Amor

 I got dis runnin' joke wit' my wife, who's 73. If we're going outta da house for whatever reason, I'll say "Oh man baby you're gonna make me look good today." And then we're out and running an errand and it's, "You makin' me look really good right now." And of course she scoffs at my enthusiasm. So today we're doing our weekly food charity thing in Centro. We come upon a coupla regulars, one who plays ukelele, and the other a shoe-shiner. I say "how y'all doin' Master of Music, and Master of Shine?" They say they're doing fine, and, "Izzat ya wife? She's muy guapa (very nice-looking)." I say, she is! Every day I tell God muchas gracias que ella es mi esposa/ thank you God that she's my wife! She made those sandwiches. They are so fine, you can't eat them, you hafta jus' admire 'em. And they are laughing, and saying oh no we got it! So my point is, from now on if wife discounts my indirect compliments, I can say, "What about those guys in Parque Calderon? They're objective; you should trust their opinion, since they are not blinded by love."

Res Ipsa Loquitur 19: Love and Marriage from Genesis to Revelations

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

like this but much faster

30-minute video from the March 2014 online Catholic Conference 4 Moms: Love and Marriage from Genesis to Revelations.

Cracked

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets.

like that but closer

Let's talk about cars. More specifically, their engines. Even more specifically, their connecting rods. The connecting rods transfer the up-and-down energy of the pistons into rotating energy at the crankshaft, which then makes the wheels turn and all that (like so). Of course the rods are under terrific stress, and if one fails it usually ruins the engine.

Until recently, a typical connecting rod was made of four pieces seen at the lower left, with the pins resisting the side-to-side stress between the rod and cap. Nowadays, many connecting rods are made per the example at lower right: each one is forged as a single piece. Then the cap is carefully cracked off, and reattached around the crankshaft for a virtually perfect fit without needing any pins. The cracked cap and the rod it is taken from are so uniquely mated that no other cap will fit that rod; and when put together, the crack is practically invisible.

Which reminds me of this: "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; 22 and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."

Uniquely mated.

Pitcherfull

This post links to Convert Journal

that's a shapely one

Marriage is a recurring theme in catechism class because it is a recurring theme in the Bible. Typically we cover this story during our trip through the Gospels:

"Master, there were with us seven brothers: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue, left his wife unto his brother. Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.
Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? Jesus said, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."

Without fail a child will ask me why I won't be married to my wife in heaven- won't we still love each other?

Part of my answer is that post-Eden, marriage lasts until the death of a spouse. But I also want to say something bigger about life after the Second Coming; that is, in the New Jerusalem- like so:

"Somebody tell me what wasn't good in Eden. Adam was alone! Yes, and? God made Eve out of his rib. Yes, and when he got his missing rib back he was completed, just like I am completed by by wife. Y'all tell me about my wife. You love her! I sure do...but why? Umm, she's you're wife? Well, yes...let's say I love her because she is good. Where's that goodness come from? God? Yes; tell me about creation. It was all good! Yes! So all the goodness we experience ultimately comes from...God. Yes. So my wife is like a book...or a TV...or Elisha's bones...c'mon, y'all know this... she's a media, cause God goes through her! Yes, a medium, she mediates God to me, like sacraments and all kinds of stuff do. Do I get the full dose of God though my wife? Huh? Is all the goodness of God available to me through my wife? Well, God's bigger than she is. Yes. But if I'm hanging out with Jesus after the Second Coming, do I get all God's goodness then? Yes! And if my wife is there...she gets it too. Yes. So is there more love between us now- or in the future? In the future! Yes. So if we will have even more love for each other while we're in God's company, how worried are we going be about how married we are? Well, maybe you wouldn't care anymore. Sort of, but not exactly...let's think of it this way: instead of the limited dose of love we get from each other here, we'll experience infinite love in heaven. It'll include all the love we have as husband and wife, but bigger: it will include everybody. Yes? But aren't you still going to miss being married in heaven? I don't think so. Imagine it like this:

Let's say I need water to live- without water I'd be incomplete, right? What? Can I live without water? No, you'd die. Without water would life be good? No you have to have it. Yes, so think of my wife, and the love she brings me, as water. I need it. And I'm ok, because I have a pitcher of lovewater right here, next to me, which is... your wife! Yes. I hug this pitcher against my heart like Adam's missing rib. And all around me right now in the classroom- is there more water? There's no water in here. Right. Except for my pitcher-full.

But eventually my wife and I will die- let's hope we'll both be in heaven, where love might be like an infinite ocean. Now imagine I walk into that sea of lovewater with my pitcher-full. See, it gets deeper and deeper, until...your pitcher is underwater!  Yes. Tell me about it. Well, the water in the pitcher is part of the ocean now. Yes. But the pitcher is still there, and it's still full, right? Yes, but the ocean is way bigger. Yes. The lovewater in my pitcher has merged with the infinite lovewater that's all around me and my pitcher. My little pitcher-full doesn't disappear: it's just where it was always meant to be. There will be many pitchers, but one water. So what we love about being married today will still be true in heaven and in the New Jerusalem, but unimaginably bigger and better."

***********************************

BTW, the above is similar to how I answer the question about pets in heaven:

"Everything that you love about your pets (and everything else) will be more fully available to you in heaven; and in the New Jerusalem I would expect to see dogs and trees and all the rest of creation, so be happy."

Paroles d'Amour

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

violets grow there the whole year 'round

Song lyrics have hugely informed my view of romance and marriage since before I could even read. For over 50 years I've sung the most influential ones around the house, at work, and in the car. Only in the last year or so have I recognized how being married for 26 years, having kids, grandkids & All That has deepened my understanding of those old lyrics for the better. Because I used to reflect on these songs, but now I participate in them.

I ached for lifelong love-

From France, Julien Clerc:

Comme un jour tu viendras sûrement/ One day you'll surely come

Dans ce salon qui perd son temps/ To this room where time stands still

Ne parlons plus jamais de nos déserts.../ We'll speak no more of just deserts

Et si tu restes je mets le couvert/ And should you nap I'll cover you snug

Maintenant, comme avant/ Now as before

Restons-en au présent pour la vie / Let's stay like this for life

Aujourd'hui, reste ici / From now on- stay with me.

My courtship was just like this-

From my grandparents' hi-fi, South Pacific (where men wear coconut brassieres):

Some enchanted evening

When you find your true love,

When you feel her call you

Across a crowded room,

Then fly to her side,

And make her your own

Or all through your life you

May dream all alone.

And this is still my wife, who turns 64 this week-

Younger than springtime, are you

Softer than starlight, are you,

Warmer than winds of June,

Are the gentle lips you gave me.

Gayer than laughter, are you,

Sweeter than music, are you,

Angel and lover, heaven and earth,

Are you to me.

