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Arthur Vaeni
When I was in grade school,
my class observed Valentine's Day with a party that included distributing valentines
to all our classmates.
Knowing the other kids were also required to give me a card didn't seem to matter.
As I read through so many valentines comprising sweet jingles such as
"Roses are red
Violets are blue
You're really swell
That's why I like you"
I could begin to imagine my classmates actually meant it.
Whatever the reality of our relationships every other day of the year, on that day I believed they really liked me.
Perhaps I'm more easily deluded than some people, but I don't think I'm that different from most regarding my desire to feel I am loved.
So central is love to the human experience that many of us often refer to our God as love. When we are in the presence of love, we experience a sense of wholeness and union with all of life. Love can be the portal through which our lives discover meaning and purpose.
On Valentine's Day, we celebrate romantic love, which is an important part of life's great love. Romantic love can bring us out of ourselves into the intimacy of a committed relationship. Even as it opens our hearts to untold joy, it also opens us to greater vulnerability, which is why it's so painful when a relationship ends.
Yet, by knowing love and allowing ourselves to live with the vulnerability love requires, we mature emotionally and spiritually.
For those adults who choose to live in committed relationships, romantic love can help them grow as a couple and as individual persons. When the nature and quality of their love grows as well, the beneficial effects ripple outward into society.
Given that, I would imagine our society would seek to affirm and support all committed, loving relationships between adults, but we don't. For the most part, we refuse to accept the legitimacy of homosexual relationships.
Although some people believe romantic love should only be channeled through heterosexual relationships, it seems that love itself is unwilling to accept that limitation. I know both gay and lesbian couples in committed relationships whose love clearly enriches their humanity as well as the humanity of their families and friends.
I am inspired by their examples, knowing that to create such gracious relationships, they must surmount not only the usual difficulties couples encounter but also the immense obstacle of entrenched condemnation of homosexuality.
Rather than seeking to subvert love's counsel, we would do well to follow its example by welcoming gay and lesbian couples into the institution of marriage. On this Valentine's Day, may we acknowledge the yearning we share to know love in our lives. Let us commit ourselves to helping love manifest more fully in the world.
The Rev. Arthur Vaeni is
minister of the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation.
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