You are here today because you know something about love. I don’t mean you are necessarily feeling loving right this moment, you could be having a terrible grumpy morning, and if you are my condolences, and I’m so glad you are here. But even if you are not feeling loving right now, you are here because when you hear about the inherent worth and dignity of every person, when you heard about a faith tradition rooted in the idea that if there is a God, the are loving, and that love includes everyone, some part of you said “ah, yes” or at least “tell me more.” You are here because at some point in your life you felt a steady love that held you unconditionally. Maybe that was your parents, or a friend, maybe it was a community like this one, or maybe it was an ineffable sense of something larger than yourself. When you asked “even me, in all my imperfection?” and you heard the answer “yes, even you.” 
Our UU foreparents came to a Universalist theology because of that “aha” sense that resonated with something they knew deep inside. The story of Hosea Ballou is apocryphal, though he did use that example of the muddy child in his sermons. For him the love we have for even a muddy child was the kind of love he believed was available to all of us. George de Benneville, another Universalist foreparent, was raised to believe in that he was sinful, that God only had a few special favorites, and the rest of us were pre-judged and damned to an eternity of torment. He had an experience when he was a young man of noticing his own arrogance and “hardheartedness toward the wellbeing of others.” He felt terrible about this, and the ministers of his faith told him this must be because he was predetermined to be damned. For 15 months he was miserable and inconsolable, until humble and heartbroken he knelt in prayer, and had a vision of the divine wiping away all his sin, all his unworthiness[i]. Remembering this experience, de Benneville wrote: “[Jesus] ] loved me before I was born. Oh, what grace! He loved me in my fallen estate when I was wholly lost. Oh, what mercy! He even loved me when I was altogether unworthy, and freely too. Oh, what love... Hallelujah! Amen."” It was after this experience that de Benneville’s heart was converted to Universalism. He knew in his heart that not only he but all people were loved by God, even in their unworthiness. It was not through logic, through work of the mind that de Benneville came to his conversation, but through direct experience of unconditional love.
Now that's a lot of God talk, all in a row. And we UUs are Theists, Atheists and Agnostics. Love is accessible to all of us. UU Theologian Thandeka speaks of something called Love beyond belief, which she says is at the heart of our UU faith: “Love Beyond Belief is the actual experience of feeling connected to all of life at once: feeling awe, wonder, and love of life itself. The access point to this state of consciousness isn’t thinking; it’s feeling. In this interior domain of human experience, one feels enlivening compassion, care, love, and resonance with all of life.”
Love is both extremely simple, and profoundly challenging. I’m not talking here about affection, or attraction. It’s okay not to like everyone, not to want to hang out with everyone. But I’m talking here about something deeper than those things- a love that lays like a bedrock under everything else. Because I’ve been with my partner 30+ years, I know that even when we are getting on each other’s last nerve, there is something deeper, often unspoken, that is there on good days and on bad. As our lives have ebbed and flowed and changed, as we have gone through good patches and difficult patches, I began to realize that even though it was subtle, and sometimes hard to see, I could count on that layer of our relationship that did not change, that was longer lasting than the changing tides of affection and the daily challenges of having a household together. I invite you to consider -- where in your life you have seen that or felt a love that is deeper than affection, So dependable that it may sometimes be too quiet and still to draw our attention. Even when it is unnoticed it is there. 
Today’s story is a simple example, that a parent could love us even if we covered ourselves in mud, or other gross and sticky things, because their love is deeper than the surface, and they could love us even if they were annoyed or disappointed in us. That is the unconditional love that is at the core of our Universalist faith tradition.
In normal times, when I ask what church is, we make a long list of all the aspects of our community. But in these challenging times, we can’t hold so many things; we need something simple to hang on to. When you really dig down to the bedrock of our tradition, we are not our programs or events, we are not our historic buildings, At the core of our Universalist tradition is unconditional love. Love is the bedrock of our faith. As it says in the Christian scriptures I Corinthians “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
Our main job, both as a Universalist community and as individual persons is to remember love, whenever we can, whenever it is available to be remembered or experienced. And to remind one another when we have forgotten. We remind each other not by a logical argument, but by being love. By embodying and manifesting love, by grounding our actions, our choices, our words in that bedrock of love that underlays and supports everything, that is deeper than the suffering and struggle of this moment.
What does it look like to live out that love ? That means something different for each of us. In the bok “love languages” by Gary Chapman, he listed 5 ways people tend to show their love in their primary relationship: acts of service, gift-giving, physical touch, quality time, and words of affirmation. His point was to help families understand that we all show love in different ways, and to help us receive those manifestations of love that may be unfamiliar to us. How you manifest your love in the world will be as unique as you are.
I think about the chalice circle that has been running at this congregation for years; no matter how we start the meeting, by the end there is this palpable feeling of being held lovingly by the group – even over zoom. There is something powerful, something transformative about just being in connection with love. When we remember our connection to love, that feeling can be contagious.
Grounding our life in love doesn’t always feel good- being open to love opens us up to the feelings of grief for those who we have lost, or those who have broken our trust. There is an almost instinctive motion of the heart when we have been hurt to close down, to put up walls and protect that tender place. But it was from such a tender humble place that George de Beneville opened his heart, was met by that numinous experience of unconditional love. Remembering love begins with opening our hearts to feel love, to know love, wherever it is available. We know there are some folks in the world who have been so wounded that they have lost touch with love, maybe they have no memory of love at all. Part of our calling is to hold a loving space for them, so it is available when and if they are ready to receive that.
Matt Kahn offers a powerful meditation in his book "Whatever Arises Love That" which I’ve found very helpful:
When I’m sad, I deserve more love, not less.What a relief to know that even when we are too brokenhearted, to angry too cloaked in our own protection to feel love, this just means we need more love, not less. The universe offers love to us even then. God loves us even then, I find it helpful to say to myself lately when I am at my most grumpy and feel the most unlovable, “when I am grumpy and unlovable, I need more love, not less”
When I’m angry I deserve more love, not less.
When I’m frustrated, I deserve more love, not less.
Whenever I’m hurt, heartbroken, ashamed, or feeling guilty, I deserve more love, not less.
Even when I’m embarrassed by my actions, I deserve more love, not less.
Equally so, when I’m proud of myself I deserve more love, not less.
No matter how I feel, I deserve more love, not less.
Despite what I think I deserve more love, not less.
No matter the past that I’ve survived I deserve more love, not less.
No matter what remains up ahead I deserve more love, not less.
On my worst day I deserve more love, not less.
Even when life seems cruel and confusing I deserve more love, not less.
When no one is here to give me what I need I deserve more love, not less.
In remembering the greatest way I can serve the world I deserve more love, not less.
No matter what I’m able to accept, whomever I cannot forgive, or whatever I’m unable to love for whatever reason, I deserve more love, not less.
Dear Ones, this simple and profound work is so important right now. And you are really good at it. Sundays we gather on zoom and patiently wait for each other to mute or unmute, lose their pages, lose their zoom windows, and yet we experience some meaningful connection. We understand that we’re not going to find perfection here on Sunday morning, but we can help each other remember love. The world is in transition for sure, who knows what we are becoming as a country, as a community. In this time of heightened fear and animosity, we who can remember love are called to do so, and to remind others that love is real, and that it is also something we can build our future on together. If we want a world that is loving, then love must be our foundation. This is our most important work as inheritors of the Universalist tradition- to follow love like a north star, to hold it like a child in our arms, like a life preserver, like a prayer. To know that no matter how unworthy or troubled we feel we can fall down upon that deep foundational love it and it will hold us all.
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