The reading for today is taken from an unusual love story. A young single-mother, divorced from an irresponsible husband, has decided to rent the small apartment adjoining her garage. A young man responds to her advertisement and rents the apartment. She learns later that he is a former monk, who after several years in the monastery decided that was not the life for him.

When the young woman, Rebecca, learns her tenant is a former monk, she begins to re-think her own religious
consciousness with these sad words: “She had picked for years at the smorgasbord of California spirituality and come away hungry.” So this story is not only about the relationship between a single-mother and a former monk, it is a story about religious consciousness.

The romantic part of the story is a tangle of emotions; of false starts, of red-hot passion, and ice-cold arguments. The two characters are caught in a web of “mutual daily practice of forgiveness.” Near the end of the story the former monk ruminates about love. He quotes a 16th century mystic, St. John of the Cross.

St John wrote a “canticle” based on the Biblical “Song of Solomon” in which the soul searches for and falls in love with Divinity. Even Love as pure as that of a soul for Divinity is not smooth. St. John talks about traveling “deep into the thicket.”

The Monk says that is how love is; not “eternal rest by a heavenly poolside with umbrella drinks.” Rather true love means to travel through the “tangled undergrowth of our lives.” “(W)e walk on, lost, and lost again, in the …wilderness of love.”

Even though real love is difficult, we live in a culture which seems to enjoy a dreamy, unrealistic understanding of love. For example, the popular song of some years ago, “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.” No, there is ample love in the world. What the world needs now is love of people for people; love has to be embodied. Schiller’s poem, “Ode to Joy” which Beethoven set to music in his 9th Symphony, has a rather ridiculous line: “one kiss for all the world.”

That kind of kiss is not worth the pucker! Kissing is between two people who someone once said have not “fallen out of love on the same day.” Someone described love and marriage “…as a fine arrangement generally, except one never got it generally. One gets love and marriage very, very specifically!”

You may remember Carson McCullers’s novella, “The Member of the Wedding,” the story of Frankie, a 12 year old who becomes so enchanted with her brother’s wedding that she decides to accompany him and his bride on their honeymoon. Bernice, the family house-keeper warns Frankie about falling in love with the idea of love.
I don’t like sounding like the “curmudgeon who doesn’t like romance.” I’m okay with romance, Betty and I have enjoyed romance for over 55 years; at least on the good days. What I’m not okay with is disembodied romance; romance as “hearts and flowers” sweetness.

How is it for UUs? We Unitarian Universalists enjoy singing “Standing on the Side of Love” No, true personal
confession: I enjoy singing the contemporary hymn, “Standing on the Side of Love.” I know what Bill Sinkford, Former President of the UUA meant when he used those words. He meant taking a stand for marriage equality; taking a stand for embodied love.

However I think it is easier to “stand” than to act; easier to sing about “Standing” than to act. “Standing on the side of love” without action is about the same as “one kiss for all the world” dis- embodied.

The problem comes because acting “on the side of love” is usually done so in the “tangled undergrowth of our lives If we are to “stand on the side of love” we will need to do the hard work of struggling through the thickets of analysis, of stumbling over the roots of ,uncertainty, to say nothing of catching ourselves on the brambles of involvement. We’ll finally do the best we know how to do at the time.

Rev. Fred Hammond, UU Minister serving a UU Congregation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has a great idea which
translates “standing on the side of love” to “acting on the side of love.” Fred says he wants to “love justly.” He used that idea in his work against the ridiculous anti-immigration laws of the state of Alabama If we are to “love justly” in the tangled undergrowth, we will need to do some clear thinking. For example, during the days of the civil rights struggles I heard someone say, “Ten percent of our employees are African American.” That does not sound bad in a society with about 14 percent African Americans in the population of that state. However, the statement needs analysis. How many of those jobs are menial jobs? How many of that 10% are working at minimum wage, sometimes without benefits.

As we all know from recent news reports, 47% needs careful analysis. More, even if wealthy people pay taxes, the key is what percentage of their income is taxed. When do they use various tax loopholes such as “investment income” to avoid paying their full share.

Here’s another example: Someone reported that the Heritage Society, a conservative think tank, had recently released a report that one-half of Americans are “on the dole.” However, if one looks carefully at that report, that one-half includes people receiving Social Security which is not the dole, but retirement income from people who paid into the system, in other words getting their own money back.

“Standing on the Side of Love” during this season of presidential politics requires careful analysis, not only of the
statements and advertisements of candidates, but also of the news reports, whether from Fox News or MSNBC. The “tangled undergrowth” of “Acting on the side of Love, will require clear thinking.

Our local San Diego newspaper was recently purchased and is now owned by Doug Manchester, one of the primary supporters of “Prop 8” which denied marriage equality. If we are to “stand on the side of love” in the “tangled undergrowth of our lives,” we will need to exercise care in reading the newspaper. Such seemingly
innocuous things as size of headline, or placement of a story, or failure to distinguish opinion from report will need to be noted.

But, that’s sermon for another day.

If, as today’s reading suggests, love between two persons is lived out “in the tangled undergrowth,” just think how it is when we decide to “do justice and love mercy” in matters of social action. That old notion, “Let’s just love everybody” is too universal, and will end with “cold feet in bed.” Social action in the “tangled undergrowth” will require equating love with justice.