This is my marriage-

From my dormroom stereo, Yes:

Hold me my love, hold me today, call me round

Travel we say, wander we choose, love tune

Lay upon me, hold me around lasting hours

We love when we play

Look me my love sentences move dancing away

We join we receive

As our song memories long hope in a way

Nous sommes du soleil

Hold me around lasting hours

We love when we play

This is my family-

When I was a cantor, Psalm 128:

Your wife like a fruitful vine in the heart of your house

Your children like shoots of the olive around your table

May the LORD bless you from Zion all the days of your life

May you see you children’s children in a happy Jerusalem

Now we’re in our waning years-

From my parents' hi-fi, the Four Freshmen:

As the days grew old and the nights passed into time

And the weeks and years took wing

Gentle boy, tender girl, their love remained still young

For their hearts were full of spring

Then one day they died and their graves were side by side

On a hill where robins sing

And they say violets grow there the whole year 'round

For their hearts were full of spring

From the radio, Minnie Ripperton, who died much too young:

No one else can make me feel
The colors that you bring
Stay with me while we grow old
And we will live each day in springtime
Cause loving you has made my life so beautiful
And every day my life is filled with loving you

And this my life even until today-

From the Greenville County Library LP collection, Billie Holliday:

Living for you, is easy living.

It's easy to live when you're in love.

And I'm so in love,

There's nothing in life, but you.

I'll never regret the years I'm giving.

They're easy to give when you're in love.

I'm happy to do whatever I do, for you.

For so long through so many songs I imagined lifelong love. Now I live lifelong love in ways I couldn't have imagined. The songs are old; but love grows, and blooms anew.

Babies & Metaphysics

This post links to Convert Journal

not appreciating the cosmicness of it all

I was at lunch with my father earlier this week, we were discussing a favorite subject: God. Somehow we got around to contraception, and that in neither of our marriages was there any contraception, natural or artificial. We reflected on how much less our marriages would be if we had contracepted, and why that was so. This led to me pinpointing when in my life I embraced the idea that God was completely interested in, and aware of, every hair on my head. That God loved me personally, infinitely and uniquely. Such that now, decades later, I accept it like I accept gravity: a done deal.

I was in my early 30s when my understanding of God-stuff and Science-stuff merged into just Stuff, my own Grand Unified Theory. That is, it seemed to me as though all knowledge pointed toward God, and that lumping it all together worked better than keeping it in separate boxes. On the science-side I was especially prodded by Einstein's wonderful equation E = mc². It essentially says that Energy and Mass are interchangeable. Einstein said Energy and Mass are "manifestations of the same thing," sort of like 1 gallon = 4 quarts; or 1 kilo of ice = 1 kilo of water. That fit in well with something I read (I think it was in Hawking's A Brief history of Time) about the first moments of the Big Bang, when the universe was a small, hot, dense, churning continuum of matter and energy, both and neither at the same time. What is colloquially referred to as massergy.

So matter is a manifestation of energy; and I believe the source of that energy is God. And that God created the physical universe through some energy manifesting the characteristics of matter. That's why there was Light before there was the Sun or the Moon: first the Energy, then the Matter. Which reminds me on the religion side that Dante described the energy of the Universe as "L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle/ the love that moves the sun and the other stars."

You may also recall that at every step of Creation, God saw that it was good, at least until He noticed Adam lacked a wife. Why was it all good? Like Dante, I believe it's because the energy of the Universe is Love. That is, the Universe is 100% composed of God's love. Not love as how one feels, but love as a force; the generative force that sustains the Universe; the force that we may also understand as gravity or magnetism or light. Or as a rock. Or a drop of water. Or a hair on my head.

God is typically described as omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent; and in that order. I'm more inclined to put all-benevolent/ all-good/ all-loving first. Why? Because God could have the first 3 qualities and not be moved to create a single thing. God's all-loving nature manifested itself as Creation; that is, God "thought" love, and Creation resulted. Why, I bet Einstein would agree with me that Love and Creation are "manifestations of the same thing."  Put in Catechism class terms, Love Creates. Where there is Love, there is Creation. And where there isn't, there isn't. Think of Satan. He hates being made of, and sustained by, God's love. And he doesn't create a single good thing.

We also know from Genesis, and from simply being alive, that God shares with us humans the ability to love, so we create too. He gave Eve to Adam, and our quintessential creativity channels through married love: babies. So for us to contracept is to profoundly push against the entire loving-creative raison d'être of the Universe, its very fabric; and our own loving-creative natures, which we among all creatures uniquely share with God.

Enchanted Sirach

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

Viva la Caccia

My wife personifies the Ideal Wife in Proverbs 31, which is not the subject of this post. This post is about our courtship some 26 years ago. Briefly, this was our courtship:

Some enchanted evening

When you find your true love,

When you feel her call you

Across a crowded room,

Then fly to her side,

And make her your own

Or all through your life you

May dream all alone.

Once you have found her,

Never let her go.

Once you have found her,

Never let her go.

That's right, a couple of verses from South Pacific's Some Enchanted Evening. I first heard Ezio Pinza sing it when I was a kid, and it has defined romance for me ever since.

So tonight I was browsing the Bible before Mass started. Let's try...Sirach. I get to Chapter 6:

"My son, from your youth up choose instruction, and until you are old you will keep finding wisdom. Come to her like one who plows and sows, and wait for her good harvest... Come to her with all your soul, and keep her ways with all your might." It's about Wisdom, but it made me think about my wife. And "Make her thy whole heart’s quest, follow, as best thou canst, the path she makes known to thee," which reminded me of our courtship, and Some Enchanted Evening. Then "search, and thou wilt find her, hold fast, and never let her go."

If Oscar Hammerstein wasn't riffing on Sirach when he wrote that lyric then this is a bigger vale of tears than I thought.


P.S. Sirach is a deuterocanonical book. I do wonder how Hammerstein might have encountered it.

Viva la Caccia

an ascending graph

We spend a lot of time on the first two chapters of Genesis in Wednesday Night Sunday School, especially these marriage bits:

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." 19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him.

1. Man on his own is alone, and that is not good.
2. Man has dominion over the other creatures, as shown by Adam naming them instead of God.
3. An animal isn't a good helpmeet for a man.

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; 22 and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he built into a woman and brought her to the man.

1. Man is incomplete without his rib.
2. Woman is formed from the missing rib.

 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.

1. Man is complete when he gets his rib back.
2. A man may have to leave his family to get his rib. The rib has priority. The rib doesn't come to the man; he goes to the rib.
3. He holds tight to her.

We have fun with this in class, partly because my own marriage has followed this story line. I bring some authenticity to the topic. I was alone and it was not good. I was incomplete without a wife; my life had been a frothy joke. I chased my future wife, not vice-versa (I had to ask her out three times; but having a cast-iron ego, I was not discouraged). I got my rib back. I cling to her, not vice-versa. And we become one flesh.

