Waun Its All About Love
It’s All About Love
By The Rev. Renee Waun
POSTED: January 31, 2009
But wait – are we forgetting someone?
When February comes, I always think about the many special opportunities I will have during the upcoming month for expressing love and inclusion. February is Black History Month, which is more meaningful to me this year because I feel fortunate to be alive during the historic tenure of our first black president. The level of unity and inclusion experienced among the various ages, races, religions, ethnicities, and backgrounds on the Mall in Washington D,C. on Inauguration Day has never been seen before. I realize I am witnessing a chapter of black history that is already starting out to be more loving and inclusive.
National Brotherhood Week comes in February – an event started by the interfaith group called the National Conference of Community and Justice (formerly known as the National Conference of Christians and Jews). The week long observance was initiated as a way of healing the wounds between Christians and Jews in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. Again it seems to me that we are already coming into a new age of healing and inclusion among many groups of people who are reaching across the old barriers of religious difference and bigotry. And tucked in around the celebration of President’s Day (when we lovingly remember Presidents Washington and Lincoln), we have International Friendship Month, American Heart Month (love comes from the heart, after all) and Random Acts of Kindness Day – all opportunities to demonstrate love and inclusion.
This brings me to Valentine’s Day, a time when children exchange symbols of friendship and bring treats to school, and most people shower their loved ones with affection. It’s the second biggest holiday (after Christmas) for retailers to make profits, as people buy cards, candy, flowers, and other gifts for their Valentines. Couples go on special dates. It’s an opportunity to celebrate or propose marriage. But more than the materialistic aspect of the holiday, it’s really all about love, and I really look forward to the roses and the heart-shaped box of chocolates that always come as tokens of love from my sweetheart.
Indeed February gives us many opportunities to feel and express our love and inclusion.
But wait. Are we forgetting someone?
What if you are gay? Some people might say, “Never mind. These opportunities to include and celebrate the love we have in our hearts for special persons are only for straight people. You might have special loving feelings for someone who is the same gender as you are, but you absolutely may NOT show it or even talk about it. Forget finding that one special one. Forget Valentine’s Day!”
But I could never, ever say anything like that to someone. Love is the deepest, most positive, wholesome, life-giving and authentic emotion we have. It comes from pure, source energy. It is the source energy pouring through each and every human spirit.
Love is something to be encouraged and respected, not stifled and denounced, yet that is what many individuals and groups do regarding gay people. They would say that a long term, committed healthy relationship between two men or two women is wrong and unnatural. They would say that these couples should not marry and that they should not raise children.
I am grateful to be associated with a religious tradition that affirms all life-giving relationships and families. Unitarian universalists have long been on the forefront of social justice and social action, calling for equality and fairness for all people, not just European-Americans, whites, men or heterosexuals.
Our seven UU Principles help to guide our lives. The first two principles are, “we covenant to affirm and promote: 1. the inherent worth and dignity of every person; 2. justice, equity and compassion in human relations.”
I realize that if I can live by those life-affirming principles, than I will never be afraid when I see a wholesome, positive, loving relationship – whether it’s between heterosexual or non-heterosexual persons. I realize I have a choice in how I think and feel about this. The opposite of love is fear, which leads me to intolerance, condemnation and hate. And so I choose to stand on the side of love.
As we begin this month of February, with its many opportunities to choose love, I earnestly hope that a new spirit is coming alive in our land, inspiring all of us to a new vantage point of unity and inclusion, and that we will begin to break down all the many walls that have divided us and kept us from fully affirming our non-heterosexual friends for so long. I hope that we can abandon the path of fear and embark on a shared journey of love and inclusion for everyone, not just for some, remembering that “perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18).
It really is all about love!