'Beloved,' an Excerpt from the Book 'Love at the Center'

Editor's Note: What follows is an excerpt from the new expanded edition of Love at the Center, which is due to publish in January.

In a gathering of ministers convened I-don’t-remember-when and I’m-not-certain-where, breathless from the airport and already feeling out of my depth, disorganized, vaguely fraudulent and ill-prepared—as usual—I froze when our convenor, warm and smiling, lit the chalice and invited us forward, one by one, for a ritual. Argh! I suddenly remembered! This had been described to us in the meeting’s invitation, weeks before. We’d been asked to write a microscopic sermon, one or two short sentences, and share it in the circle as a blessing for our colleagues, and for our Association, which was then (as now, as ever, as always, and by definition) in a time of change and Deep Discernment regarding whence we come, and how and whither.

This convening was about that. The ritual would anchor our discussions. Quiet music began, and I squirmed and fretted in my seat. How had I forgotten this assignment? 
 
For our opening chapel service, please come prepared to share with your colleagues in just a few words: what is it you hope the people will receive on Sunday morning in your congregation’s service, whether they are visitors or lifelong members, elders or young children? What for you is the essence of our faith? What gospel are you preaching?

Could it be that I’d “forgotten” because, after all this time, years and years, and torrents of words, I had not yet formed an articulate answer, not yet risked an honest and convincing—to me—answer?

One by one, my colleagues spoke, movingly, courageously, some in Sunday voices, thoughtful and well-reasoned, some haltingly and tearfully, all generous, all kind. No bluster here, no rhetorical flourishes or arrogant edges, but only grace, amazingly, their words anointing us, the crumpled cards and scribbled slips of paper in their hands placed like offerings upon the altar. There was no pulpit here to hide behind, there were no robes or stoles to shroud us. One by one, these ministers, old and young, people I’d known and admired so long, and many I didn’t know, shared blessings from a vulnerability deep inside themselves with integrity that was at once heart-breaking and heartening. They testified. The softening silence after each one was like a kind of sacrament. Then, and there, decades past my ordination, I was converted, a little, to a Unitarian Universalism I’d not known before, nor trusted could exist. One by one, my colleagues spoke of love.

I’ve never been an extemporaneous preacher. I really don’t know how, nor why, I spoke the words I did when my turn came. Somehow I heard myself telling them, and meaning it, urgently,

You are beloved of God.

(Who was it who said that preachers preach unfailingly the sermon that they themselves most need to hear?)

You are beloved of God. 
It is so easy to forget this. 
Our calling on this earth is to remember and remind each other, 
with every move we make, 
every action, 
every breath. 
Our calling is to remember and remind each other 
without ceasing 
who we are, and what, 
which is beloved.

Something like that. I scribbled it in pen on the palm of my hand, and soon sweated it away.

It was not a sermon I had ever preached before, directly. These were not words I’d ever chosen, having stepped gingerly for years, and perhaps a bit too nimbly, through the theological minefields of congregational semantic life, always skating on the surfaces, not quite diving in. But here, unexpectedly, with the compelling power and the solace, the blessed assurance, of my comrades’ benedictions on my head, I realized that for me this is the heart of it, this implicit, inherent “beloved-ness.” Behind the silky scrim of woven words each week lay this hope, this intention, this aching aspiration, that whether they “believed in God” or not, and whether or not I did, the people would know themselves beloved, which is to say, worthy, with a place, as the poet says, “in the family of things,” a place no more and no less exalted than anyone’s place, or the place of the grasses, the trees, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, a holy, wholly undisputed, rightful place on this, our common ground. To know themselves, to know ourselves, beloved without question, is the place where we begin. And from there, by our actions, by our choices, by our art, by our risks, by our work and tears and prayers and mutual support, by our solidarity and singing (lullabies to children and chanting in the streets), by our tenderness, and when it is required, rage – by our love, in other words—to remind each other. This is our calling in this world.

I care—a great deal—about the precision of language, and theological speech in particular. I know the lethal and life-giving potency of words and the ease with which sloppily chosen words may be weaponized or just misunderstood, and yet . . . I don’t want precision or theology or semantics to get in the way of this conviction, this hunch, this simple, somewhat radical (to the very root) claim about love. As music and dancing, paintings, poems, and prayers insist, metaphor speaks sometimes with more fluency, more light, more prophetic possibility and more pastoral tenderness, than the deadening thud of literal, prosaic explanations. I’ve not been a minister long enough, I’ve not been a person long enough, to know much about God at all. But I believe we are called to move through our days as if we are beloved of God, as if we all belong, we ourselves and everyone else, and every living thing. When I say, “You are beloved of God,” I mean you are beloved OF COURSE. You just are.

Now and here, in this unlikely, perhaps un-replicated, gorgeous world, this shimmering, sorrowing world, we exist, together. No scientist, no sorcerer, no sacred text can ever fully tell us why or how it’s happened, this existence—whether we ask our whole lives long in the idiom of astrophysics or a child’s bedazzled wonder. We are here now, and we all belong. Beloved. And therefore my work, however imperfect at the end of each day, my work and my joy is to strive to act accordingly, as if in your presence (whoever you are, wherever on this earth you are), I were in the presence of the holy. I have no other words to describe it, this love that guides us, calls us, heals us, and holds us in its hands.