By the way, she had other suitors. And although she is nothing like Scarlett O'Hara or Marilyn Monroe, here's how I remember the competition:

or this:

or maybe this:

 and we have a winner

A couple of other bits of Genesis further remind of my marriage. F'rinstance, consider the process of creation:

1. Dead stuff: light, sky, land, water.
2. Living stuff lacking animation: vegetation, plants, trees.
3. Basic life forms: swimming and flying creatures.
4. More sophisticated life forms: wild animals and cattle.
5. Man, made from a dead thing, dirt.
6. Woman, built from a living thing, a rib.

An ascending line, if you graph it. The later the creation, the nearer to God. And nearer the top is the woman. No wonder Man should put Woman up on a pedestal, look up and admire her. No wonder that Woman should be comfortable there. But there's also the one-flesh business, which is illuminated by this last line of Genesis 2:

And they were both naked: to wit, Adam and his wife: and were not ashamed.

That's like my life too; well, like my marriage, which I understand as a life-form made of the next highest two, a man and a woman. So even if the woman is on her pedestal, the man and the woman together forming a marriage are higher still.


Finally, because no-one wants to read the full-blown story of our courtship, this video condenses the whole saga into 15 seconds: 

Viva la Caccia

Hadley's Legs

 these precious days I spend with you

I read a lot of Hemingway in my teens and twenties. Purely by coincidence, the last thing I read was also the last thing he wrote: A Moveable Feast, a patchwork of memories from his years in Europe between the wars. It's not as well-regarded as his other stuff, but I liked the sense of affectionate retrospection; regret; and sadness for things lost. And I was moved by the elegaic notion of Hemingway, now an old man, writing this book as a prelude to letting go of life. The book doesn't make that point explicitly; but it's the same gentle, if reluctant, acceptance of death expressed in these verses by Hermann Hesse, later set to music by Richard Strauss:

September

The garden is in mourning.
Cool rain seeps into the flowers.
Summertime shudders,
quietly awaiting his end.

Golden leaf after leaf falls
from the tall acacia tree.
Summer smiles, astonished and feeble,
at his dying dream of a garden.

For just a while he tarries
beside the roses, yearning for repose.
Slowly he closes
his weary eyes.


Speaking of men and mortality, Rembrandt likewise regards his own flawed life in this final self portrait:

feeling a lot like Hemingway at the end

So men grow old, and reflect, and regret; and appreciate.

Getting back to Hemingway, the thing he best remembered from his Paris days wasn't the cafes, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Gertrude Stein; what he remembered best was his first wife, Hadley. I wasn't married when I read A Moveable Feast, but I was beguiled by Hemingway's spare yet winsome depiction of their life together with their little son Bumby. And from then on I longed for a wife like Hadley, someone who made life wondrous in a quotidian sort of way. Now Hemingway has a direct, even flat, way of writing; and was never florid in his descriptions. So when it came to Hadley, it's through this quote about skiing that I imagine her: "..she had beautiful, wonderfully strong legs, and fine control of her skis, and she did not fall."

A few years later I married my very own Hadley. One day we were hiking up Table Rock in nearby Pickens County, my wife was in front. As I watched her shapely calves flex at each steep step, I imagined Hemingway's Hadley hiking up the mountains in Austria, and saw those same "beautiful, wonderfully strong legs" on Janet. Since that epiphany on Table Rock, I like to tease Janet about having beautiful strong legs like Hadley's; and how like Hemingway, I was smart to pursue a woman a bit older than me. Janet's riposte is that she doesn't mind having Hadley's legs as long as she doesn't have Hadley's husband.

My life's about three-fourths done; now I anticipate death. I too reflect and appreciate. Unlike Paul Anka, I have a thousand regrets. But marrying my wife isn't among them.

The Sun Poured In

Thanksgiving Day was cold and clear, and My Fabulous Wife was adding Blondie ingredients to a mixing bowl on the kitchen island. There's a big skylight over the island, which was lit up like all outdoors. I idly watched Janet pour in a bag of little tan goobers. What's that stuff? "Butterscotch." Huh- you put butterscotch in Blondies? "Yep." Huh...and I was seeing the sunlight all over her and the bowl, and trying to recall something about the sun and butterscotch that for a few seconds gave me that Jesus-kill-me-now good feeling.

Later that night I was still trying to make sense of sun and butterscotch. Searched online for "sun butterscotch" and found:

And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses.

Oh that's right, it's from Chelsea Morning by Joni Mitchell. I probably first heard it sung by Judy Collins on the radio in 1968, when I was 11, then later on by Joni. Chelsea Morning has always colored my image of Manhattan: bright, busy, full of possibility. And it also influenced my idea of romance.

So I listened to it again; and at 56, it moves me more today than it did when I was young. For as well as the lyrics hinted at the love I imagined as a teenager, they better describe the real love I have now. 'Cause in my life, every morning is a Chelsea morning.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I heard
Was a song outside my window, and the traffic wrote the words
It came a-reeling up like Christmas bells, and rapping up like pipes and drums

Oh, won't you stay
We'll put on the day
And we'll wear it 'till the night comes

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I saw
Was the sun through yellow curtains, and a rainbow on the wall
Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal beads to beckon

Oh, won't you stay
We'll put on the day
There's a sun show every second

Now the curtain opens on a portrait of today
And the streets are paved with passersby
And pigeons fly
And papers lie
Waiting to blow away

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I knew
There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too
And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses
Oh, won't you stay
We'll put on the day
And we'll talk in present tenses

When the curtain closes and the rainbow runs away
I will bring you incense owls by night
By candlelight
By jewel-light
If only you will stay
Pretty baby, won't you
Wake up, it's a Chelsea morning

Chelsea Morning lyrics © Joni Mitchell/Crazy Crow Music/Siquomb Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Tempus Fugit 7: Don't Dare to Blink

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

The little girl on the chin-up bar got married in November. 

 
I'm reminded of this from my own childhood.

The One

When I was 12 years old or so I first played the WW2 naval wargame Bismarck, and learned about Scapa Flow, an odd patch of water in northern Scotland where the British fleet was based during the World Wars.

A couple of months ago I started reading Castles of Steel, about the the naval war in WW1. Castles spends careful time on what I call management issues, including the British decision to base the Grand Fleet in the north to directly confront the Germans, rather than keeping it at Portsmouth on England's southern coast. I had a look at Scapa Flow on Google Earth to get a sense of the place, tried to imagine maintaining and protecting fabulously complicated and expensive ships in such a desolate wash.

My wife & I were having drinks on the porch this weekend, and I was percolating on Scapa. I tend to tell her bits of stuff I read that I think she'll find interesting (or not) and figured I should give a bit of intro before just jumping into this obscure topic. I get about a dozen words out and she says, "Oh, you mean Scapa Flow; go ahead." So I ask how in the world would she know about such an obscure place? Why, because before we were married, she was doing marine archaeology doctoral work at the University of St. Andrews (Chariots of Fire) in Scotland, where Scapa is known as a great place for diving on wrecks. In fact, over one holiday her friends went to Scapa, while she opted for a warmer Mediterranean break at Rhodes.

