[UUPoly-L] What I said (Re: Poly-Suportive Worship Service This Sunday)

[WABaldwin@aol.com]

Here is what I said at the poly-themed service last Sunday -- introducing a  
poem by Marge Piercy (which is available online, so I don't think there is any 
 copyright issue with including the poem here).
 
Bill
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How do we speak of Love?
 
The Queer writer Christopher Isherwood once said:  âOur love is the  same as 
your love; Get over it!â
 
But love isnât âusâ and âthemâ â Love is âus.â
 
Why is it so hard to speak Loveâs less-known names?
 
In our culture it can take a lifetime to learn to say, and to dare to say  -- 
with no guarantee of being understood:  âIâm in love with three people,  and 
theyâre in love with me and others, and we all know and acknowledge and  
nurture these loves, and want them to endure.â
 
Love can be difficult to name and acknowledge; but poetry can transcend  
thought â and fear.
 
In this poem, Marge Piercy speaks of different loves â but all still  âLove.â
 

A NEW CONSTELLATION
 
We go intertwined, him and you
and me, her and him, you and her,
each  the center of our own circle
of attraction and compulsion and gravity
What  a constellation we make: I call it
the Matrix. I call it the  dancing
family. I call it wheels inside wheels.
Ezekial did not know he  was seeing
the pattern for enduring relationship
in the late twentieth  century.
 
All the rings shine gold as wedding bands
but they are the hoops  magicians use
that seem solid and unbroken, yet can slip
into chains of  other rings and out.
They are strong enough to hang houses on,
strong  enough to serve as cranes, yet
they are open. We fall through each  other,
we catch each other, we cling, we flip on.
 
No one is at the center, but each
is her own center, no one  controls
the jangling swing and bounce and merry-
go-round lurching  intertangle of this mobile.
We pass through each other trembling
and we  pass through each other shrieking
and we pass through each other  shimmering.
the circle is neither unbroken
nor broken but living, a  molecule attracting
atoms that wants to be a protein,
complex, mortal,  able to sustain life,
able to reproduce itself inexactl,
learn and  grow.
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