Love is never wasted

I was already thinking about this even before hanging out with the Unitarians this Easter morning.  If you're not a Unitarian Universalist ---- and most people are not ---- you might not understand about UU and Easter.

In many churches, the regular kind, there's a core group of people who attend a lot and keep the ball rolling and then there are the Christmas and Easter folks.  They're nostalgic or guilty or unusually busy or something, but they tend to just show up for special occasions, like Christmas and Easter.  That means that Easter, in many mainstay churches, is a big day, requiring extra seating and someone directing traffic.

At UU it's not really like that.  First of all, in the usual eclectic way, the people who show up are dressed in everything from jeans and t-shirts to the fancy dresses and hats.  This morning the one who took the cake for me was the 3 or 4 year old beauty in a sparkly, pink, frothy dress and headband with a large pink flower attached.

Costuming aside, it looks like almost any other Sunday of the year.  Attendance is on the low side of normal --- UUs are often on spring break, so people tend to go to the beach or Disney World or Jakarta or London.  We had a pretty reasonble crowd this morning but no records were broken.

Since there is no creed or theology that everyone must adhere to, the Easter story from Christian tradition is only one of many possible topics for this day.  Even when it is recounted, as it was this morning, the interpretation is likely to be outside the usual sermon about Jesus and the resurrection.

So today, what I loved hearing about was love and renewal.  Events in my life and those around me lately, have led me to think about love and continuity, and the cycles of life.  Today is about spring and the renewal of life that every spring brings about.  It's a renewal not only of life, but beauty.  We had a flower communion today.  Cut flowers that people brought in were banked up front, and the children distributed them to everyone at the end.  It didn't matter if you brought in flowers or not; we all went home with that symbol of new life and beauty.

I've been thinking about love and death and life.  I've been thinking about relationships that have come and gone.  I have never been hurt by love, though not all loving relationships have lasted.  And loving has never been wasted.  The love I have felt for people who are no longer in my life did not disappear.  It was there, and it contributed to me and to the other person and to the world at large.  I think about the love I've felt for the children I taught; they carry some of it with them, and so do I.  My two ex-husbands and others I have been intensely in love with?  There is no loss, as I look back.  The loving was there and real.  The obstacles were stepping stones to necessary lessons.  And loving parents, grandparents, people who have died? If anything, love softens and becomes more buoyant as time passes.

Not only that, but a little love can go a long way.  If someone smiles and says a genuine hello, even if I don't know them, it lifts my heart and makes me view the world with a more positive spirit.The same thing happens in reverse, as well. Wanna see a day get better?  Read the nametag of the store clerk at the checkout and say "Thank you, Darlene" (or whoever) ---- You will experience connection with a person, not an automaton.  And that, my friend, is love.