And I'm thinking maybe 1% of Americans have ever heard of Scapa Flow. And of that 1%, 99% must be men with an interest in military history. So my wife would be 1% of 1%.

Just goes to show what very careful job God did of picking her for me.

Fine Art Handout 3: Chagall

When I used to teach RCIA and adult ed, I never worried much about engaging people's imaginations. But it's a requirement for teaching kids, so I am always on the lookout for anything beyond the classroom that can help me do that: scenes from movies such as Prince of Egypt; excerpts from stories such as A Christmas Carol; newspaper articles; sticks, bones, and rags; and especially fine art. I've posted recently about my preference for art that isn't aimed specifically at kids, but rather art that is the best the world has to offer.

Marriage and children are big topics in Wednesday Sunday School. I give the Bible and the Church every opportunity to teach this valuable life template:

Get married; stay married; have children.

But as often as marriage comes up in my class, I've never seen anything on the subject that really grabbed my imagination. At least not until this weekend, when I surfed into yet another piece of art that will work perfectly: Marc Chagall's Wedding from 1910.

Sweet, isn't it? Little angels, pretty flowers, an affecting and childlike innocence. We won't discuss any of that in class unless the kids bring it up. See, that's looking at the painting as an illustration of marriage; that's ok, but Chagall isn't illustrating marriage, he's painting a portrait of marriage. Whose marriage? My modest amount of research didn't provide an answer.  That suits me just fine: I can proceed with my own opinion. I think it's Chagall and his wife Bella, whom he met in 1909. What a pretty thing she was:

 bella Bella

They were engaged in 1910, but not married until 1915: her prosperous parents weren't keen on Chagall until he showed he could earn a proper living as an artist. But didn't he paint this Wedding in 1910? Yes: he painted the wedding he longed for, created a portrait of his marriage ahead of time. Does that bride look like Bella, and the man Chagall? I say yes. We may discuss Marc and Bella a bit in class, just to broaden the kids' horizons, but they aren't the point of the portrait either. So what is Chagall's point? Let's see.

Right off, I don't believe this is primarily a painting of Marc Chagall and Bella Rosenfeld: rather, Chagall  has made a wedding portrait of Adam and Eve, using himself and Bella as models. Why does he do this? Because he sees his longing to be attached to Bella through the lens of Adam's longing for, and attachment to, Eve. But why would Chagall necessarily think of Genesis when he thought of marriage? Because when little Moishe Segal was growing up in Vitebsk, Russia, he attended Jewish grade school.

Let's look at key bits of Genesis Chapter 2: "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."...but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh...Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed."

Cling is a critical word. The verb to cling/ to cleave in Hebrew is dabak, דָּבַק. Yes, it means to cling, to adhere, to stay with. But it also means to pursue, to overtake. I like that.

See how Adam holds Eve: he is tender, but forceful: even her arms are caught in his urgent embrace. The couple is not side by side; not arm in arm; not hugging each other. No. He holds onto her; not vice versa. And though she's caught in his arms, he's not elated or victorious: he's profoundly relieved. At last, at last, bone of his bone, he presses Eve close to his left side, where his heart beats.  And he doesn't look at her, but bends a bit to inhale her scent. I don't know how to artfully express that, but I well know its drug-like effect.

Eve is nonplussed by Adam's intensity; surprised even. But to find your rib among a multitude- well, that's the achievement of a lifetime. And once you have it back, never let her go*, as the song says.

Oh yeah, the point. Chagall's point is that this is what he expects his marriage to be. Not so much because he uniquely loves Bella (although he does), but because every marriage should be like the first one. I'm especially moved because he's portrayed my wedding & marriage as much as his own, or Adam's. Isn't it amazing that in 1910 he understood marriage well enough to say so much about it while yet remaining unmarried himself? Well, yes; but through the winsome Genesis account of how God gave Adam his mate, even the unmarried Chagall knew that a man shouldn't be alone; a man misses his rib and wants that one-and-only missing rib to be pressed once again against his heart; that his wife is bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh; and that he is impatient to leave his family and cling to her. And of course that they'd be naked, and not ashamed, and make some babies, but the kids don't need a picture of that.

We already cover all of this in class; but we never had the right image until now.


*Some Enchanted Evening

Griswold vs. Music

I was born in 1957. Grew up amid music which predated Griswold vs. Connecticut (the 1965 Supreme Court case which ok'd contraceptives for married people), Eisenstadt (1972) and Roe (1973). Looking back over the decades, it's remarkable how the Sexual Revolution has affected the imaginations of songwriters and their audiences. And I don't mean rap or death metal, but popular music that can be played in polite company.

As I kid I heard and learned songs such as:

Love & Marriage (1955)

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like the horse and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one, you can't have none, you can't have one without the other!

I Have Dreamed (The King & I)

I have dreamed that your arms are lovely,
I have dreamed what a joy you'll be.
I have dreamed every word you whisper.
When you're close,
Close to me.

(That's just how I feel about my wife)

Sweet Lorraine

When it's raining I don't miss the sun
'Cause it's in my sweetie's smile
Just think that I'm the lucky one
Who will lead her down the aisle

(I felt just like that on my wedding day)

and Some Enchanted Evening (South Pacific):

Some enchanted evening
When you find your true love
When you feel her call you across a crowded room
Then fly to her side
And make her your own
Or all through your life you may dream all alone

(Our courtship was just like that; we joke that I launched myself at her like a cruise missile)

I especially took the last line to heart: not only is marriage good, but not getting married has a price. But you say: there's not a word about marriage in this song. And I reply: yes, it goes without saying. And the adult world around me confirmed it. I remember only one marriage-age woman from my early childhood who wasn't married or a nun. And every adult man I knew was married, or a priest. Adulthood in my childhood meant taking an other-directed vow of one kind or another.

I could go on, but here's the point: how I imagined adult life and romance always pointed to marriage, partly because the popular culture which I absorbed did the same. But music started to change when I was a kid. The songs I list here are hardly comprehensive, but simply a few of the ones that made lasting impressions on me, for better or worse.

Griswold was in 1965; in 1967 Angel of the Morning was a huge hit. It seemed odd to a kid...why doesn't she sleep at her own house? What sin is she talking about?

I see no need to take me home, I'm old enough to face the dawn.
Maybe the sun's light will be dim and it won't matter anyhow.
If morning's echo says we've sinned, well, it was what I wanted now.
And if we're the victims of the night, I won't be blinded by light.

Now let's jump ahead two years to a song which from the age of 13 has contributed mightily to my image of marriage, Our House (1969), by Graham Nash:

Our house is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy
'Cause of you

My life is just like the song; but only after I was married in 1988 did I learn that Our House is not about a married couple. By 1969 living together was becoming mainstreamed as an alternate/ prelude to marriage. But Graham Nash, who was born in 1942, made this song about living with Joni Mitchell into such a beguiling little hymn about the joys of monogamy that it looked just like marriage to me...and probably to Nash as well.

