THE WAYS OF COMPANIONSHIP

The Rev. Mark Ward
Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville

Asheville, NC

October 22, 2006

READING

from Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman.

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune –
I myself am good fortune;
I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine,
And the north and the south are mine.
All seems beautiful to me;

Whoever you are, come travel with me!
However sweet these laid-up stores –
However convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here.
However sheltered this port, and however calm these waters
we must not anchor here;

Together! The inducements shall be greater;
We will sail pathless and wild seas;
We will go where winds blow, and waves dash
Onward! To that which is endless, as it is beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it.
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you—
To know the universe itself as a road – as many roads –
as roads for traveling souls.

SERMON

A little over 100 years ago the Unitarian minister William Channing Gannett gained some fame by writing a popular essay on what he called “The House Beautiful.” In an approach we might describe as a kind of 19th century American feng shui, Gannett argued for attention to such things as taste, color and refinement in the making and decorating of a house. The essay so impressed the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, another Unitarian, that he crafted a special folio edition of the essay with plates that he hand-engraved himself. That edition, in turn, inspired the name for “House Beautiful” magazine that we know today.

Toward the end his essay, Gannett observed that as important as details like flowers and books, pictures and the harmony of colors may be, in his words, “one thing remains to furnish the house beautiful . . . without which the house is not a home.

“I mean,” he wrote, “the warm light in the rooms that comes from kind eyes, from quick unconscious smiles, from gentleness in tones, from little unpremeditated caresses of manner, from habits of fore-thoughtfulness for one another – all that happy illumination which, on the inside of a house, corresponds to morning sunlight outside falling on quiet dewy fields. It is an atmosphere really generated of many self-controls, of much forbearance, of training in self-sacrifice; but by the time it reaches instinctive expression these stern generators of it are hidden in the radiance resulting. It is like a constant love song without words, whose meaning is, ‘We are glad that we are alive together.’”

Today’s stores and catalogues are full of fine and elaborate furnishings to decorate our homes, and yet it seems to me the accoutrement that we most desire is the latter one that Gannett named more than a century ago. In our busy lives we juggle one obligation after another, fill our schedules with important, even fascinating activity, yet we fumble over how to attend to, to care for our deepest, closest relationships.

What we are seeking, it seems to me, is to learn the ways of companionship, how we might live and grow with another in a way grounded in mutual respect and care. Sounds lovely, right? Isn’t this the stuff that Valentine’s cards are made of? Well, perhaps. But what those lovely words hide is the work it takes to realize them. Remember that Gannett counseled that such a way “is generated of many self controls, of much forbearance, of training self-sacrifice.”

The contemporary poet Adrienne Rich is more direct: “An honorable human relationship,” she says, “is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they tell each other.

“ It is important to do this,” she says, “because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in so doing we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.”

Much heartbreak comes of learning how challenging that way can be. Our relationships begin with that exciting frisson of attraction, a wonderful feeling of rightness that lights up the world. But it’s not long before we start to bump into sharp edges: needs, wishes, ways of looking at the world that grate against ours. How we negotiate those awkward moments usually goes far to determine whether the relationship moves to a place of depth or stays shallow and eventually dissolves.

Some years ago the psychologist John Gottman gained public attention for his claim that as a result of his research that he was able to predict with 90% accuracy whether a couple would get divorced after observing them in conversation for just five minutes. Gottman and his researchers compared cues in the couple’s conversation with physiological measurements and discovered characteristic patterns of couples in trouble. (And let me add that while Gottman’s research showed that the dynamics of gay and lesbian couples differ a bit, he found that the same cues apply as with heterosexual couples.)

Couples headed for break-up, he found, were those where partners had lost a sense of closeness or no longer felt loved or appreciated. Arguments began with harsh accusations and quickly moved on to what Gottman dubbed “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. Complaints were couched in global statements of blame. Partners would make demeaning comments about the other, and they would be unwilling to let down their guard and acknowledge the other’s concern, and the conversation would end with one shutting the other out. Even efforts to deescalate the argument would go unnoticed.

Having refined his techniques for predicting when a relationship would end, Gottman began exploring what lessons would help couples turn a failing relationship into a successful one. The answer probably won’t surprise you. Happy couples, he found, are those who behave like good friends. That is, they show respect, affection and empathy toward each other. They accept that conflicts will arise but handle them in gentle, positive ways.

When a problem comes up, one partner raises it in a neutral way without criticizing or insulting the other. Each partner often turns to the other to make bids of emotional connection – a comment, a question, a smile – and the other responds by turning toward them – open, listening, engaged. If things get off track, they each make efforts to repair the rift and to receive the other’s attempt at repair. They learn how to soothe themselves and each other, either by taking a break but resolving to return, or responding to the other in a way that calms or affirms them. They make compromises, accepting the influence of the other. And they appreciate each other, accepting the other’s faults but also reflecting and commenting on what they admire.

