This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
I Was Made For Loving You – Rev. Darrell Jones
DESCRIPTION
We were born to love all life. Sometimes it is not as easy as it sounds. Life and love can be messy and imperfect. Still, we get to ask ourselves: how actively are we showing up as Love in the world? This week we move from the inner knowing of love to its outward expression — in our relationships, our choices, our presence with others. Love is not passive. It asks to be lived.
SUMMARY
This talk explores a “love ethic” inspired by bell hooks, emphasizing love as an active, multidimensional practice rather than a passive feeling or idealized, fear-free state. Drawing on Gregory Porter’s song “Take Me to the Alley,” the speaker frames love as a call to move toward those who are marginalized, lonely, or hiding, offering acceptance, presence, and friendship. Building on hooks’ assertion that society glorifies love while ignoring the pervasive role of fear, the talk argues that fear undergirds systems of domination, fuels separation, and keeps people prioritizing safety, sameness, certainty, and control over genuine connection and love. The speaker contends that while humans are inherently capable of love, our nervous systems default to self-protection and hypervigilance, making love a conscious choice that must move against fear, misunderstanding, and the need to be “right.”
A “love ethic” is defined as a chosen set of governing rules—distinct from moral notions of right and wrong—that places love above certainty, perfectionism, and narrative control. Following hooks, this ethic requires engaging all dimensions of love—care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge—and recognizing love as something realized moment by moment in relationship rather than a static state. The talk critiques cultural myths that portray love as a utopian, conflict-free ideal and insists that love is not the absence of fear, pain, or uncertainty, but the practice of accepting and loving what is, even when it is messy and imperfect. Practically, this involves choosing a love ethic “line in the sand,” committing one’s life to practicing love in ever-expanding ways, and allowing each day to deepen one’s understanding of love.
The speaker illustrates this ethic through everyday examples, including the “five love languages” insight that people usually express love in the way they themselves understand it, not necessarily in the way others receive it. By learning how others understand love—such as preferring physical touch over gifts—one can adjust actions to help others actually feel loved, even when it does not match one’s own preferences. A customer-service anecdote shows how a love ethic can transform irritation into allowing another person to fulfill their role without dehumanizing them, reframing the interaction as an opportunity to practice patience and acceptance. The talk also challenges the tendency to seek community as an escape from loneliness, arguing—via hooks—that learning to be solitary and whole is essential to loving others without using them as a means of escape, and critiquing cultural narratives like “you complete me” as ultimately harmful.
Using the image of an infant who relaxes into connection without “stranger danger,” the speaker suggests that practicing a love ethic resembles a baby’s open presence: being in the moment, allowing oneself to be loved by what is, and extending love outward from a foundation of self-acceptance. The talk culminates in a contemplative question—“How actively are you showing up as love in the world?”—and invokes Krishnamurti’s warning that a mind trapped in tradition cannot perceive what is true, applying this to rigid ideas about how love should look.The closing affirmation shifts the title “I was made for loving you” into the present tense “I am made for loving you,” inviting listeners to claim that they are inherently made for loving others and life itself, to clear away the “mud and muck” obscuring their loving essence, and to live as active embodiments of love in need of their love today.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.