Of course 1969 was also the year of Whole Lotta Love. I don't count it because like much of the blues it springs from, its sexual bluntness wasn't in the cultural mainstream, and it didn't affect my ideas about love and sex one way or another.

In 1971, Carly Simon recorded That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be which was surprisingly blunt about getting married:

But you say it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we'll marry.

If you check the whole song you'll see that in spite of assorted substantial misgivings, she still accepts marriage as the adult model of love. Pretty remarkable for 1971; but Simon, 12 years my senior, was raised in a more normative culture than I was.

Also in 1971 the Temptations released Just My Imagination, which shows Motown could still think traditionally about men and women:

Soon we'll be married and raise a family.
In a cozy, little home out in the country with two children, maybe three.
I tell you, I can visualize it all.
This couldn't be a dream for too real it all seems.

Then in 1972 there was Summer Breeze,  (recent version) which like Our House even today informs me about the quotidian joys of marriage:

And I come home
from a hard day's work
and you're waiting there
not a care in the world

See the smile a-waitin' in the kitchen
food cookin' and the plates for two
Feel the arms that reach out to hold me
in the evening when the day is through

Is the couple in Summer Breeze married? I don't know. I like to think so: my life is just like this song too.

It wasn't until 1974 that I started to understand mainstream lyrics that not only didn't point toward marriage, but seemed to point away from it, like Joni Mitchell's Help Me (recent cover):

Help me, I think I'm falling in love with you
Are you going to make me go there by myself
That's such a lonely thing to do
Both of us flirting around, flirting and flirting, hurting, too
We love our loving
Not like we love our freedom

and

Didn't it feel good, we were sitting there talking
Or lying there not talking, didn't it feel good?

Then in 1976, Mitchell was more explicit about her inconstancy:

Hejira

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away....

In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I'm returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed...

In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There's the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years.

Hejira is Arabic for flight (as in flee, not fly); here it implies a flight from commitment, not Mecca.

Coyote

There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes
And the lips you can get
And still feel so alone...

Now he's got a woman at home
He's got another woman down the hall
He seems to want me anyway
Why'd you have to get so drunk
And lead me on that way...

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs

Song for Sharon

When we were kids in Maidstone, Sharon
I went to every wedding in that little town
To see the tears and the kisses
And the pretty lady in the white lace wedding gown
And walking home on the railroad tracks
Or swinging on the playground swing
Love stimulated my illusions
More than anything...

Sharon you've got a husband
And a family and a farm
I've got the apple of temptation
And a diamond snake around my arm

I was 16 in 1974, and I regarded 31-year-old Joni Mitchell as a thinking adult. But how could a thinking adult have such a wreck of a love life?  Why was love so difficult? Back then I didn't see that what went without saying were Griswold, Eisenstadt, and Roe.

Together these songs became a cautionary tale; I sure didn't want my life to be like that. But my life has turned out wonderfully, as I especially reflected on this Valentine's Day while my glorious wife and I sat in the sun, laughed, and kept tabs on our two grandkids. I imbibed the traditional view of monogamy and marriage through the popular culture that preceded my teen years; and songwriters such as Mitchell warned me that living like "Don Juan's reckless daughter" does not lead to happiness. So I wonder: what about the generations that follow me...my kids for instance?

In 1994 I watched the movie Reality Bites, about GenXers' directionless lives. It was the first time I heard the song Stay, by Lisa Loeb (born in 1968). In the song a couple argues about breaking up, but we learn from the closing lines that the woman who intended to leave will stay:

You said "you caught me cause you want me
And one day you'll let me go"
You try to give away a keeper, or keep me cause you know
You're just too scared to lose.
And you say, "Stay."

What strikes me is that it's clear they're living together (it goes without saying), and it isn't working. The man asks her to stay because he doesn't want to be alone; she knows that is his reason, but stays anyway. And at no point in the song does the woman give any impression that marriage is anywhere on the horizon with this person, or another person, or that there's any choice except to maintain this formless "relationship" or have no relationship at all. And set marriage aside for second: what about love, or romance?  She's only choosing among different levels of dissatisfaction. To which I say, well, yeah: if marriage is simply not an option, then love will be problematic. It sounds like the songwriter (or at least the character in the song) lacks any image of marriage as a model for any present or future way to live; which is far, far away from the worldview I grew up with. She clearly wants love and happiness, but at age 26 seems unaware of how to pursue it. And the song shows how the historical/ anthropological model for sex and romance (marriage) has been just about erased from a popular culture that's marinated in a contraceptive/abortive worldview for more than 40 years.

Of course the erosion of cultural/ moral substance isn't limited to love, sex, and marriage. Even fundamental, existential notions of what life is for are also slipping away. In 1996 Smashing Pumpkins released the album  Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which contains the song 1979 (recent version) which is nominally a treatment of teenage ennui. But the songwriter, Billy Corgan (born 1967) was 28 at the time, and makes observations more adult than adolescent. I don't think this degree of anomie was lyrically expressible in say, 1979:

We don't even care to shake these zipper blues
And we don't know
Just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed to the earth below

Double cross the vacant and the bored
They're not sure just what we have in store

We don't even care as restless as we are
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts
And poured cement, lamented and assured
To the lights and the towns below.

Man, that's bleak. And yet when I sing along to 1979, I hear a yearning for meaning, and feel optimistic. If these younger generations can recognize when life is empty or pointless, then maybe they can obtain a life that's substantial and full, if they know how. Yet they struggle against so much that I never had to: it would never occur to me that maybe one or more of my siblings had been aborted, for example.

My imagination has never been my enemy; is theirs?

In closing let's look way past Griswold; could no one have predicted the consequences of easy contraception?

"....the use of contraceptives has made sexual intercourse independent of parenthood, and the marriage of the future will be confined to those who seek parenthood for its own sake rather than as the natural fulfilment of sexual love.

But under these circumstances who will trouble to marry?

Marriage will lose all attractions for the young and the pleasure-loving and the poor and the ambitious.......It is impossible to imagine a system more contrary to the first principles of social well-being."

Christopher Dawson, 1933

Braver Newer World

Poor Aldous Huxley's fiction becomes ever more quaint when compared to the latest postmodern reality:

"Mike Aki and his husband, a Massachusetts couple...planned on having two children. But their two surrogate mothers in India each became pregnant with twins.

At 12 weeks into the pregnancies, Mr. Aki and his husband decided to abort two of the fetuses, one from each woman. It was a very painful call to make, Mr. Aki says. "You start thinking to yourself, 'Oh, my god, am I killing this child?'"

He didn't think of his decision as an abortion, but as a "reduction," he says. "You're reducing the pregnancies to make sure you have a greater chance of healthy children," Mr. Aki says. "If you're going to bring a child into this world, you have an obligation to take care of that child to the best of your abilities."

