our love. Unconditional love isn't something to win. It is something you receive. It is something you give. Have you heard of that off-Broadway show "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change". Isn't that familiar? How often do we want to change the people we love? Oh yes, of course, it's in their best interests, but we would like them to be whom we'd like them to be. Sometimes, when the ones we love can' t or don't or won't change, we don't get beyond the disappointment and we love them a little less. Yet people rarely change because someone else decides they should. We change when we are appreciated for who we are so that we want to become our best selves for the people who love us. It is very hard to love this way because we tend to want the ones we love to fulfill our needs and expectations and we don?t always consider whether they can, or should, do that. But is it love if we demand that another person exist for our satisfaction? The final marker I want to point out today is that unconditional love contains respect and gratitude. Respect for the person he/she is and gratitude for the person he/she is. This requires understanding the person he/she is. Without some piece of understanding, it's hard to imagine unconditional love. Seeing, knowing and cherishing the ones we love, we become grateful that we can be with them. We want to give them pleasure, make them smile. We want there to be happiness in their lives. We'll put ourselves out for them. We' ll be there for them and offer our presence in sorrow and in joy. This is beginning to sound like perfection and I don't mean it to be. Love isn't perfection. Even when we love unconditionally we get angry, we behave badly, we like some parts of a person better than other parts. We are the best friends we can be at any given moment to the ones we love and some days that is just greater than others. Nevertheless, the ground of unconditional love is respect, gratitude, generosity, and treasuring another human life. If that is the foundation for our love, then even if we forget it's there, it still supports us. It still remains for us to build upon.

We can choose to follow the footprints of unconditional love. Unconditional love is the ethical manifestation of the inter-related nature of life. Love informs our Unitarian Universalist practices and lies at the heart of UU theology, if such there be. When we love and cherish our relationships, personal and communal; when we love and cherish each individual part, then we base our moral and ethical choices upon such unconditional love. We can choose to live our lives based upon what writer and teacher bell hooks calls an ethic of love. She says, "When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. " There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love. While we will necessarily behave differently depending on the nature of a relationship, or have varying degrees of commitment, the values that inform our behavior, when rooted in a love ethic, are always the same for any interaction. . . .Those of us who have already chosen to embrace a love ethic, allowing it to govern and inform how we think and act, know that when we let our light shine, we draw to us and are drawn to other bearers of light. We are not alone. . . .. Choosing to cultivate the practice of unconditional love in at least some human relationship is important because it puts us on the path of a love ethic and asks us to live according to respect, generosity, gratitude, care, responsibility, nurturing the spiritual growth of ourselves and others, and treasuring our inherent worth and dignity. It asks our love to cast out fear, rather than our fear casting out love.

Unconditional love and its ethic of love are the most powerful tools we have for bringing about a beautiful world. When we plug into the unconditional love that surrounds us as the core of life, or the divine, or however else you understand it, when we let it flow, not only into us, but also out of us as unconditional love for others, we live in harmony and synchronicity with the very sources of life. That is powerful indeed. It is awesome; it is energizing; it is strengthening; it is delicious. May we know unconditional love. May we know in the deepest parts of our souls that it holds us like the sea will hold us. May we take it in and give it away again and again unto one another. May it be so.

Closing words: Jayne Relaford Brown

  I am becoming the [person] I've  wanted,           
  I am  becoming the person I 've longed for;  
  grey at the  temples  who  knows she's sufficient,
  soft body,  delighted,  knows  where she's going
  cracked up by  life and  travels   with passion.
  with a laugh that's known  bitter.
  Who  remembers she's precious,
  but, past it, got better;                                       
  but  knows she's not scarce   
  who  knows she is  plenty,
  plenty  to share.