Reflection #119 (8th February 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
I feel I should issue a disclaimer before I get into my sermon – this might be a relief for some and a disappointment for others – but as I asked Sarah to warn you last week, despite the title ‘Free Love’, this sermon is not going to be as racy as you might have anticipated! I’m not talking about ‘free love’ in the euphemistic 1960s sense of sexual liberation and orgiastic revelries (though by all means go for it – in your own time! – if you’ve got the stamina and the full consent of everyone involved).
Instead, I want to start by framing our exploration of love as a profoundly religious question. We speak so much of love in the church and indeed in the wider culture. The word ‘love’ is used in so many different ways and contexts that it is imprecise and confusing. Some years ago, 9 years I think, I wrote my dissertation on the subject of ‘Models of God and the Meaning of Love’. I think there’s still a copy in the church library! And I opened the dissertation with a Biblical quote from the first epistle of John: ‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.’ Even if you are unfamiliar with the scripture you’re probably familiar with the notion that ‘God is Love’.
I am not going to try and get the gist of the whole dissertation into this sermon! It’s just a stop along the way. But the key point, for me, was that love is the centre and foundation of our human search for meaning, purpose, and value in this life. And that, somehow, our symbolic religious language interweaves with our practice of love, with the two supporting and reinforcing each other. The philosopher Keith Ward has said: ‘We should not think of the word “God” as referring to any sort of being… to make such an assertion as “God is Love” is perhaps to have discerned, in our lived experience of loving and being loved by others, something worth ultimate commitment.’ By this I think he means that, often, our experience of loving and being loved is the way in which we humans first intuit that there is a transcendent dimension to life, and this dimension may be known through love, in all its forms.
I will just share the concluding paragraph of the dissertation so you get an overview: ‘Many religious people employ religious language, and God-talk in particular, as a symbolic means of affirming and cultivating that which is most worthy of ultimate commitment in life. “God is Love”, in this sense, means that real, authentic, transforming love – in all its many and varied expressions – is of supreme worth and, as such, it offers a guiding principle for life and a glimpse of the underlying nature of reality.’ I closed with a few words from theologian Edward Vacek, who said: ‘Love is the heart of a person, the font of spirit, the power leading to growth, the bond tying human beings, the world and God into cosmic unity.’
So… that’s the backdrop to this morning’s exploration. Love is, for many of us, a primary source of meaning, value, purpose, depth in this life. And, for some of us, it’s how we come to know God. One way or another, for many of us, love is our ultimate concern. If that’s the case then – this is the premise of today’s service – perhaps we’re called to love ever more freely, more generously, more exuberantly, in our short time on earth. To broaden our sense of what love might look like in practice, and the shapes that loving relationships can take, liberating them from unnecessary convention and constraint. And also to be freer in our expression of love – be more ready to name and affirm it.
What comes to mind when you think about love? Maybe, by default, we picture the sort of love that’s portrayed in pop songs, in novels, on screen. A certain sort of love story – romantic, passionate, dramatic – tends to be held up as the ideal. Or maybe the associations that come up for you are shaped more by your own experiences of love as you have known it in your own life. These real-life experiences might be more varied (and more complicated) than what is typically portrayed in mainstream culture. Though in the Better World Book Club last year we did read ‘The Other Significant Others’ which showed that significant loving relationships can take all sorts of different forms.
In previous Valentine’s services we’ve talked about all the Greek names for different varieties of love – eros, agape, philia, pragma, and all the rest – but really there are as many forms of love as there are combinations of people. We don’t have to follow the limited social scripts that our culture lays out for us. Each encounter between two souls is its own unique and precious thing – alive with possibility – if we can remain open to its unfolding. If we’re fixated on a certain image, a certain ideal, of how love has to be, we might miss the opportunities to love and be loved that are right there in front of us.