Today, Mr. Aki and his husband have two 21-month-old daughters. The girls share the same genetic mother. Each man is the genetic father of one of the girls. Next week, Mr. Aki and his husband will officially adopt each other's genetic daughter."

Assembling the Global Baby - WSJ.com 

or

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703493504576007774155273928.html


"He didn't think of his decision as an abortion, but as a "reduction"...

Nazis could only aspire to such artfully-confected euphemisms.

Smarter Than God

This article has been linked to Sunday Snippets

Condensed from this year's 2nd class:

Let's see, what book in the Bible are we learning about? Genesis! Yes, we're up to the end of Chapter 2 and Adam & Eve are in Eden. Somebody tell me about life in Eden. Nothing was bad! Yes. Could Adam & Eve get sick? No. Get zits? No. Get hit by lightning? No! Die? No! Right. In fact, life was so good in Eden that Adam & Eve hung out with God in a physical way, not just spiritual...does God the Father have a body? No. Right. But listen: "...they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day"...so, even though God didn't have a body, he was still with them sort of like the way we're together now. He wasn't far-off in Heaven, but right there.

[I pull out a rubber ball] What's this? A ball. Yes... watch this. I throw it down, it bounces up. I throw it up, it bounces down. OK, watch closely this time, it's gonna decide not to bounce down...nope, it came down. Let's try again, I'll decide for the ball not to come down...huh, it came down again! Why does the ball always come back down? Gravity! Yes, the Law of Gravity. Can we decide not to obey the Law of Gravity? Huh? If I jump like so, [jump] can I decide not to come down? No! Right. It's a physical law, I can't decide to ignore it. The Laws of Physics are part of God's Creation, and we don't have any choice about observing them. Can someone think of one of God's laws that we can choose to ignore? Yes, tell it. Don't steal? Yes, someone else, another one. Don't kill? Yes. Why can we decide to ignore those moral laws? Because we have free will? Yes, what's that mean to have free will? It means you can be good or bad. Yes, that you can freely decide to be good or bad. If I grab your wrist & swing it to slap someone, are you being bad? No, you are bigger than me. Right, you have to make a free decision to be bad...or good. Hmm...can a bear decide to be good or bad? Ha, no! Right. Bears and other creatures aren't made in God's image & likeness like we are. God loves us so much he allows us to choose between good and evil on our own. He doesn't force us to be good, doesn't treat us like babies.

Speaking of babies, what was the first commandment to Adam & Eve? Have babies! Yes, be fruitful and multiply. And the second commandment? Don't eat the fruit! Yes. Let's look at that now. Chapter 3 of Genesis says, "Now the serpent was more clever than any other creature... He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" And the woman said, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, neither shall you touch it, or you'll die." But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. God knows that when you eat of it you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Tell me, who's the snake? The devil. Yes. How is the snake tempting Eve about the fruit? No guesses? Is he saying it's tastier than the rest? No...? OK, listen again,"God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Guesses? That she'd be like God! Yes. And if Eve could be like God, in the sense of being equal to God, would she have to obey him? No, she could do what she wanted to. Yes. Show me hands, who likes to be told by their parents or teachers what they can or can't do? Nobody? Don't feel bad, I don't like it either. Neither did Adam & Eve. We're all proud of ourselves; we're the smartest things Earth, we don't need to be ordered around, right? We don't like to be subject to anyone else's authority. And in Eden there was only one little thing that was forbidden; why wouldn't Adam & Eve leave it alone? Well...they just wanted to see what would happen, they wanted to know for themselves? Yes, they wanted to be as smart as God; smarter, even. When I was kid, I asked my parents, “What’s in that cabinet? That’s the liquor cabinet. What’s liquor? It’s something grownups drink, like whiskey. Can I have some? No it’s for adults, not children.” So what did I most want to taste in the whole world? Liquor! That’s right! Who can tell the story about Pandora's Box? She had a beautiful box that she wasn't supposed to open, but she opened it anyway and bad things came out. Yes, that's a Greek myth, and it makes the same point: people's pride, mostly pride in their intellect, their brains, gets them in trouble. Who's someone who never sinned? Umm, Jesus? Right. And was Jesus proud, or humble? Humble! Yes, perfectly humble. And who is a huge sinner? The devil! Yes, Satan. And if Jesus is humble, then Satan...has a lot of pride? Yes. And that's one reason he knew he could appeal to Eve's pride: "Oh Eeeve, God doesn't want you to know what he knows, you wouldn't have to listen to him anymore...like me."

So Adam & Eve sin was simply to disobey God because of their pride. All their descendants, that includes us, still have this problem with our pride. We like to think we're as smart as God.

After they ate the fruit, "the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God. But God said to him, "Where are you?" Adam said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." Why did Adam hide? Because he was embarrassed? Yes…but God knows he’s naked, God doesn’t care. Why’d he hide, give me another reason. He felt guilty! Yes, he disobeyed God and he feels guilty, and ashamed. When I was a kid and would get in trouble in school, what did I do when I got home? Go hide in your room! You bet I did!

Then God said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate."

I love this. First Adam says, "It ain’t my fault, you gave me Eve, and Eve gave me the fruit." Then Eve says, "It ain’t my fault either, that snake made me do it." See, pride hates to admit guilt, because it’s humbling. It’s easier to say someone else is guilty. Show of hands, who likes to apologize for bad stuff you do? Me neither; but we should whether we like it or not.

So what happens to Adam & Eve? God makes them leave Eden. Yes. God doesn’t get rid of Eden, he…gets rid of Adam & Eve! Right. “He drove out the man; and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, with a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.” Hey, who knows what a cherub is? They’re like little baby angels. Yes, you see them on Valentine cards, things like that, they’re chubby and silly. But a real cherub is not chubby and silly…what language do you suppose cherub is if I’m reading from Genesis? Umm…Hebrew? Yes, genius! In Hebrew it’s spelled like this: K-E-R-U-B, kerub. Kerub means “near one,” someone who is close to God. When the President goes out in public there are usually some tough guys who stay near him all the time, why’s that? They keep people from bothering him. Yes, what do you call those guys? Bodyguards? Yes. The kerubs, the cherubim, are God’s bodyguards, and they are serious as cancer. Did you know we have two kerubs in our church? We do? Where? Mmm, I’m not telling tonight, but we’ll find out later this year. In the meantime keep your eyes open in church.

So Adam & Eve are out of Eden. Could they get sick? Yes! Get zits? Yes. Get hit by lightning? Yes! Get sucked up by a tornado? Yes! Be a snack for tigers? Eww, yes! Die? Yes! Right. Their sin didn’t just mess up their souls, it messed up Creation. The consequences of sin are almost always bigger than we can imagine. God said, ”cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you… In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Yuck: one sin and even the ground is cursed.

