Love’s In Need of Love
Jesse Greist (February, 2025)
When I was young, I remember going a few times to the Howard Johnson’s at Long Wharf. As I’d dig into my ice cream I’d look out the side windows of good ol’ HoJo and could just barely see a giant banner in black and red on the side of that impossibly balanced Pirelli tire building:
“Power is nothing without control”
That has been the slogan of Pirelli for decades. It’s not a bad slogan for tires – but at various points in the course of humanity’s run here on Earth it seems that some people have come to believe that it’s a slogan for humanity too. How often have human beings – leaders, business owners, even some teachers and parents subscribed to the idea that their power is best won and maintained by subverting others – by exerting total control?
We’ve witnessed it in social structures, and in legal systems. We’ve seen it in models of industry, and government. We’ve seen it in religion and within families, across genders, sexualities and races. We have even seen it manifest in the ways people treat the very Earth we live on. The powerful are those in control and they decide what is right, wrong, included or marginalized. They sometimes decide who lives or dies, who has access to liberty. For many, order and a sense of safety are gained by submitting, or even subverting oneself to those power structures, and giving up some measure of our own control, especially those of us who wind up protected within those structures by way of demographics alone.
The slogan isn’t new. Six thousand years ago power via control was written into the Vedic texts in the Indus valley, which laid out a Caste system that all but guaranteed that a person born to a family of educated leaders would grow up to be an educated leader, a person born into a military family would be military, a musician’s son would pick up the phoongi by their third birthday and put it down only when their hands were shaking too much to hold it, all while a person born into a family of street cleaners would inescapably be handed down their first jhadu broom.
We certainly saw power through control in chattel slavery, and in the post-civil war’s conditional abolition, in Jim Crow, and in red lined real estate maps, and in the trail of tears, codified into law by democratic vote. We see it now in 2025 in Executive orders that flow like a mighty stream from slave-built marble mansions and golf course hotels, flooding the streets and teeming shores, flooding the gathered masses, who seek nothing more than the illumination of a lifted lamp beside a fabled golden door.
But is power inextricable from control? Are they one in the same? Is control the only path to power? Ask anyone who has been empowered by love and community, and you’ll have your answer! Ask John Lewis if controlling others was what brought him empowerment in the halls of congress. Ask Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta if it was their dominion over grape pickers, or even landowners that eventually stopped the planes from dropping poison on them. Ask Oprah Winfrey if it was a heavy hand or an open heart that got her where she is. Ask Ketanji Brown Jackson, or her mother, or her grandmother, and back and back and back.
Friends, I’d like to propose that true, lasting, power – the kind that is not worn like a new set of invisible imperial robes, but rather a power woven into the fabric of one’s being, is not to be achieved through control or dominance. It is to be given, it is to be gently and responsibly received. It is to be shared, built, and sustained throughout communities, and further, it is synonymous with a concept central to Unitarian Universalism.
The kind of power we are inviting into this sacred space here, that we call on to guide the application of our values to all that we do, great and small is a power that outlasts empires, outlasts injustice, outlasts executive orders, outlasts fragile rich men. This power is not just the power of love – it IS itself love!
Stevie Wonder said that love never asks for anything from us. The conscious and difficult act of recognizing and eliminating hate, and replacing it with deep, actionable love is the only price that is ever charged. And I’d like to share with you that this is the radical idea that lies at the very center of Unitarian Universalism. While some may think that power or even faith is built on control of others’ thoughts, feelings, beliefs, families, rights or bank accounts, Unitarian Universalism begins with the individual and invites us to completely abandon the idea of exerting control over them, spiritually, morally – in every way. We hold dear the idea that by freeing others fully and completely from structures of control, each individual just might choose to build a collective form of empowerment that will uplift everyone equally, equitably and in love. And if they don’t, they are no less a human being. We continue to hold space for them and lift up everyone around them just the same. We UU’s are subservient to no one, but are accountable to everyone, especially ourselves. Just as we are empowered by an ideal of collective love and freedom, we are ultimately and supremely responsible for that collective liberation, and it can only be achieved if we hold ourselves accountable for our actions – Universalists opened up the concept of heaven to everyone, believing in a loving accepting god and modern UU’s take it further, opening this shared Earth-bound life journey to everyone as well – saying you are good just by virtue of your existence. You are worthy of love and opportunity, by no other privilege than the free air you breathe and the heartbeat that propels you through your experiences.
But… the hard truth that we face, that we have faced in many ways is: we don’t collectively live in that reality – at least not yet. The force of love still stands at odds with the force of control, and at times it seems elemental to human nature. When I taught Kindergarten, the simple distribution of crayons to my students was a daily reminder of these intrinsic self-serving instincts. At Alfred F. Garcia school, we never had enough crayons to give each student their own set. Some kids jumped to the conclusion that speed, or physical strength would win the day. They’d jump like a cheetah on a box of colors, wrestle it out of the very hands of a neighbor they’d high-fived just minutes before, and hover over their prize menacing and growling at anyone who dared dream of using their yellow to warm the sun. Then there were those who simply said let’s lay them out on the table and take turns. I’ll fill the blue sky while you warm the sun, then we’ll switch. In observing the two approaches, I noted one important life lesson that permeates the practice of my Unitarian Universalism and justice seeking. The classroom cheetahs often did wind up with more crayons in the short term, and almost never had to wait, but sooner or later, those crayons would be the ones that showed up broken and unusable, along with the friendships around them. It was the controllers and hoarders who led to increased scarcity, and the sharers who hung up their art and went on to lunch first, holding hands. But these forces did split the class down the middle, and it was my job as teacher to resist the urge to PUNISH the cheetahs for their instincts and find creative ways to access the love that I had to believe was in there somewhere, waiting to be lifted and nourished.
In the larger world beyond the classroom, there are still those who pounce on resources. There are those who willingly and consciously oppress and control in the name of power and wealth acquisition. There are still solidly built legacies of injustice and marginalization all around us, and at times such as, say, early 2025 for example, it still feels like they are greater or at least more numerous than the legacies of love that brought us together in this Sanctuary. That’s why love is in need of love today. Empowerment needs to be empowered. Injustice cries out for justice. Earth itself desperately needs healing from all that we have wrought.
But let’s ask John Lewis again, and Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta (who, by the way at 94 years old is still at it, currently organizing a boycott of big box stores that canceled DEI programs) Let’s ask her again, and Oprah Winfrey, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Tenzin Gyatso and (name a few people in the Sanctuary) let’s ask them and each other if we will ever stop seeking empowerment through community uplift. Let’s ask them and each other if we will ever aim to climb our mountains by stepping on the hearts and minds of those we have fought for. Let’s ask them and each other if love is not enough to power us through. Because love is in need right now– it’s hurting, it’s laboring, but it is far from defeated, my friends. Love is the center of our faith, it is in all we do, it is all we are, and if we build together and dream together, and act together, love can guide us through any hard night until we awaken to justice, to freedom and to liberation!