As we’ve considered the proposed revisions to Article II of the Unitarian Universalist Association Bylaws, we’ve seen love lifted up as a central value for our faith tradition. The idea seems to be that holding love as the foundation for anything and everything we do will help ensure we’re moving in a meaningful direction, toward greater wholeness and well-being.

But what is love? At least 100 million love songs have been recorded. And all of them might capture a piece of the whole, but none of them seem complete. Is love a single soul inhabiting two (or more) bodies? Is it a many-splendored thing? Is it a serious mental disease? Is it friendship that has caught fire? Is it a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination?

At a basic material reality, love begins as a neurochemical process, but it evolves into a lot more. And trying to be specific about the feeling of love just winds up falling short:

I experience a fondness for you that is a different intensity and quality than the fondness I feel toward other people. And this fondness is tinged with physical desire and extravagant hope, coupled with a sort of tunnel vision, a shortness of breath, and giddy palpitations…

But that’s only one possible experience of a particular kind of love. And getting specific doesn’t really help to clarify things.

I’ve defined love as: active commitment to the well-being of another. That seems to be a functional working definition for most conversations. Of course, what we think of as another person’s well-being may not be the same thing they would want for their lives. So, we have another dilemma.

The Article II proposal adds a clarifying word to help, though: “liberating love.” What we might strive to hold as a central value is liberating love. How does love liberate us? From what—and for what—does love liberate us?

We’ll be exploring this theme in the month of February. First, we’ll consider the liberating power of romantic love—or the love of those people who know us best. Then, we’ll expand our awareness to the experience of liberating love in larger community. And we’ll keep stretching to consider if it’s possible for us to express liberating love for the world. Finally, we’ll wonder about what commitments love asks of us in terms of welcome and inclusion.

Maybe by the time our congregation takes a deeper dive into the proposed changes to Article II in March, we’ll have at least a little bit of a common definition for liberating love. It won’t be a complete definition, but perhaps we’ll have something to hold onto. Loosely. As it continues to take shape in us and through us.