Our theme of the month for February is “Love.” Ah, love. One of our more popular chalice lightings and affirmations in Unitarian Universalist congregations are these words of covenant adapted from Griswold Williams:

Love is the doctrine of this congregation,
This quest for truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve humankind in fellowship,
To the end that all souls shall grow
into harmony with the Good.
Thus do we covenant with each
other.

Unitarian Universalists are also often insistent that we are a nondoctrinal, creedless faith. So it seems funny that this popular expression of our covenant opens with an assertion about what our doctrine is. Love, however, is not a doctrine—which means that love cannot really be our doctrine, strictly speaking. What I believe we mean when we say, “Love is the doctrine of this congregation,” is that, for us, love takes the place of doctrine. Beliefs and creeds occupy a certain spot in the heart and psyche. We turn to that that place for guidance in life. As Unitarian Universalists, our aspiration and our covenant is that that spot be filled with love instead of with doctrine. 

Yet love is largely unchosen. Consider this. I have never heard anyone say, “I choose today to love my children.” I never heard anyone say, “I decided at age 22 to fall in love with the person that I married at age 25.” I never heard anything like, “I studied the facts and made an intentional decision to love baseball more than any other team sport.” I never heard anything like any of these utterances, and I daresay you never did either. 

We Unitarian Universalists have a reputation for prizing our selfdetermination and independence. Yet love is something that happens to us, not something we sit down and make a rational, calculated decision to do. We don’t decide to love a person, love a sport, love a favorite book or author, love the beach, or love a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Rather, we simply find that we do love them. 

We don’t decide to love. All we can choose is to try to be open to love. Trying does not guarantee success at becoming open to love, and becoming open to love does not guarantee that love will arrive. Still, trying to be open is the best we can do. We can’t make love happen. If it does happen, it’s a kind of accident. All we can do is practice to make ourselves a bit more accident prone.

Love,
Meredith