Rev.
Ann C. Fox
(508) 992-7081
RevAnnFox@aol.com
Unitarian Universalist
Society of Fairhaven
Though Lovers Be Lost, Love Shall Not
a sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox
February 11, 2007
Note: A reading is attached, which you might like to read first.
Have you ever been in love? Have you ever loved another person such that it has inspired a great lifting of your spirits? Have you ever held another person in such great affection that just to think of him or her makes you smile inwardly and outwardly? I ask you these different ways of responding to love for I know that we each experience love in different intensities according to the structure of our personality and also according to our relationship to the person; also, the loved one might be a beloved child or friend—thus, the intensity of passion can be different.
In the reading, from the Song of Solomon, it is clear that the woman is intensely and romantically in love with her male beloved. Many think it is remarkable that such stark romantic poetry is a book of the Bible. It is a slender 5 pages long. Because it is poetry, its date is hard to determine, but many scholars agree that it dates back to the time of King Solomon, which would have been around the year 1,000 BCE (Before the Common Era) or about 3,000 years ago and is in the style of Middle-Eastern love poetry. It is also the only book of the Bible where a woman speaks directly and extensively in her own voice. Who is she? Was she the author? Perhaps she was an educated foreign wife of King Solomon. In other chapters of the Song, she refers to her own vineyard. She was also dark skinned and calls herself “swarthy.” She was perhaps not accepted by other Jewish women because of class or ethnic group. She was certainly confident of her beauty for she also calls herself “comely.”
The purpose of all scripture is to instruct. To what was this love poem instructing us? The attitude of Judaism was that human sexuality was a gift of God. In earliest scripture we read that a young man should not be sent into battle before the end of the first year of his marriage. (Deut. 24:5 – “When a man is newly married he shall not go out with the army or be charged with any business; he shall be free at home one year, to be happy with his wife whom he has taken.”) This would have been to hopefully produce an heir; but also clearly was valuing the joy of human sexuality!
I believe that The Song of Solomon has three purposes. One is the description of human love experienced everywhere and the woman expresses that love in explicitly human terms. Second, she also challenges the prejudices of other women who would diminish her for not being a light-skinned beauty or the most admired class or ethnic background. Third, it may well be a metaphor for divine and human love: God is the beloved; the woman is the chosen people Israel, and this love can never be lost. I wonder also whether those who gathered the scriptures together wanted us to ponder the meaning of this poem through the millennia.
You might wonder how “The Song of Solomon” fits into Judeo-Christian scripture. It is part of the Jewish Scripture that we used to call the Old Testament and that Christians included as a precursor to their New Testament, made up of the Gospels and other writings. (Jews, of course, do not think of their Scripture as the “Old Testament”. For them, there is only one scripture.) Now, in an attempt to be politically correct, we call the Old Testament “the Jewish Bible.” The Jews think of their Scripture in three groupings: one is the Five Books of Moses (or The Torah); the second is The Prophets; and the third is The Writings (which Christians refer to as The Wisdom Literature). The Song of Solomon is part of The Writings or Wisdom Literature. I hope you will read the entire poem for it is very beautiful indeed and you can draw your own conclusions.
There is one more love relationship and that is the love of God for the individual and the love of the individual for God. Monks and nuns in medieval monasteries had great and intense “affairs” with their Beloved, their God. And their poetry shows this. Even St. Augustine in his letters to God writes as to a lover. I wonder how inspired they all were by the Song of Solomon! The term “God Is Love” comes to us from the Universalist faith in their attempt to describe their view of God.
Loving the invisible is far less complex than the love we experience in the human drama. Human love gives us great joy whether it is the love of a lover or the love of a child or friend or community. However, most of us become deeply attached to the object of our love. When we lose that love, we can be plunged into despair or grief. Some people even die of a broken heart because the loved one has gone. But do we really lose love?
Counselors might help us to integrate that loss into our lives. This is one reason that I like our tradition of having a Celebration of Life service when someone dies for it often begins the process of changing our perspective from seeing only a loss to seeing what we still have—the memories, the gifts that the loved one has left behind.
There can also be grief when a child has taken a job 3,000 miles away and then marries. We have to let that child go for the sake of their growth as well as our own. The love of that child is not lost, it is just that it is transformed and we would do well to integrate into our lives that that child was for us and who he or she is becoming. Kahlil Gibran says, “Your children are not your children….for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday….You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”
We must learn to let others go while valuing what they leave us. This is how we transform love and grow ourselves.
Some of us are left with the bitterness of rejected love of bygone relationships. This rejected love needs to be valued for what good it gave us. I say this for the sake of us who are divorced for it is hard to know what to do with what was. This valuing of what was can be transforming love if we will let it be so. The choice, the intent, is ours.
The poet, Dylan Thomas, gives us a perspective worth considering in his poem “Death Has No Dominion.” This is the first verse of the poem:
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked--they shall be one
with the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones
gone,
they shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
though they sink through the sea they shall
rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And
death shall have no dominion.
Dylan Thomas is telling us that nothing is lost; it is simply transformed. Our beloveds have left us the life we had together, whether the beloved is a spouse, a child, or friend. You still have the treasure of your memories. Also, if as many believe, the soul goes on, then the love is still felt and still there.
With all of this talk about love, perhaps you’d like an example of what love looks like through the eyes of a child. A Day Care worker asked her students what love looks like and this is what four-year old Mary Ann said, "Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day."
Pets can remind us of the joy of the moment, the joy that is there even in the face of loss. If we can reclaim the joy in living after loss, it can free our hearts to love once more the life we have and those around us.
The transformation of the world depends upon the transformation of individuals to love—themselves, others, and beyond their families, friends, and “coupledoms.” This is why community is so important for it enlarges our small family world. Through community, we are able to feel the tentacles of the love of the world. We bring one another the greater love for which we long deep down. When we turn to the concerns of the world from the strength of our community, we discover a love that is far greater that we could possibly imagine. Some call it the love of God. Others are satisfied with simply experiencing the multiplied power of a gathered community of open hearts and minds on a Sunday morning, unburdened by doctrine.
Our third Principle calls us to spiritual growth. The love expressed in our personal relationships, then in community relationship, and then in the social justice causes we embrace help us to transform ourselves and the world.
I am thankful that Valentine’s Day comes once a year for it gives us the opportunity to think about love and what it means to us in its narrow form of loving another to its expanded form of loving humankind and it also may include divine love. May love for all of us continue long.
References
Das, Lama Surya. Letting Go of the Person You used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation, New York: Broadway Books, 2003.
Newsom, Carol A. and Ringe, Sharon H., editors. The Women’s Bible Commentary, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.
Reading: “The Song of Solomon” 2:1-17
(Also known as The Song of Songs) from The Holy Bible (RSV)
I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of
the valley.
As a lily among brambles, so is my love among maidens.
As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among young
men.
With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples; for I am sick with love.
O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced
me!
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the hinds of the
fields, that you stir not up nor awaken love until it please.
The voice of my beloved!
Behold, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle, or a young stag.
Behold, there he stands behind our wall,
Gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come
away; for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice
of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give
forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away…”
My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures his flock
among the lilies.
Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a
gazelle, or a young stag upon rugged mountains.
© The Rev. Ann C. Fox