The Kissing Bandit

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Story for All Ages

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I want to talk today about romantic love. And I want to talk about St. Valentine’s Day. What—exactly—is St. Valentine’s Day? Where did it come from?

We all know that it is tomorrow—February 14th—and that it is associated with love and sweethearts. And celebrated with the exchanging of cards and candies, flowers, and so on. But while the name Valentine appears on calendars, the Roman Catholic Church (which beatified him) does next to nothing to observe his day; and it is in America and England only—not Europe—that the memory of this patron saint of lovers is kept alive. Well, who was this Valentine?  

Ancient records reveal that among the early church martyrs there were several Valentine; at least three and as many as eight. Two of these Valentines, one a priest and another a bishop, are both said to have been murdered by Emperor Claudius II on the eve of the Roman holiday Lupercalia, which was celebrated on February 15—the day after tomorrow. These executions allegedly took place in the year 270. Several legends have filtered down through the centuries regarding these several Valentines. While imprisoned, it is said, one of them cured his jailer’s daughter of blindness. Another story has him falling in love with the daughter and sending her a letter signed, “from your Valentine.” 

Eventually, multiple legends surrounding the assorted Mr. Valentines coalesced into one. This coalescing (i.e., the merging of various legends about several different figures into a single story about a single hero) is called mythic condensation. Religious literature is teeming with mythic heroes and heroines; and the reputations of just about all of them—to one extent or another—have benefitted from mythic condensation. It is with this understanding, for instance, that the Biblical scholar Norman Gottwald (a professor at General Seminary in New York City) writes of the Old Testament heroes Moses and Joshua as actually compilations from many oral legends about many different charismatic and military leaders, all condensed into two larger-than-life mythic superstars. 

In any case, the various Valentines coalesced over time into one legendary saint who eventually came to have authority over lover’s quarrels. With the passage of still more time, St. Valentine became the patron saint of sweethearts and of people wishing to get married. Exactly how this connection evolved is elusive, at best. One clear connection, though, is with Lupercalia, an important Roman festival in honor of the god Lupercas. Lupercas was a Roman version of the Greek Pan—god of the fields, forests, wild animals, flocks, and shepherds. The festival of Lupercas, Lupercalia, occurred every year on the fifteenth of February and had both purification and fertility aspects. 

On that day half naked adolescent boys would run through Rome carrying furry strips of goat hide (called februa) with which they would lash out at all the adolescent girls. The young women, we are told, gladly offered themselves to become vessels of conception and delivery. (It is from those furry strips of goat hide, incidentally—februa—that the word “February” derives….) 

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Having spoken a moment ago about mythic condensation (wherein the exploits of many are condensed into the miraculous feats of one superhero), let us now consider the practice of mythic appropriation. Here the ancient gods are appropriated into new religions. This happens all the time—even today. For instance, in 1984 conservative Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan repeatedly invoked the names of liberal heroes Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy, thereby mythically appropriating the ancient liberal pantheon for his own new conservative political purposes. 

The survival of the ancient gods, with new names and new clothing, is happening all the time. So it was that everywhere the early Christians came into power they immediately adopted the holidays and customs of the local people to their own new creed. One of those, during Lupercalia, involved putting the names of young girls into a box from which boys would randomly draw; the young people so matched would then be considered partners for the coming year, which began in March. For Christians, coming to power in 325, it was a simple matter to call the day of this drawing St. Valentine’s Day, for the day of his martyrdom and that of the drawing were only one day apart. By the 14th century the custom of wooing on Valentine’s Day was fully established. 

This had to do with the increased romanticization of love. Consider the impassioned lyric poetry of the 12th and 13th century troubadours and mine-singers. Their songs about the likes of Tristan and Isolde were the first praises sung in tribute to Amour, or what we are referring to when we speak of the love of one individual for another. 

Amour is not agape.  

And it is not lust,  

both of which are completely impersonal. Amour is totally personal. And within its passionate embrace we—all of us—are totally vulnerable,   exposed…     and revealed… 

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Now it happened that in the Middle Ages there was a widespread belief that birds mated on February 14th. Thus, we note in Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fouls” “…this was on Saint Valentine’s Day/When every fowl cometh to choose his mate….” The metaphysical poet John Donne, writing about 200 years later [c. 1600] elaborates: 

HAIL Bishop Valentine, whose day this is;  

         All the air is thy diocese,  

         And all the chirping choristers  

And other birds are thy parishioners;  

         Thou marriest every year  

The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,  

The sparrow that neglects his life for love,  

The household bird with the red stomacher;  

         Thou makest the blackbird speed as soon,  

As doth the goldfinch, or the halcyon;  

The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped,  

And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.  

This day more cheerfully than ever shine;  

This day, which might enflame thyself, old Valentine. 

The belief that birds chose their mates on Valentine’s Day led to the idea that boys and girls should do the same. And by Donne’s time, this was becoming more and more the case, such that by 1650 the precursors of modern Valentine’s cards were being sent. These early valentines were usually handmade, rustic creations, onto which suitors or husbands copied sentimental verse. Often these cards were also adorned with pasted-on cupids and other “emblems of love,” such as bleeding hearts, lover’s knots, and turtledoves. 

Over the next 200 years the custom of sending valentines slowly grew; but it was the introduction of the penny postcard in the 1840s that led to the widespread sending and receiving we know today. Commercial valentines also came out about this time and were a tremendous success.  

Today valentines—ranging from the sentimental to the ridiculous—are manufactured on an enormous scale and are made to be sent to anyone, friend, relative, classmate, and paramour alike. Indeed, St. Valentine’s Day is second only to Christmas in the number of greetings sent in the United States. We send these greetings to honor our friendship, and in special cases our love, for the people to whom they are addressed. 