The Long Range Planning Committee of this Congregation has developed a preliminary Long Range Plan, part of which deals with social justice. That report includes these words: “…living out our principles and values in the larger community.”

That report is building on the excellent record which your Congregation has in matters of social justice.

From donating 40% of undesignated offerings to significant causes, to the Ernie Pipes lecture series, to the Hunger Task force, you have an admirable record of outreach and social justice. Building on that record, the Long Range Planning Committee has made further suggestions about possible social justice activities.

Let’s imagine that “tangled undergrowth” through an exercise in imagery. In your mind’s eye imaging standing at a trail head with three paths because you have decided not merely to stand but to act on the side of love. Imagine there are three paths or three options for your action. One option seems very easy, the path is broad. However, it leads to a kind of “dead end” where someone else tells you what you need to do. This path requires very little energy. About all that is needed is doing what someone says to do, usually nothing more than provide some
financial support.

However, in this imaginary journey toward acting on the side of Love there is another path. It is the path of avoidance, which Forrest Church once called “sophisticated resignation.” I can assure you this is an easy path; at least it is easy for me. I can so readily say, “Oh well, the problems are so big and the options are so difficult, I’ll just sit this one out.”

What I believe Fred Hammond, UU Minister in Alabama means when he calls us to “love justly” is to choose the most difficult path.

This could be considered the path between simply having someone else tell us what to do, or simply avoiding the issues.

This is the path of justice through the tangled undergrowth of our lives.

This is the path of clear thinking; the path of analysis, the path over the tangled roots or uncertainty, the rocky path of having to exercise our best mental capacity. This is the path between the easy answers of avoidance and the simplicity of half- truth. This tangled path of loving justly is like the tangled undergrowth of loving relationships, never smooth, never easy, requiring almost constant trial and error, and, yes, forgiveness, but “try, try, and try again” Even so, daring to become involved.

Here’s a personal example which for me has been a “tangled undergrowth of uncertainty. I have struggled for a year thinking about the “Occupy Movement.” On the one hand, I could easily simply allow the news media—both pro and con—to tell me what to think. However, what I have generally done is simply avoided having to think about Occupy.

The middle path, the path through the tangled undergrowth, at least for me, recognizes that the Occupy movement is just the same as all human endeavors; some good, some not so good. The Occupy movement, as is true for most all human endeavors, attracts people who represent a wide spectrum of thinking and no thinking. I am uncertain, ambivalent.

And yet…here comes the “tangled undergrowth” of analysis and clear thinking. I also believe that the Occupy Movement has brought the serious inequities in our society to public attention.

“Occupy Wall Street” has helped us think about just how unequal our society really is.

Here are some examples of the failure of equality: In 1972 there were 22,887 IRS tax returns reporting income of one million or more dollars. In 2010 there were 236,893 reporting one million or more income. Meanwhile the tax rate of these top incomes dropped from 47% to 25%. (Andrew Hacker, “We’re More Unequal Than You Think,” The New York Review of Books, February 23, 2012, pp. 34-36.)

That inequality is reinforced by money in politics. In a recent book, Who Stole the American Dream? Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, says:

“(There has been) a series of policy choices that systematically favored employers over workers, rich over poor, business over consumers. Tax rates, minimum wage rates, union organizing rules, financial deregulation, pension arrangements,…campaign financing laws—all became strongly tilted in favor of the business, financial and corporate elites.”

(Quoted by Benjamin Friiedman, “The Oligarchy in American Today,” a review of Who Stole the American Dream?” in The New York Review of Books, October 11, 2012, pp.36ff)

I am not here to bore you with statistics. Rather I am sharing this one example of how I have found myself in
the “tangled undergrowth” of trying to Love Justly through my uncertainties related to the Occupy Movement.
If there were no other reason for us to be aware of the need for Loving Justly through the tangled undergrowth of our lives it would be the current political campaigns. We are deep into the every-four-year episode of “bumper sticker” clichés. For about nine months we have been bombarded with half-truths and simplistic easy answers in the name of truth. If we are not aware we will be drawn into avoidance of the political process or into the realm of sound-bite catch-phrases. Personal political preference is not as important as becoming aware of the need to
think for ourselves. During this campaign season we need to be careful not to surrender our minds to simple answers for complex problems. Namely, to love through the thicket of analysis, clear thinking and uncertainty.

I will not leave you hanging. What finally happened to Rebecca the land-lady who rented her apartment to Christopher, the former monk? They finally got together. The love story ended with love, but only through their struggle; no “hearts and roses.”

Christopher had quoted St. John’s “Canticle.” That “canticle about love” was written when St. John was in prison, incarcerated because he was considered too extreme! That’s just one example of love in the “tangled undergrowth.”

What does this all mean? It means we need one another. If there were no other reason for this Congregation it would be for the care and support you can give one another as you struggle to “love justly,” to “stand and act on the side of love.”

Like all Unitarian Universalist Congregations, you will have ample opportunity to support one another not only in social justice, but in the tangled undergrowth of personal relationships. I encourage you to a covenant of love, a covenant of care, a covenant of right relationships. May it be so. Amen and Blessed Be.