But Adam and Eve still obeyed God’s first commandment, and so…? They had babies! Yes, who? Cain & Abel! Yes, and what was Cain’s job? He was a farmer? Yes, and Abel? He was a shepherd. Yes, good. Genesis says, “Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought the firstlings of his flock.” Question: what’s an offering? When they gave something to God? Yes, good. Cain gave God some of his wheat and fruit, I suppose, and Abel gave what? What’s a “firstling of the flock?” Umm, a baby sheep? Yes, what’s a baby sheep? Oh, a lamb. Yes, and the firstlings would be the best ones.

Y’all tell me how a lamb is offered to God…did Abel say, “This firstling lamb is for you, God; now I’m going to make it into lamb chops just for you and then eat them just for you?” Ha, no, he had to kill it but not eat it! And then what, leave it sitting there for buzzards to snack on? Umm, no…he had to burn it? Yes, and Cain did the same with his offering. When people kill lambs & offer them to God what’s the word for that kind of offering? A sacrifice? Yes, good. Did Adam & Eve offer sacrifices in Eden? Umm, no? Right, they did not…why not? Why were they thrown out of Eden? ‘Cause they ate the apple? Yeah...what’s the bigger reason? They sinned! Yes. So where there’s no sin there’s…no sacrifice? Yes, and where there is sin…there’s sacrifice! Yes. What is it about sin that makes people offer sacrifice? OK, if you break your mom’s nicest flower vase, what should you do? Fix it? Yes, what if it’s too busted up to be fixed? Well, I guess buy another one? What if it’s too expensive? Umm, say I’m sorry? Yes. Suppose you didn’t break it in the first place? Then I wouldn’t have to do anything. Right. So what’s the point of sacrifice? Making it up to God? Yes, partly; making up for what? Well, just sinning? Yes. And it’s also a way of saying thank you. Abel is saying, “thank you God for all these sheep, I’m giving the best back to you.”

Back to their offerings: “And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.” Abel offered God his “firstlings,” but Cain probably offered some good fruit, some bad. God could tell that Cain would rather keep the best stuff for himself.

“So Cain was very angry. The LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is waiting at the door; but you must master it." Why didn’t God look with favor on Cain’s offering as he did Abel’s? Cain didn’t give God his best stuff. Right, and if Cain is upset about it what can he do? Give his best stuff like Abel does. Yes. It’s clear, but Cain wants to keep his best for himself and is angry that Abel isn’t as selfish.

So “Cain said to Abel his brother, "Let us go out to the field." And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.” What had Abel done to Cain to deserve being killed? He didn’t do anything to Cain. So why did he kill Abel? Because Abel was so good? Yes. Cain couldn’t stand being made aware of his own selfishness by constantly comparing himself to Abel. It’s the same in school: slackers and misbehavers can’t stand a good student.

This is the first time in the Bible, but not the only time by any means, that an innocent person is killed just because sinful people can’t stand to have him around. We’ll learn about those other people later this year.

After Cain killed Abel, Cain was driven away. But Adam had other sons and daughters, who knows of one? Seth! Yes. Seth fathered Enosh, who fathered Kenan, and so on. In each case, the Bible says “and he died.” One man in that line of fathers & sons was named Enoch. About Enoch, the Bible doesn’t say “and he died.” Instead it says, “Enoch walked with God; and he was not here, for God took him.” What would that mean, “Enoch walked with God; and he was not here, for God took him?” That God took him straight to Heaven? Yes, more or less. Remember, Jesus hadn’t opened Heaven yet. But Enoch still 'walked with God' in some special way. And Enoch isn’t the only person that went to be with God without dying, as we’ll learn about later on.

By the way, Enoch was Methuselah’s father; who was Methuselah? He lived the longest! Yes, the Bible says he lived longer than anyone. What’s more interesting about Methuselah is that he was Noah’s grandfather. We’ll discuss Noah next week. And that brings us to the end of Chapter 5.

Class over!

P.S. That's a self-portrait of Maurice Quentin de la Tour, whom I regard as the Artist of the Enlightenment. I saw this image a single time more than 30 years ago, and recalled it again today for its trenchant portrayal of humanity's pride in its own abilities.

Plus de Review

We review at the beginning of most classes, not more than 5 minutes. When reviewing, I always add some new information onto the reviewed material. Every little new tendril will reach out toward something else that will crop up later on.

For example, last week we covered some Bible basics and the first two chapters of Genesis:

"Hey y'all, let's review a bit of what we learned last week: what are the two parts of the Bible? The Old Testament and the New Testament. Yes, what's the difference? The Old Testament was before Jesus was born. [new stuff] Yes...we might say Before Christ, B.C. What's B.C? It's how we make dates before Jesus. Yes, and after B.C? Ummm, A.D.? What's that mean? No guesses? It means Anno Domini; it's Latin for "Year of (our) Lord." So the O.T. corresponds to...B.C., yes, and the N.T. to A.D., yes, more or less.

[review] And the O.T. was written in what language? Jewish! Not quite...Hebrew! That's it.  And the N.T.? Latin! No...? Greek! Yes, Greek. [new stuff] By the way, what's the language of the Church? Latin? Yes, there you go. All the unusual words you'll see this year are going to be Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. Sometimes you can guess the language by what I'm reading from.

[review] Somebody tell me about Adam's rib. He misses his rib and wants her back! That's right! [new stuff] How many ribs did God take from Adam? One. Yes...so how many wives should Adam have...three? Ha, no, one! Yes. God didn't take a bunch of ribs for Adam to have a wife posse, just one rib. Now all of us men, and boys, who are future men, inherited that sense of missing something. Honorary son, let's say God took your rib and made her out of it, and you over there, your rib became this girl, and my wife came from my rib. Now if you're missing your rib, do you want his rib? Ha, no I want mine! Right. You don't just want any rib...you want your rib. Well that's how my wife is to me, not just a woman that God made, but what? The woman God made for you? Yes, just for me. I don't want another woman any more than I want someone else's rib."

All of these new bits anticipate concepts that the kids will encounter later on.

The Power of Luck

Regular readers will know my elder daughter nearly died in an accident on Memorial Day ( ICU ). Since then she's finished all her therapy regimens, and can drive again. She's about 80% of her old self, and gradually recovering. However, she lives at home (instead of being in school at the College of Charleston) and is on some meds. Before the accident she had applied for summer work at 5 places, but by the time she was employable again, all the positions were filled. She hasn't been able to get a job, and she's been feeling down about her circumstances.

Last night at my Knights of Columbus business meeting I asked everyone to pray for my daughter's full recovery. Our Insurance Agent, Steve Miller (the other Steve Miller) was sitting next to me, wasn't up on her story, so I filled him in. He said he'd sure pray for her, probably thinking as I used to, there but for the Grace of God....

About 4:00 this afternoon I got a Catechism-related email from Steve (we're both catechists). At the end of the email he wrote, "I have been thinking about Francie since I woke up this morning. All the LeBlancs are in our prayers."

