Eric’s Sunday Sermon; For the Love of Love and the Sound

Now if you do not need to pinch yourself to make sure this great life is not a dream. Go back to sleep

How can you “do” love. How can you hear love and how can you love. Silence and Love may just be the only love.

I am going to leave this world for a while. I am free falling – by Tom Petty. How wonderful if placed under that tree where you are sitting with a straw in your teeth and just drifting away. Dobie Gray.

Shucks sometimes I wonder if only folks who put things to music are poets? Maybe not but when I read good poetry I get a rhythm and rhyme and harmony to it. John Hansen is one. And then I get to tapping my foot even to a Mailbag by a folk we call Billybuc. There it is. Communication in artful form is music? Now to me sculpture and paintings are the same. Clearly strange but I don’t get anything else in there. I was dancing in the Louvre and almost got arrested.

I have been happy lately, I think something good has become. Peace Train by Cat Stevens.

1 John 4 God Is Love; Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Now it is foggy and a smearing overcast this morning. You would think that is great to cool our inland coastal desert. Wrong. Heat rises and when heat cannot rise it is trapped. Your coffee pot lets the heat escape through a spout of sorts otherwise it explodes. And the fog is here. Which means by 11 AM the humidity will be over 100. Now then the sun will beat down on us with all it’s glory.

Horrible at 100 degrees. But enough to celebrate. The humidity reduces fire danger. So in restless siesta dreams today I will sweat but hear the sound of silence – Sound of Silence. (let us go with Paul Simon)

So the sound of silence is perhaps the sweetest sound of all. Yet I will sit and listen and watch the leaves pop up from heavy dew as the sun parches them and they actually crack rising up. No really I mean it. I promise if you do the still deal sitting in the dirt you can hear it. Crazy but true.

I think when my boy and wife get up with sleepy eyes in a bit I will hear their breathing as I kiss them in love but also to feel their temperature to detect any untoward condition.

I wonder If I am playing with the Queen of Hearts (Juice Newtan?)

So let us talk about my favorite love. Loving between two. Marriage is the best. If you have not tried it go and do it. Marriage is a contract. Marriage requires stuff from you. All emotional and physical and even financial. It is a great contract. Maybe except for your covenant with your God it is the best.

I even know folks who do not love each other in such a contract they will not break. Bummer but still a good contract.

Now I am a lawyer type so I know about contracts. Contracts are what make the world go around. I have a couple contracts with my young son. If this then that and we abide thereby.

But love is not a contract. Love is gentle, Love is kind, love is forever and ever. Love also requires “tough” love and not walking away until love has settled the issue. For some reason some would claim to be battling ethnicities but my wife and I fight. And the fights just fade away. My son seems to think they are funny. He does not put on headphones and run into another room, he just kind of watches. Perhaps we had a violent one back in 2003. I seem to recall she hit me with a frying pan.

So love between two on a fully personal level is a different thing than just general love. Love of doing stuff and of nature is awesome. And love in the spiritual is quite cool. But “loving” a partner is super duper.

Seems to me that a lot of folks do not have a formal contract for marriage. I don’t get that but that is fine by me. If they are being all in love who cares? Not my style but I am old fashion. Some folks want the right of being formally married. Now I may not know everything but that is really kind of interesting. Maybe stuff like SSI? Maybe the right to be like other people, again. Surely I do not discount their feelings and respect their desire there.

Let me just proclaim outright that I love my wife with everything I got. Well except what I reserve for my children and God. But that helps with the point. Different loves.

The Sound of Love

Perhaps the greatest of all sounds is the silence when holding hands. Here we do group hugs and usually say I love you and a prayer. But when we just stand there and shut up it is the best. I wonder about chanting out loud. It is well to consider prayers in silence. On the other hand I love to sing hymns and the like. Do you think my tap dancing may just be rude.

The term “babbling brook” is good. Roosters waking me up is a great day starter. If you never heard it you should take some time, a horse breathing on a good run right at dawn is amazing. Silly me but the sound of heavy traffic in a foreign city is aliving. Now go borrow a child and sit without waking them and listen to their breath early. (Mine happens to be on loan from God ;-)

There is a song that I just really think is special. (Ballad of the Green Beret). Why not celebrate combat heroes. Thanks to them for my wife and son. Her dad who was/is his grandpa, fought with these fine men. A ranger in the So. VN.

Now we must remember that the price of freedom is too often the sound of weapons. But we must love the sound of our freedom. “I say there are somethings were fighting for” (Have You Forgotten - Darryl Worley) Call me a bit strange but I just love my country.

Let me tell you a secret. “it is a love without end” – Perhaps George Straight? Maybe Barker. And it ends with “Amen” witch really means RIGHT ON.

And that is the bottom line. RIGHT ON Brothers and Sisters.

You got to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. (I think Harris and Rodgers)

Can you force your love on someone over the sound of silence? Nope. You cannot demand love from another or from God. Give it, use it or lose it.

Now let us hold on to love with all we have but with cupped hands so when it may be time we let it flutter away and watch the beauty of its wings into a new flight of life and love. It remains love and not resentment and worry. As we are bound to love we are bound to freedom because of that love. We are bound to love and not to possession.

Please join me in loving the sound of silence.

What a great day!