Love Heals the Way

 
“Love Heals the Way”
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
 
 
Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings.
Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move.
    The Essential Rumi by Jelaluddin Rumi
 
What a powerful message to begin our exploration of how it is that “love heals the way.”  On this wonderful day, Valentine’s Day, which is a celebration of love, we have just witnessed the love and joy of baptism with the family of Jillian Marie who are all here with us today.  What a wonderful celebration of the manifestation of love! How delightful! Even as we celebrate and feel the true joy of this moment, we know that it was not an easy path to arrive at this day.  If you have birthed a child, you know a kind of pain that really takes your breath away with its frequency, intensity and duration.  And it is never easy to watch your beloved in that kind of pain.  We can swap labor and delivery stories after the service today; it is kind of a rite of passage! Love asks a lot of us, doesn’t it?  And as new parents, I can safely say, you have only just begun!
 
Bringing new life into the world asks a lot of us just as letting love heal the way asks a lot of us. The last time I was with you was right before Martin Luther King Day and my question then, was, “Living the Dream, What Does it Require?”  And the answer was that it required telling the truth, however painful that is and embracing Truth, capital “T” Truth, that is greater than we are.  That was the role of the Prophets in the Hebrew scripture, to call out those who were not truthful, who were ignoring the spiritual Law and plowing a path that would lead nowhere by not telling the truth.  But we are at the place of the first line of Rumi’s poem, “Keep walking, though there is no place to get to.”  It is a walk of faith.
 
I have just returned from a wonderful 17-day vacation in Florida, thank you, God!  We stayed in a condo and because of COVID, we really did not do a lot of touring or sightseeing.  We did go to Corkscrew Swamp and walked through 400- year-old Cypress trees that have withstood so much and still stand. We learned that the dead trees that still stand are called “snags” and they are essential to the eco-health of the forest and the swamp.  I took strength from those trees. The swamp was so quiet, it felt like nature’s sanctuary and it was healing. Todd and I also meditated together every day and we fasted from the news and all the political turmoil in our country.  It was more like a retreat in some ways, and very much needed. It took me a number of days to begin to “detox” and release all the poisonous, angry, outraged feelings that were holding me hostage, closing my heart, giving me heartburn, and robbing me of sleep.
 
My intention in ministry is to be as honest, transparent, and authentic as possible while maintaining healthy boundaries as I do my own inner spiritual and emotional work of healing and growth.  What I must confess is that in the midst of the pandemic, the riots, the insurrection, the politically poisonous rhetoric on a national and even state level, it has not been easy to walk a path of love, even in the abstract.  At times it has even felt impossible, to the point that I wondered to myself if I should continue in ministry if I can’t find my own spiritual center in the midst of all this, especially the virulent hatred. 
 
We got home on Monday and as much as I was dreading the cold, I was dreading the news, a return to “reality” as it is.  I just wanted to stay in my warm, happy little vacation bubble, but that was not to be.  It was -3 on Monday night and on Tuesday, I found myself watching the trial and the video of that explosion of hatred on January 6, 2021.  It was a sad, sobering moment to look at that again and feel our collective pain. And yet, here I am again, today, standing before you, baptizing a beautiful baby girl and affirming that love is the path of healing even when we are not sure where we are going.
 
The next line of Rumi’s poem is helpful: we begin with  “Keep walking, even when though there is no place to get to,” and now he tells us “Don’t try to see through the distances, that’s not for human beings.”  Wow, that is really challenging for someone who wants to know how the movie turns out before she will commit 2 hours to watching it!  It better be good and uplifting or I’m not gonna waste my time!  I only like it when it all turns out ok….yikes!  Well, that may at times work for movies, but it is not how life works.  So as we sat on the beach one day in heavy fog in Florida, we could not see the horizon, we could not see the distances.  But that does not mean it was not there.  Most often God sees what we cannot, so we let go and let God.  Easy to say, not so easy to do. 
 
One of the most difficult passages in letting love heal you is learning to just allow people to be exactly where they are and do what they do, full stop.  No matter how much you dislike it, how disappointed you are with them, letting them learn and grow and just holding a loving space is such a challenge.  No matter how much you want them to wake up and smell the coffee and get their act together in a better way, it is their journey, not yours.  Holding a loving presence while not taking on their pain and not conspiring with them to deny the pain or consequences, well that is love in action, but it is often difficult and painful, like the Prophets of the Old Testament.
One such Prophet was Jeremiah who lived at a time of great loss, great sadness for the Jewish people.  As Richard Rohr describes it in his February 11th Meditation:
 
Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians and his people had been exiled. He critiqued the false prophets of his day who denied such necessary suffering and pretended things were better than they were. He poured out his heart to God and famously asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” (Jeremiah 8:22). The hope for a healing “balm in Gilead” provided inspiration for the African American spiritual tradition and Civil Rights Movement. Today’s meditation is a reflection from the mystic and theologian Howard Thurman about the beloved spiritual “There Is a Balm in Gilead.”
 
There is a balm in Gilead,
To make the spirit whole.
There is a balm in Gilead,
To heal the sin-sick soul.
 
As Howard Thurman states:
 
"The basic insight here is one of optimism—an optimism that grows out of the pessimism of life and transcends it. It is an optimism that uses the pessimism of life as raw material out of which it creates its own strength."
~Howard Thurman, Deep River: Reflections on the Religious Insight of Certain of the Negro Spirituals (Harper and Brothers: ©1945, 1955), 55–56
 
This spiritual, “There Is a Balm in Giliad” highlights the last line in Rumi’s poem, “Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.”  In order to let love heal the way, we move within, we turn within and seek a balm that makes the spirit whole, that heals the sin-sick soul. What we have been seeing in our culture, mirrored in ourselves is what hate and violence looks like and the despair and hell that it causes.  If we devolve in fear to that place of revenge and hatred, there is no balm, no comfort, no healing.  But if we move to love as a healing way, we are, as Howard Thurman says, using “the pessimism of life as raw material out of which it creates its own strength.” Our African American friends have been doing that for generations. And of this is born hope and from this is generated more healing love.
 
It is Black History month, and I truly stand in awe of the Civil Rights marchers of the 1960’s.  It is from their journey, their story that I draw courage to walk the healing path of love no matter how often I stumble, and I do. I am inspired to keep walking by another hero, John Lewis.  I want to share part of a conversation from “On Being” released on Feb. 1, 2021, John Lewis: Love in Action:
 
Tippett: I also read somewhere that you were trained even if someone was attacking you to look them in the eye, that there was something disarming for human beings.
Lewis: We did go through the motion, the drama, of saying that if someone kick you, spit on you, pull you off the lunch counter stool, continue to make eye contact. Continue to give the impression, yes, you may beat me, but I’m human.
Tippett: In the way I come to understand this as I, again, study you is the point of all of this role-playing was not just about being practically prepared….. But you also understood this to be a spiritual confrontation first within yourselves and then with the world outside. Is that right?
Lewis: You’re so right. First of all, you have to grow. It’s just not something that is natural. You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. And in the religious sense, in the moral sense, you can say in the bosom of every human being, there is a spark of the divine. So you don’t have a right as a human to abuse that spark of the divine in your fellow human being.
 
So on this Valentine’s Day 2021, we again choose the raw energy of pessimism and with the balm of healing love, God-love, shape it into a powerful path of love, looking first within to our own fears and humanness, and then to that power of love that heals us all.  May it be ever so!
 
Blessings on the Path.
February 17, 2021