At about 4:30 Francie came in and asked if she could borrow some money to buy some dressy clothes. Umm yeah, I guess, what are they for? Well, she just got back from calling on the place she most wanted to work for back before Memorial Day, and they hired her to start tomorrow as the hostess! The daughter is so re-energized and optimistic, I think she may have recovered to 85% in about an hour.

The power of...you know.

At the top, Francesca and Alexandra about 9 years ago.

Helpmeet

This post is also available through Sunday Snippets

This is  a common interchange in my house:

"You are a great wife." (Love sees clearly)

"That's because you're the perfect husband." (Love is blind)

I have wondered for a couple of decades now, what makes for the best spouse? And yesterday I figured it out, I think, with some help from Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author and blogger. In one of his books I remember a line like this about saints:

A saint is someone who let God make him into everything God intended for him to be.

Which I have adjusted to:

The best spouse is one that most helps you to let God make you all He intended for you to be.

Which is a good working definition in my household.

Other definitions are welcome.

ICU

For the last 10 years or so, I participated in the Ministry to the Sick, bringing Jesus to the ill, the shut-in, and whichever Catholics were in the hospital on my day of the week. Most memorable were the visits to those who lay in the Intensive Care Unit. A few minutes in ICU will get ya countin' ya blessins. I had started writing this post on May 25, planning to talk about acting as a conduit of God's grace to people I don't know. But those plans went astray today.

This morning about 4am we got a call from the hospital; they wanted information on Francesca LeBlanc, isn't she our daughter? Do we have her Social Security number, medical insurance info, etc? What? What? She's had a bad fall, is seriously injured and will be at the Emergency Room shortly. My daughter, who only a couple of weeks ago came home from college, is fast asleep across the hall from us; what a mistake! No mistake, they have her ID. My wife says we can be there in 10 minutes and will bring the data.

She is not in her room. They said she fell?

The world is quiet and dark at 4:15, except for the brightly-lit ER entrance, and a concrete pad where a helicopter is landing. I reflect for an instant on the West and its incredible machines. We go in, are quickly received and processed to a waiting room in the back. Turns out we arrived at the same time as Francesca, who was delivered in the medevac. The ER doc sees us about 15 minutes later, says a CAT scan shows broken bones in her toes and foot, and a subdural hematoma, i.e., a blood clot in her brain like the one that killed Natasha Richardson in March. The neurosurgeon is already on his way, and we can see her now before she's prepped for surgery. The curtain to her cubicle is pulled shut; he pauses and says we should prepare ourselves.

Francesca is hooked up to the usual devices, including a ventilator. My recollection from ICU is that nobody gets off the ventilator alive. But maybe not in this case: she was yelling and fighting with the ER staff  when she arrived, so she was restrained and heavily sedated. They are gently wiping blood off of her head and face, her big toe is showing bone. Her appearance is absolutely shocking. Twenty-five years ago my car was totaled in an accident. Standing the rain I looked at it...that wasn't my car...my car looks pretty and new, not destroyed. And now I stare at this person who resembles my daughter, but must be someone else: busted mouth, swollen lip, swollen head, sightless eyes, tangled bloody hair, the ventilator, naked under a sheet with God-knows what-all stuck in her. I notice the urine bag: it's got a little bit in it already. I expected her to look more like...Francesca; my sadness was indescribable. How could this wreck be my little girl? Except that there's no way not to bear it, it's unbearable. And of course all Janet & I can do is stand around while the staff, in its efficient yet surprisingly affectionate way, goes about the prepwork. The chaplain is with us, and helps with the phonebook as we try to find a priest; we are close to three of them and are pounding every cellphone, tollfree, and church office number we can think of to reach one.

In the meantime the surgeon arrives, fired-up, ready to save a life at 5am. He explains what he'll be doing. He expects a good result, which means in a year or so she will likely recover completely, or nearly so. The fact that she arrived able to fight, yell, and focus meant there may have been no permanent damage. May. This blow was an insult to the brain, he said; we can't ever be sure how the brain will react. I thought that was an artful description.

The daughter is wheeled off to surgery and the chaplain escorts us up to the appropriate waiting room. The procedure "doesn't take long" and at some point I decide it is running long, way long. I accept that she will die. My wife & I sit and pray silently, and the chaplain sits with us doing the same. I'd have thought I'd pray for her to live. Instead I was praying that if this were the right time for her soul to go to heaven, then I wasn't going to argue with God about it. She had been a great blessing and a wonderful gift for 18 years, and I was thankful for that. So I prayed that God's will be done. I asked her 3 patron saints and my buddy saints Isaac Jogues and Max Kolbe to receive her if it became necessary, and pray along, too. I can't imagine how people get through this sort of horror without faith.

Two of Francesca's friends show up. The ER told them how to find us. They are about her age, 19 or so. I know Joey and Larry; last week they all played Parcheesi in the living room. Joey ate dinner with us yesterday, and afterward all the kids watched a movie. Turns out that later that night Francesca let herself out and they picked her up to go to an impromptu cellphone-coordinated get-together in an abandoned warehouse. She had the bad luck to fall through the upper floor and land about 25 feet below on a concrete slab. They had called 911 and thus she got to the hospital in good time. I told them that regardless of the outcome, we didn't blame them, and they shouldn't blame themselves. The two of them looked so miserable; they stayed with us the whole time.

The surgeon strode in all of a sudden...here it comes, accept it.  The operation went well, he reiterated his original prognosis. He advised us to go home, sleep, and come back around 1pm to see her in ICU. This isn't a sprint, he said, it's a marathon. Get some rest. Oh... so she'll live, then. I was surprised. We went home, told the other kids the news. They'd been praying rosaries and were stressed out. Francie's dear sister Alexandra had been crying. We slept a bit.

We returned to ICU about 1 pm, went right in to Francesca's bed. I know the ICU drill. I have seen so many dying, battered bodies in ICU over the years, no worries. But I could not look at my daughter for even 30 seconds without breaking down. Still on a ventilator, induced coma, and a partly-shaved still-swollen head, with a 4-inch long cut running from her right earlobe arcing up the side of her head, held together with metal clips. Looks like a brain zipper. I had to retreat to the ICU waiting room. Tried again after I felt better; same result. My little girl is the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen. Janet deals with it better and stays with her. Maybe mothers are tougher, I thought it'd be the opposite. No, wait. I was there at Francie's birth: the mothers are definitely tougher.

We're at home now, eating something, heading back around 8:30. Close friends have already come by with food, and our immediate family who live close by are ready to help as needed. The doctors may take Francie off the ventilator in a couple of days; in an induced coma, she keeps trying to yank it out. To me that's good. You go girl, get offa that thing. Once more I reflect on the West: its managerial and organizational skills; its knowledge base and educated populations; its flexibility, responsiveness, and preparedness; its machines.

At the top of the page is the shirt they cut off of Francesca in the ER. This would seem to be the perfect time to say thank ya Jesus.

Thank ya, Jesus. I know you love us.

This is an ICU blessing I never expected to count.



Update June 16: my daughter is at home, may recover fully, timetable unknown.