I included a quote from feminist theologian Carter Heyward on the front of today’s order of service (and in Friday’s email). I think what she says is important as it frames love in the broadest terms – it doesn’t limit love to any one particular flavour or expression – and it also doesn’t hold back in affirming love’s centrality, vitality, necessity. Heyward says: ‘Love does not just happen. Love is a choice—not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretence or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity—a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family and a partner in the dance of life.’
The reading we heard earlier from David, by UU minister Vanessa Rush Southern, ‘In Praise of the Romantic’, actually praises both the romantic and the pragmatic. Both/and. She (rightly) lifts up the romantic vision, saying: ‘In her headlong tumble, the romantic comes to see the Divine in each of us and, as such, that we are all deserving of the wildest and most profound adoration.’ Yes! And at the same time she acknowledges that mature, lasting, love can be hard work, as it requires an ongoing devotion to the flourishing of another. All that everyday maintenance, all those small acts of connection and caring, which can be quite mundane, but which can cumulatively add up to something very meaningful. I wonder how many of you are familiar with the wonderful U.A. Fanthorpe poem, ‘Atlas’, which speaks of this, with its opening line ‘There is a kind of love called maintenance / Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it’.
I recently read something from therapist and author Terry Real which resonates with this pragmatic view. He says: ‘We grow up thinking love is a feeling. But real love — lasting love — is a practice. It’s not built on how you feel in any one moment. It’s built on what you choose to do. That choice often shows up in small, ordinary moments. You take a breath instead of snapping. You reach for your partner instead of retreating. You say, “That didn’t come out right. Let me try again.” These are not grand gestures. They wouldn’t make for a good movie script. But they matter more than you think. Because every time you choose connection, you are building trust. Every time you stay in the room with an open heart, you are practicing intimacy. And every time you repair, even just a little, you remind each other: we can do this. That’s true intimacy.’ Words on the more pragmatic side of love from Terry Real.
The poem we heard by Marge Piercy, ‘To Have Without Holding’, which Chloë read, this paints another picture of love, one which illuminates both the profound challenge and the profoundly transformative potential of authentic love between human beings who remain free. She says ‘learning to love differently is hard’, ‘it hurts to love wide open’, ‘to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively’. The poem gestures toward an idealised image of a love in which each partner remains grounded in themselves, their own person, free and freely choosing to love another, without possessing them. It reminds me of the sort of love that proponents of relationship anarchy talk about: where each person approaches every encounter with an open curiosity about what form this relationship might ultimately take rather than forcing it to fit a particular box. Each connection is its own thing. In relationship anarchy, you would expect to have multiple loving connections – with friends as well as lovers – rather than focusing on one to the detriment or exclusion of all others. That’s not to say that all our loving connections are, or should be, equally significant. Inevitably, we will prioritise some over others, as it takes time to do ‘maintenance’, to grow in intimacy, to know and be known, to tend to a sense of security and comfort. Love is all wrapped up with bonding and attachment. Yet it seems crucial that we never lose sight of the essential wildness of the other. Lover and beloved must know themselves to be both deeply connected and ultimately free.
Recently, I was talking to my dear friend Chris, who knows a lot about love – mainly because she’s a wonderful big-hearted human being – but she also has the professional credentials to back it up, being an associate professor of psychology who specialises in intimate relationships. We were talking about what it means to say we love someone. She pointed me towards an article by Carsie Blanton who says this: ‘The truth about love is: it happens. A lot… We have a mythology surrounding love that says it’s a special, rare feeling, reserved for just a few people in your whole life. It says that love takes time to develop, and that the feelings you experience at the outset of a relationship are not love, but something else (“infatuation” or “a crush”)… we tend to round some feelings up to love (i.e. when you first met the person you later married) and others down to not-love (i.e. your weekend fling with a Spanish dancer). The thing is, those experiences feel remarkably similar from the inside… instead of trying to deny it, or ignore it, or call it something different in each different situation, I want to call it like I feel it… I fall in love all the time. And really, it’s no big deal. It’s actually kind of fun, once you get used to it.’
