The True Hard Work
Sermon | March 7, 2021 |Rev. Julie Lombard
If you ask philosopher and writer, Alain de Botton, what the truest and hardest work out there is, he might say that it’s The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships. Face it, those who do this hard work never get paid. It seems to me that de Botton believes that the ones who are most likely to do this work are those in relationships.
“Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person” was, amazingly, the most-read article in The New York Times in the news-drenched year of 2016. As people, and as a culture, the author de Botton says, we would be much saner and happier if we reexamined our very view of love. Nowhere do we realistically teach ourselves how love deepens and stumbles, survives, and evolves over time, and how that process has much more to do with ourselves than with what is right or wrong about the other person. The article was turned into a book by the same title if you want to learn more. de Botton is the author of seven books that look at the great questions of ordinary life – love, friendship, work, home – in a way that is intellectually rigorous, amusing, and highly readable. His goal is to bring ideas back to where he thinks they belong: at the center of our lives.
He asks: How different would our relationships be if the question we asked on an early date was, “How are you crazy? I’m crazy like this,” and they understood that the real work of love is not in the falling in love, but in what comes after?
We fiercely believe the idea that true love must mean conflict-free love, that the course of it is smooth. It’s not, he says. The course of true love is rocky and bumpy at best. That’s what we can manage as human beings. It’s no fault of yours or mine; it’s human nature. And the more generous we can be with our flawed humanity, he claims in “On Being” interview from 2018, the better chance we’ll have of doing the true hard work of love.1https://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships-aug2018/ 02/15/2021
“Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over knowledge.” Says de Botten in his book titled On Love. He tells the story of a couple who meet over casual conversation on a flight, and so their love story begins —from first kiss to first argument, elation to heartbreak, and everything in between. Each stage of the relationship is illuminated with clarity as de Botton explores emotions often felt but rarely understood.
Many of us can say we have dabbled in this business, the relationship business. Sometimes it results in marriage, sometimes divorce, but we endeavor and continue to trust in the triumph of hope over knowledge. We don’t love because we think the other is worthy of love. We love because we feel a need to be with them. We resist the idea of being alone. Love leads us to places we would not dare go if our aim was to simply stay comfortable.
Once, while at a Clergy meeting, folks were sharing stories of our own experiences of when we didn’t know where we might sleep that night. Someone was given the wrong hotel room key and didn’t find that out until when it was time to go to bed. Another was at a youth conference and when they showed up to their shared hotel room, they were surprised to find the other people in the room were of a different gender… the teen was told to go elsewhere to sleep. They wandered for forty-five minutes not knowing what to do. No chaperone helped them navigate the crisis.
The story that caught my attention the most that day was the story of one leaving a bad relationship. One night, the person quietly left behind their lover in the dark with no idea where they’d sleep. I am not certain of the details, but they ended up staying on someone’s couch, and not someone who invited them to stay. They snuck in, crashed on a couch, and left the scene early the next morning before the unknowing host woke up. It’s hard to imagine this happening, but sometimes love can get us into quite a pickle.
Back to Aiden de Botton philosophy: the hard work of love. He says we’ve got to accept that the other person is just human, which means full of flaws, fears, and not some sort of superhuman.2https://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships-aug2018/ 02/15/2021 That goes for clergy, too. I am as human as the rest and the stories I told about clergy remind us that we can all find ourselves in challenging places.
What if we admitted a truth – that love is a painful, tear-jerking, tender attempt by flawed humans that try to meet each other’s needs in situations of gross uncertainty and ignorance about who they are nonetheless who the other person is. But since we’re here together, we just try to do our best. What if we had a more generous starting point in relationships or re-entered from this more generous place when things get rough? I am talking about grace and promise- what grace are we offering the other and what promise do we have with one another to remain in right relationship?
To de Botton, the acceptance that we are flawed creatures is what love really is. Love is at its most necessary when we are weak when we feel incomplete, and it’s more important than- to show love, grace, and live out our promise to be in right relationship.
Our culture gets hung up on the start of the love story, but de Botton believes the more meaningful part of the journey comes afterward. What’s more interesting is the survival of love over time. The sweeter joy and celebrations or heartache and sadness come from sticking it out. Grace gets us through but our promise reminds us of our commitment.
Long ago, on the top floor of Devine Hall at the University of New Hampshire when I was an undergrad when the timing was just right and the doors were left open so the sounds of radios flowed out to comingle, I heard the most intriguing strange super-star duet. The Eagles were singing in one room and Elton John in another.
As I listened carefully, I heard them sing, “There’s gonna be a heartache tonight, so sad, a heartache tonight, so sad… – these two songs never meaning to intermingle in this way yet they captured the sentiment of what de Botton is trying to say. I don’t think heartache is funny, but when I heard Elton’s response that the Eagles’ heartache was so sad, I just had to laugh at the absurdity of how compassion can literately be found in the least unexpected places.
And anytime love and life gets messy, which is bound to do, it is so sad. We know it might happen and that’s why freshening up on our theology of redemption can be useful for such occasions.
Redemption offers a path to salvation. It’s a place where forgiveness is welcomed and peace can be found. Redemption begins by noticing and admitting something is wrong, then doing something to rectify the situation. We might offer an apology- this is a small act of redemption when really the aim is not only to regain face but rather to re-establish and deepen the relationship. Don’t forget, redemption serves that which is larger than oneself: redemption serves a relationship and the wider community.
Each act of redemption chips away at the Hell that will surround us when we feel stuck. By choosing to serve something larger than the self, redemption opens a door. Now, whether the open doors lead you to hear some super-star duet like the one I heard in Divine Hall is another thing.
We know that too often heartache leads to slammed doors and stunted communication, maybe even a sneaking out in the middle of the night. If someone’s been humiliated or shamed in the process, they’re reluctant to learn, want to listen, or make a needed change. The only conditions — as we know with children, that anyone learns are under conditions of incredible tenderness and patience- de Botton believes we all learn that way, not only children. The problem is that the failures in previous relationships have made us so anxious that we can’t be the teachers we want to be. We don’t wait. We rush to judge.
Then any legitimate thing that we’d like to get across— comes out sounding defensive or as an insult, or maybe as attempts to wound, and are rejected. People become guarded and ready to fight, not love.
de Botton believes, love is doing the work to ask oneself, “Where is this rather aggressive, pained, non-communicative, unpleasant behavior [in the person I love] coming from?” If we can ask that, then we’re on the road to know a little more about what love is. Isn’t that what we all want to know- what love really is?
It may sound easy to ask such a simple question but we know it is not- this is the true hard work- to stay present even when it gets uncomfortable. Be as patient as a grandparent with a young child. Be willing to wait to know that they’re worth waiting for.
The wisest of sages in a relationship can forget the need to wait. Even they succumb to the desire to hurry a conflict along, get on with life. But when we surrender to this anxiety, we rush the person who is learning and we put our own needs first.
Is there redemption for those who’d rather hurry through pain? Our first name is Unitarian, but our last name is Universalists making us the ‘no hellers’. Salvation is for all because all may be redeemed according to our Universalist ancestors.
I want to leave you knowing that there’s so much hope here, for us in doing this work. This kind of love, relationship building, is well worth waiting for and investing in. I invite us to slow down. Look around. Remember why you came here. It’s time to roll up your selves, chip in, and be ready to do the hard work.
You came to connect, with something larger than yourself. You came to find comfort yet you accept that the ride through life and love will be bumpy. In those times, reach out. I am here with you. Remember the lines from the earlier Irish blessing: when the shadows fall – You do not walk alone. (1769)
May it be so. Amen.
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