But what is this love? This amour which inspires valentines, compels courtship, hastens marriages, sells novels, enriches box offices, breaks hearts, and baffles the foolish and the wise alike?  

Amour is the passionate love of the imperfect, totally unique individual. At its best it is liberation. At its worst: misery and addiction.  

Amour is not the “love thy neighbor as thyself, whoever she or he may be” of agape, charity, and compassion. Nor is it the general will to sex, which is equally indiscriminate. Amour, rather, is of an order neither of heaven nor of hell, but of earth—grounded in the head and heart and eyes of a particular person. (“…completes its brightness with your eyes….” Writes the Unitarian poet ee cummings, as quoted in this morning’s Call to Worship.) 

Being earthy and individual, love as amour is susceptible to all the human pitfalls and foibles that are particular to individual people. Which can—and often does—lead to trouble. So much so that the late French author, Françoise Sagan, was compelled to write: When you fall in love with someone, you’re finished. It’s always like that!” 

Problematic as love is, however (and it is!), I would hate for anyone to miss the experience…. For falling in love is one of, if not the, most vital experiences of our lives. And like Sagan says, whenever it happens, you are kind of finished. Because the “you” in you, the ego, the head-tripping, mental schemer becomes suddenly and miraculously caught up in something so much bigger than oneself (and so much more liberating than our daily routines) that it is kind of like a “little death” and “rebirth.” What is going on here?  

We “fall in love” with people because, as individuals, we see or sense something in them that appeals to us. There is a danger here, however, because often what appeals to us is the unconscious intuition that this other person will somehow provide for us a sense of security by recreating the dynamic found in our childhood home. So, we feel safe (as though we have retreated back to the womb, as it were) even though quite often when we’ve “fallen in love” we have actually just traded our growth and freedom for regression and—potentially—addiction.  

“It is easier to live through someone else,” wrote the feminist author Betty Friedan, “than to become complete yourself.” This is certainly true. And, as Friedan and others have shown, “living through someone else” in such a way can, in certain instances, become addictive: a pathological way for a person to avoid looking at and dealing with their own issues often referred to a co-dependency. 

This tendency to choose partners (i.e., to “fall in love”) for unconscious (and often unhealthy) reasons is found in everyone. No doubt it is what Maurice Chevalier had in mind when said “Many a man has fallen in love…in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.” But just as we are all too prone to choose partners for unconscious and potentially unhealthy reasons, so too, within us all is the wish, and the will, and the willingness to struggle to do otherwise: to choose to love for healthy and creative reasons. 

There are dozens of self-help books out there that deal directly with these issues, many—though by no means all—written from a woman’s perspective. The two, in my estimation, that state the issues most clearly are Love and Addiction by Stanton Peele and Melody Beattie’s books on co-dependency. These and other titles reveal the many dangers involved whenever we fall in love, and the many opportunities for growth. For the truth is, we all suffer from relative degrees of health and dependency, and we choose each other as partners for both healthy and self-destructive reasons. The trick, I guess, is to focus, by yourself, but also with your partner, on holding on to the healthy reasons and let go of the addictive ones that draw us together. 

Barbara Keller, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Fullerton, California, where I served for two years, has written close to a dozen novels. I read one, Heartbreak Trail, a historical romance with a kind of a harlequin flavor. I liked it a lot: filled with adventure and exciting twists and turns, but mostly it is about two unlikely lovers who find new lives together and happiness in the Old West.  

The Moderator of the San Francisco Church when I was serving there, Stephen Schwichow, is one of my personal heroes for his courage when, while living in Texas years ago, gay-bashing hoodlums beat the tar out of him. He later told me that the romance novels of Mary Renault helped him immeasurably in coming to terms with his own sexuality. If others have loved this way and found wholeness and happiness, why couldn’t he? Stephen asked himself, and then set about crafting a life of dedication, service, and dignity toward that end, a life all can admire; I surely do. 

One of my favorite movies is Tender Mercies, starring Robert Duvall and Tess Harper. Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay, and Robert Duval both won Oscars for their work in Tender Mercies. It is about the struggle of one man—a washed up, divorced, and alcoholic Country & Western singer—to abandon the addictive qualities that led to his first, failed marriage and to strengthen the healthy qualities leading him into a new, creative relationship. 

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People poo-poo romantic love as emotional fluff, but it is not. Indeed, many a hero has been inspired in their gallantry by love. Russian storytellers deal with this subject a lot. A Slave of Love was a poignant 1976 Soviet movie, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov. During the Russian Civil War, a movie camera operator tries—and succeeds—in awakening the political consciousness of a glamorous movie star with whom he is romantically involved—with revolutionary consequences. A decade later, William Hurt won the 1985 Academy Award for best actor in Kiss of the Spider Woman, in which his love for the character played by Raul Julia inspires tremendous political courage. No; romantic love—amour—is not fluff. 

“Compared to other feelings,” wrote the Noble Prize-winning author Boris Pasternak, “love is an elemental cosmic force wearing a disguise of meekness. In itself it is as simple and unconditional as consciousness and as death, as oxygen or uranium. Love is not a state of mind, it is the foundation of the universe.” 

And so, in closing: 

Let us pause this Valentine’s Day weekend to reflect for a moment on the nature of ourselves, and on the nature of love: 

Both creative – “the foundation of the universe” –  

and sometimes destructive, 

imPASSIONed,        and meek…. 

May we be open to the mysterious and often miraculous workings of love, within our hearts… and all about us, as well. 

May we remain open, always, to the still-small voices of our own hearts. And of the hearts of those around us. 

And may we have courage enough to confront our doubts and fears, such that arm in arm—but under our own power and by virtue of conscious decision-making—we may grow.  

In consciousness. 

In compassion. 

In passion. 

Our unfolding selves learning to love. Blessed Be. 

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