A sermon given at the Community Congregational Church, Tiburon CA,
March 12, 2006
Since I was ordained, I have become increasingly drawn to weddings; to the miracle of two people finding one another, growing into a deep love together, and the desire and act of committing their lives to one another in sacred ceremony. It has been thrilling meeting people and hearing their stories, then helping them create a ceremony that reflects what they have told me about their love, their vision, their desire for a lifetime pledge to one another. I get really excited about these and this was completely unexpected; this was not something I planned on doing when I was a student at The Chaplaincy Institute for Arts and Interfaith Ministries.
An exciting assignment, when we were learning about ceremonies and rituals, and especially weddings, was to select two parts of ourselves, and marry them! That is, our inner minister, was to meet with two aspects of our character or soul, to give them pre-marital counseling, and then create a wedding for them! We had some great ones, too. One person, born and bred in New England, but now a solid Californian in every sense of the word, married “the mystic and the Yankee.’’ Another married two characters she named “Persona” and “Psyche.”
I had written a long piece about the marriage of my mind and my heart. I gave them names: Critiqua and Passionetta. It seemed it would be simple enough: they would meet with Rev. Elizabeth (my inner Interfaith minister), get some counseling, and tie the knot! After all, I’ve been married before—twice!—so I know a thing or two, especially about the pitfalls.
Well, after 9 or 10 pages of endless dialog, Critiqua and Passionetta were not even close to being ready to make eternal vows with one another, much less in the sight of God or anybody else. They were wrangling and arguing, busy defending their positions and also really struggling to see the other’s point of view. But that’s not the only snag. Other characters began showing up. One smart-alecky chick that showed up, calling herself Giggles—said she was my Clown Chakra. And her beef was that everybody was taking herself way too seriously. She said this marriage better be fun or it was going to end the same way the other 2 did. Another character claimed to be my body, and she wanted to make sure she was properly cared for in this marriage—that continuing neglect of her was going to sink the ship, so to speak. Finally, an ethereal-looking creature in a white sari showed up, calling herself Eterna—she said she was my Spirit and she was happy to support everyone is this whole gang, if they would only ask for her help. And frankly, Rev. River didn’t know what to do with this ragtag cast of characters!
It was an exhausting process, though, and I couldn’t have done it alone. Which is exactly my message about this subject: Being the Beloved. You really can’t do it alone. And I don’t mean having a partner or a mate is going to make you “beloved.” On the contrary, learning how to be the beloved WITH a partner is sometimes harder than learning how to be the beloved when you are by yourself.
What I learned from this project was a whole lot about my own two marriages, and why they each ended as they did. And I learned something about my lifetime’s sometimes relentless search for love. Well not really for love, exactly. It was a search for Belovedness. By this I mean the absolute certainty that I am loved. That I am precious and unique, special and desired. Accepted, just the way I am. And that in this preciousness, I would never never never be deserted. I would always have Someone “there for me.”
In our society today, there is so much that is written, taught, pictured, discussed, dramatized and worried about, concerning romantic love—the urgent desire to have a mate, a lover, a spouse—someone who can love us beyond our wildest dreams, make us feel adored, cherished, desired, needed. Someone who makes us feel BELOVED. Who takes away our loneliness. And yet, lots of people can tell you that there is nothing worse than the loneliness that is experienced inside a marriage or a relationship. There is no loneliness like the bone-deep ache of leaving yourself behind within your own marriage. It can be devastating. And abandoning the self in favor of the other will destroy not just the romantic, human love, but even more, it blocks the channels with divine love, God’s love, the love that surpasses all understanding.
Before we can truly be someone’s Beloved, or they, ours, we have to become the Beloved in ourselves. Being the beloved means putting into practice, in every moment of your ordinary life, a behavior of acting like someone who is precious. Worthy. Wonderful. And loved. And whenever you feel things pulling you away from this behavior—any things—you pull yourself back to the practice, the act of Being the Beloved. You don’t permit yourself the dubious luxury of wallowing in self-recrimination, mea culpa, or various forms of self-punishment. You right the wrong, if there is one, you make amends, and you return to inner harmony. You accept this human, fumbling, creature that you are, with gratitude. You know that you don’t have time to sit around for long in that cold prison of blame and unforgiveness. Because when you do, your light dims. Not only does your own inner fire dwindle and cease to nurture you, but also you have nothing for anyone else either. And when that happens, then you are not available to remind others that they, too, are beloved. When you are stuck in self-rejection, that’s what you are modeling for whoever is around. Remember the passage from Marianne Williamson?
“We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (p. 165, A Return to Love)
So to be the beloved, you cannot reject yourself. You need to act as if you were personally chosen, as special, unique, blessed in all your imperfection and messiness. You have to continue to believe you are wanted, have a purpose, and are of use here in this life, at this time, in this place. And it can be difficult at times to hold onto this core belief if you allow yourself to be too influenced by other people’s opinions (usually uninvited) that can push you into self-doubt, low self-esteem, or even despair.
Then there is self-aggrandizement—the practice of putting oneself above others. This is also not being the beloved; it’s in fact the other side of the coin of self-rejection. It is a form of pride and arises out of a deep inner sense of insecurity that one is not going to be loved. It leads to separation, not connection and often takes the form of aggression, dominance and control—even warfare.
This is the deepest spiritual struggle in our lives: holding on to being the beloved under all circumstances. And it is a lifetime deal—not something that we finally settle once and for all, and then get to coast.
Some of us awaken to this journey though abandonment or other profound losses. Some discover it in the facing of their addictions and the subsequent support of their beloved recovery communities. Some find it when realizing life has become unbearable in the swirling thoughts of self-loathing they harbor, and they seek therapy or spiritual guidance. And of course, some people live their whole lives believing the appalling (and false) notion that they are unworthy, without purpose, and are unlovable, or unloved.
Henri Nouwen, in Life of the Beloved, teaches that there are 3 steps we must take (not just once, of course, but again and again) to anchor ourselves in our belovedness:
1. We have to reject a lot of the earthly messages we are bombarded with that counter the idea that we are beloved exactly the way we are.
2. We have to find a beloved community who remind us of what and who we truly are, and then we have to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into it.
3. And then, we live our life in a state of constant gratitude. Having “Thank you” be our most fervent and frequent prayer.
Finally, I want to refer back to marriage—the sacred bond between two people. The poem, At Christ in the Desert Monastery is about marrying oneself. To be the Beloved is to commit to a dedicated life with this person whose body you inhabit. Make vows to her (or him) of respect, honor, love, faithfulness, and yes—even obedience! Obeying her genuine principles and virtues and boundaries, protecting her tenderness, treating her always like the precious, beloved, worthy creature God made her to be. Just as in the marriage covenant between two people and God, marrying oneself is also a covenant, between the ego-self (the self we think we know), the soulful self (who perhaps is not quite known) and God. All three parties keep their promises to one another, no matter what the others are doing.
Look at the three middle verses of the poem At Christ in the Desert Monastery, by Morgan Farley:
I come home to myself here, prodigal refugee lost child.
I marry the woman I am, ripe and tender and full of juice.
Oh, I am the one I have been waiting for with such patient longing
Amen.
Rev. Elizabeth River