Pastoral Letters

Pastoral Letters

Viola-January2009 Rev. Viola Moore
Minister Emerita

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Love, Power, and Justice

Dear Friends and Members,

Robert Frost writes, “Earth is the best place for love: I don’t know where it would go any better.” Probably the subject of love and its mystery has been covered by poets and musicians more than any other subject in the lexicon. St. Paul writes in Corinthians that love is gentle and kind, that love does not insist on its own way. When I am officiating at a wedding, I always read those words. I also read those words at every memorial service. It seems so appropriate to remind ourselves at the end of any life that this person has participated in the great mystery we call Love.

If we think seriously about love, it becomes evident that in every genuine love two elements are evident, namely Power and Justice. I call Love, Power, and Justice the three legs of the stool which must be present. I am talking about authentic relationships between any two people. How can you love a person and deny that person justice? This seems so self-evident, yet it is denial of justice to a beloved person that creates the tragedy in the relationship. In my seventy years of pastoral counseling I have seen the destruction which the lack of justice causes. How many times when a marriage is failing I have seen how the cause of the tragedy was the lack of any understanding of justice. Love, by its very nature, contains the power of being. Without this power no friendship or relationship can long endure. Love itself gives us the power and the wisdom to penetrate the deepest needs of the other.

It is easy to forget how much power resides in each lover. This power is also part of the mystery of love. This is the serious dimension of love which romantic secular interpretation completely misses.

I am assuming that most of the people who read these pastoral letters have at some time been “in love” as that phrase is popularly used. When the magic chemistry of love, power, and justice is in full play, there you have happiness and the much deeper feeling, joy.

I have seen in these many years the tragic breakdown of this trinity: Love, Power, and Justice. How many relationships begin in ecstasy, with high hopes and every good intention to make the relationship last into eternity? The statistics on failing marriages in the United States are alarming, and do not speak well for the future of marriage, now facing untold miseries and problems of unemployment, uncertainty, infidelity, and the lack of any moral anchor.

Now as we approach the celebration of Valentine’s Day, with its trivialization of the holy mystery into a celebration with drugstore greeting cards, candy, and flowers, which are meant to cover a multitude of sins, including the lack of justice and power. In another part of Corinthians, Paul admonishes, “Let everything be done in love.” What better advice could one give to lovers of any age, in any place?

I think that each of us has stored in memory some of the great lines written in an attempt to solve the mystery of love, such as Shakespeare’s lines, “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”

There is a kind of love which wants all eternity. So as we look at the secular emptiness of February Fourteenth, let us remember the eternal dimension of love, which St. Valentine illustrated by leaving fruit and flowers on the doorsteps of the hungry and needy.

May the power and justice of love sustain us all the days of our lives. However you celebrate Valentine’s Day, may it be filled with the joy of love’s power and justice.

Amen.

Love,

Last Updated (Sunday, 05 February 2012 14:35)

Rejoice in the New Year!

Dear Members and Friends,

Viola-January2009 Benjamin Franklin did what he called “moral bookkeeping” every night just before hopping into bed. He would review the day and note anything that he had done that fell short of his ideal. He would then give himself a grade for the day’s behavior. We busy people today probably would not take the time for such an exercise. It is, however, as we face the New Year, a good time to remember and review the past year. No life is all preaches and cream, and life has a way of sandpapering us as we go through our daily routines. It is a good thing to go into the depths of our soul and hold a dialogue with our deepest selves. As I do this, I look out into the bare trees, which in their bone honesty require me to be honest with myself. In these deep inner dialogues there is the temptation to put a positive spin on all that we did in the past. We remember and review what we have done and said. In this process we try to be honest with ourselves, but there is always the lingering temptation to paint a flattering picture of ourselves.

Last Updated (Thursday, 29 December 2011 22:23)

Christmas Giving

Dear Members and Friends,

My heart leaps up when I behold the Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell to remind us that it is that time of year when we should remember the hungry and the homeless. It is also a call to repentance, but many do not hear that call. It is the time of year when we connect a baby and a star, and so for all of us, regardless of faith, we celebrate family and friends.

Even in Japan, which at the last count was only three percent Christian, the Christmas season is a time of frantic buying, getting and giving gifts for loved ones. Tokyo’s Ginza looks very much like Chicago’s Loop. This frantic shopping is not fired by envy, the usual prod to buying, but by love of friends and family. There is a feeling in the air that something important is going on beyond business.

When Walter Benjamin wrote The Project of the Arcade in 1939, he could not have known how prescient he was. He described the most beautiful, glittering, and modern shopping mall in central Paris. He also predicted that in a few years, in the western world, there would be no activity except buying and selling. One of our members recently said to me “Viola, we are already there.”

In spite of what we know about the costs of Capitalism, we still cling to our old habits in buying and selling. Now in the holiday season it is not envy that drives the marketplace. Rather it is caring that drives people to the mall to buy just the right sweater for Grandpa.

We are aware in our own “Arcade” of the Christmas music ringing out to remind shoppers that there is something much more important than the giving and getting of gifts. In ringing out the carols, the stores remind us that beyond the shopping there is a connection between a baby and a star. That baby, with twelve very flawed disciples, changed the world forever. We even count time from the appearance of that one bright Bethlehem star.

Therefore, take heart! Listen to what the protesters are saying, in many countries including our own, about the will to struggle toward a just and humane world.

I wish for all of you, my extended family, a joyful holiday season; and I shall be with you in spirit (go easy on the Remy Martin!). I am looking forward to March third, when we all celebrate, gloriously, Gloria’s ninetieth birthday at the UUF.

Love,

Last Updated (Wednesday, 28 December 2011 08:13)

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