Blanton continues: ‘Imagine if you could say… “I love you. It’s no big deal. It doesn’t mean you’re The One… it doesn’t mean you have to love me back. It doesn’t mean we have to date, or marry, or even cuddle. It doesn’t mean we have to part ways dramatically in a flurry of tears and broken dishes. It doesn’t mean I’ll love you until I die, or that I’ll still love you next year…” Then, later, you could tackle the question of whether there’s anything to do about it. All of the aforementioned – dating, marriage, cuddling, etc. – are options, and there are an infinite number of other options [such as sailing round the world together]. These are all things you can now choose or not choose, as two conscious, adult, human beings. The important distinction is that none of them is necessarily implied just by saying the word “love”.’ Some intriguing thoughts on love from the singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton.
There are things in her article that resonate for me and things that really don’t (and I imagine our responses to this will vary wildly). I think she makes a compelling case for being free with our love, not being stingy with it, not holding back. The one thing I took umbrage with was her statement ‘I love you. It’s no big deal.’ ‘I love you’ IS a big deal! Surely! It matters! OK – I do get it, I think – she means ‘I love you’ isn’t a big deal in the sense that it doesn’t have to be rationed too much, it doesn’t have to be something we only bring out for special, heightened, occasions. And, crucially, it doesn’t have to be freighted with a whole bunch of heavy expectations about what it implies. We very probably won’t mean precisely the same thing by it every time we say it. And, like she says, every pair of people in love get to decide what (if anything) they want to do about it. But those words, ‘I love you’, they mean something. And it can feel so good to say it and to hear it. Perhaps we can take her encouragement to be freer in naming and expressing love in a wider range of connections that we are generally accustomed to.
Around the same time, I came across another article by Shankar Sapram, which takes the rather interesting angle that ‘I love you’ is a kind of mantra. He says: ‘A soul-deep “I love you” isn’t just a string of words — it’s a mantra. Not a tool. Not a trick. It’s a quiet ritual that heals, anchors, and connects. When spoken with intent, it doesn’t demand anything in return. It simply gives. It flows without expecting. That’s where its power lies.’ He writes about how the expression of love can sometimes feel transactional (and how people can hear ‘I love you’ and reflexively think ‘what do you want from me?!’). His remedy: ‘To undo that damage, make it a habit to say it — not when you want something, but when you feel nothing in particular. Say it when you’re bored. When you’re scrolling endlessly. When your mind is blank and your heart feels dull. Pick up your phone, call them, and say it — just that. “I love you.” Let it sound like a heartbeat, not a strategy. In time, it becomes a small ritual that waters your bond without you even realizing it… Be the first one [to say it]. Be the only one, if needed. Love is not a transaction. It’s a flow.’
So where does this leave us? We’re never going to exhaustively explore a subject as big as love, are we…? So expect us to return to this in the months and years to come. Perhaps we can come back to the notion that love is the centre and foundation of our lives – and our faith – maybe even that loving is the primary means by which we might know God. And so, let us free love from convention and constraint, be open to love in all its forms. In this world of so much suffering and harshness seems ever more vital to love exuberantly, extravagantly, abundantly, freely, (and imperfectly) while we still can.
I want to close with a few words which call us back to love’s sacred centrality, an excerpt from a longer piece called ‘When I Speak of Love’, by UU minister Dan Schatz.
When I speak of love,
I mean nothing more
or less
than opening to what is sacred
in all of us,
even when it is broken,
even when it is hidden,
even when it is inconvenient.
This love transforms
and illumines
my heart.
This love
shapes my living.
This love
demands
better of me,
always.
This love
brings me home
when I have lost my way.
So
when I speak of love,
please do not shake your head,
or smile in condescension.
Instead,
listen
to your soul’s own longing.
[And] together,
let us speak of love.
Amen.
Reflection by Jane Blackall