Again, all this told in clinical language sounds easy, but shifting our attitudes to accomplish it can be hard. We all bring patterns of behavior into the relationships we make as well as expectations of the other, stated and unstated. The stresses and demands of day to day living can also shape habits that work against the relationship. We fall into an unthinking routine where, while chores are done and bills are paid, there is little real joy in the relationship. By all outward standards things may be going fine, but we feel ourselves drifting without ever really connecting.

We enter relationships feeling that the glow that animates us at the time will stay with us, carry us through our grumpy days and lonely nights, then wonder why it fades. What we forget is that in those early days when everything felt so wonderful we were also putting a lot of time and energy into that relationship. In fact, we probably go a bit overboard, and so in a sense early in our relationships we are able to bank up all that excess energy, all that attention as we get settled and get to know each other.

Too often, though, we get distracted and fall into patterns that take each other for granted. In the place of the time and energy we once gave to our relationships we substitute sentimentality: syrupy valentines and bouquets of roses that, while they claim to come from the heart, actually contain little
emotional investment.

Adrienne Rich, remember, defined honorable human relationships as the difficult process of refining the truths we tell each other. It is the steady diminishment of truth telling that leads to the decline of relationship, truth telling arising from love, truth telling that recognizes the “I” as bound up in a “We.” And not an exclusive “We” that shuts you off from the world, but a “we” that enhances and that touches the deep truth in each.

The poet Marge Piercy addresses it this way:

Learning to love differently is hard,
Love with the hands wide open,
Love with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring
and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm.
It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch;
to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger,
moment by moment balanced.

In committing to another, we enter a realm of mutuality that embodies both care and respect, a realm where we not only share space but also, in Gottman’s words, create shared meaning. Satisfaction in relationship comes, he says, when couples create an inner life together: a culture, essentially, rich in symbols, shared rituals and common stories that explain who and how they are together.

These stories, he says, honor and incorporate the dreams of each, even when the dreams are not shared. That happens, though, only when partners are honest and open to each other’s perspectives. The more candidly and respectfully people speak with each other, he says, the more likely they are to find a blended sense of meaning in relationship.

The Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, minister of the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church near Cleveland, tells the story of a couple she was working with in premarital counseling. The woman, she recalled, had been married before and the relationship had ended in a bitter divorce.

She told of fights that she and her ex had that, just like the couples that Gottman interviewed, began with pointed criticism that degenerated to personal attacks, defensiveness and ultimately inability to talk with each other at all. “So,” Rev. Rolenz asked the woman as they were reflecting on her upcoming second marriage, “what makes you think this love will last?” The woman took a deep breath, and thought for a minute, then responded. “I guess I’ve learned that love is not so much a feeling – it’s a discipline.”

The ways of being together that lead to deep and enduring companionship are indeed a discipline, and like any discipline they take time to learn. We are awkward at first. We make assumptions and mistakes. And so we must approach this task with certain humility, accepting each other’s fallibility with humor, compassion and good will. Yet, like any good, life-giving practice, we keep at it. We devote time and thought to it. We make ample space for it in our busy lives.

And so perhaps in time, as William Channing Gannett suggested, it does “reach instinctive expression” so that what we experience truly is a radiance, an ability to experience the world light-hearted and free, blessed with good fortune in a partnership ready to take on whatever the wind and waves may blow our way: Together, to know the universe as a road, as many roads for traveling souls.

In the end, of course, what traveling souls seek is a home, a place to come back to where we belong, where we can be at ease. Many of us spend a good part of our lives traveling from place to place looking for that home, imaging it must have a certain shape or be in a certain location. I want to suggest, though, that the home we are seeking is one we are going to find not in the real estate section of the newspaper, but in each other.

I have always loved that hymn that began our service, “May Nothing Evil Cross This Door.” But it is only recently that I have come to see that I could reinterpret it as a metaphor, a metaphor for deep and loving companionship. It is, I think, a kind of silent prayer we each murmur as we reflect our ties to those we love best.

May nothing evil cross the threshold of this loving companionship, pry, as it might, at the windows or beat, as it will, on the roof. By faith, faith in each other centered in mutual respect and care, this abode we have made for ourselves will be made strong, withstanding the battering of the storm. And this hearth, the warmth of our hearts sheltered in this place, though all the world may grow chill, will keep us warm.

May peace walk softly through our rooms, hallowing them an inner life that is ours alone. When times get tough, may laughter and forgiveness drown the raucous shout. And still, we know that for all we do, the walls of this common shelter of ours are thin. The circumstances of life can hold some blows that are hard to parry. There is nothing we can do to guarantee our success or that everything will turn out right. All we can do, with the most dedicated attention, is to resolve to do our part to keep hate out and hold love in.

Now, I have focused much of what I have said today on committed couples, for that is how it is with most of us. But in truth there are many shapes that this relationship can take. One can also find deep companionship in loving friends and communities of support. Indeed, part of our challenge as a church community is to learn how to companion each other in many ways, so that we might be supported, encouraged and inspired to abundant living that fulfills our own hopes and the hopes of the world.

Let this be a place where we feel the radiance William Channing Gannett spoke of, where there is a song on our lips whose meaning is, “We are glad that we are alive together.”

So Be It.