In this Issue
February 2006

FROM THE PASTOR'S DESK
Love everywhere speaks
By Rev. Sara E. Ascher

Dear Friends,

The month of Love is upon us, or so popular culture tells us. As though Love exists only during the briefest month of the year. Bernard of Clairvaux, an 11th-century Benedictine monk, reminds us however, “love everywhere speaks.” He argues in the collection of his sermons on the Song of Songs within the Hebrew Scripture, that the love of the Divine is in all things. That all of creation is an expression of that Godly love and it is our work as human beings to recognize that love in the world.

But we are busy. We rush around in the last hours on the 14th of February to find small tokens of the love we feel for those in our lives. They may not be inexpensive in price tag, but often they are cheap representations of the true love that exists in the world and that we hold in our hearts for those in our lives. We get so caught up in not being empty handed on that one day of the year, we are fearful that our emptiness will be understood as lack of caring or attention. We have literally bought into the idea that if we can “pull it off big” this year that in this one gesture we will prove our love. Not so.

Maybe the empty hand, but the full heart is the better gift this Valentine’s Day. Yes, this sounds a little corny and even like a greeting card, but Bernard tells us in his sermons that it is our attention to Love that is what matters, not the possessions we express it through. That is not to say do not express your love. On the contrary. Express it often and in many ways. But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that one gesture great or small gets us off the hook for the rest of the year.

Bernard demands that our lives be an expression of love. He asks the community he is preaching to, to let that love come through them in all they do. This is much more difficult than choosing the appropriate gift.

Love is so often something idealized or romanticized. We are told through greeting cards and heart-shaped candy boxes that love is simple and always blissful. But that is not true and those who have loved someone for a long time know this. To love another through the hardships of life, that is the test. To love when we do not like, do not approve, are angry or disappointed in the one we love, that is the Love Bernard speaks of.
So may there be love in your life, not the chocolate-covered, gift-wrapped, or sweet tasting kind, but the deep abiding love that the Holy offers us and that we can learn to offer one another. May your expressions of love in this season of deep winter be rich and warm and lasting. And may you hear the love that “everywhere speaks.”

Rev. Sara E. Ascher is pastor of Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church.

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