Tag: Marriage

The Things in My Pocket

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hilaryben4

We are about to celebrate the marriage of these two precious people this coming weekend
May they always share the poetry in their pockets.

 

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket.  But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
~G.K. Chesterton from “A Piece of Chalk”

The waves haven’t come for my smooth glass yet (polished from the sea).  In the meantime, it is right here in the front pocket of the jeans I am wearing now.  I reach into my pocket for it a lot; it helps me write in some mysterious way…
~Anne Lamott from Traveling Mercies

benhilarysunset

 

One Mind Between Them

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porchsunset

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry from “A Timbered Choir”
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Tenderness Upon Tenderness

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Abandon entouré d’abandon, tendresse touchant aux tendresses…
C’est ton intérieur qui sans cesse se caresse, dirait-on;
se caresse en soi-même, par son propre reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème du Narcisse exaucé.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Dirait-on” from his French Poetry collection ‘Les chansons de la rose’

Translation by Clarissa Aykroyd

Abandon upon abandon,
tenderness upon tenderness…
Your hidden self unceasingly
turns inward, a caress;

caressing itself, in and of its own
reflection illuminated.
Thus you’ve invented the tale
of Narcissus sated.

 

The dozen red roses from my husband for Valentine’s Day brought this beautiful piece to mind:
There is nothing so tender as a rose in full bloom–
no longer an enclosed bud
but an opening,
petal unfolding upon petal
in caressing abandon.

Morten Lauridsen’s choral version –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWXVZlrLa6E

rosedrizzle2

A Deeper Well

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ivycling

The whole process is a lie, 
                  unless, 
                          crowned by excess, 
      it break forcefully, 
                  one way or another, 
                              from its confinement-- 
      or find a deeper well...
                 I love you 
                              or I do not live 
      at all.
 At our age the imagination 
                  across the sorry facts 
                              lifts us 
      to make roses 
                  stand before thorns. 
                              Sure 
      love is cruel 
                  and selfish 
                              and totally obtuse-- 
      At least, blinded by the light, 
                  young love is. 
                              But we are older, 
      I to love 
                  and you to be loved, 
                              we have, 
      no matter how, 
                  by our wills survived 
                              to keep 
      the jeweled prize 
                  always 
                              at our fingertips. 
      We will it so 
                  and so it is 
                              past all accident.

~William Carlos Williams, excerpts from “The Ivy Crown”
written at age 72, published in Journey to Love

How can we, at our age,
who have treated love as no accident,
looking into a well
of such depth and richness,
how can we tell the young
to will their love to survive –
to strive through thorns and briars,
though tears wept and flesh torn,
to come to cherish the prize
of rose and ivy crown.

It is everything that matters,
this crown of love
we have willed and worn together:

I love you or I do not live at all.
I to love and you to be loved.

Thirty Two Years Ago Today

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Before God and this gathering, I vow from my heart and spirit that I will be your wife/husband for as long as we both shall live.

I will love you with faithfulness, knowing its importance in sustaining us through good times and bad.

I will love you with respect, serving your greatest good and supporting your continued growth.

I will love you with compassion, knowing the strength and power of forgiveness.

I will love you with hope, remembering our shared belief in the grace of God and His guidance of our marriage.

“And at home, by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be–and whenever I look up, there will be you.”

(vows written during a lunch break on the roof of Group Health on Capitol Hill, Seattle Washington in July 1981 before our September 19, 1981 wedding at First Seattle Christian Reformed Church)

*the last line is adapted from Thomas Hardy’s  “Far From the Madding Crowd”

 

 ”How joyful to be together, alone as when we first were joined in our little house by the river long ago, except that now we know each other, as we did not then; and now instead of two stories fumbling to meet, we belong to one story that the two, joining, made. And now we touch each other with the tenderness of mortals, who know themselves…”
Wendell Berry

Thirty two years ago today we became one story, a story still being told.   What joy it is to know you and be known by you!
May our story have many more chapters celebrating the poetry of life together, with a minimum of plot twists and cliffhangers.

We’ll trust the Author who touches us with Words as tenderly as we touch each other.  It is bliss to love and be loved from the first page to the last.

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The Bench of Miracles

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bench

bench6

They sat on a bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour.  They were not lonely anymore.  They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other.  What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other.  It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle.
~Haruki Murakami

It makes sense to simply be with each other, telling our stories and holding hands.  A bench is just such place to be.

I’m not sure there exists a 100% perfect other for each one of us but sitting together on a bench in a beautiful place when nothing and no one is more important makes an almost perfect other 100% perfect.

That is the miracle of the bench.

Just come and sit a spell.  I’ll tell you my story and you tell me yours and we become perfect together.

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One Mind Between Them

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They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”
 
And this is how it is.  Minus the pipe…
 
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Epithalamion–The Pasture Gate Opens

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For Jim and Breanna on their wedding day

Today is the day the pasture gate opens
after a long winter; you are let out on grass
to a world vast and green and lush
beyond your wildest imaginings.

You run leaping and bounding,
hair flying in the wind, heels kicked up
in the freedom to form together
a binding trust of covenant love.

You share with us your rich feast today,
as grace grows like grass
that stretches to eternity yet bound safely
within the fence rows of your vows.

When rains come, as hard times always do,
and this spring day feels far removed,
when covered in the mud or frost or drought of life,
know your promises were made to withstand any storm.

Even though leaning and breaking, as fences tend to do,
they remind you to whom you belong and where home is,
anchoring you if you lose your way,
pointing you back to the gate you once entered.

Once there you will remember the gift of today:
a community of faith and our God blessed
this opened gate, these fences, and most of all your love
as you feast with joy on the richness of His spring pasture.

A Little Tepid Pool

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
I know what my heart is like
      Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
      Left there by the tide,
      A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Ebb”
My mother was my age when my father left her for a younger woman.  For weeks my mother withered, crying until there were no more tears left, drying inward from her edges.
It took ten years, but he came back like an overdue high tide.   She was sure her love had died but the tepid pool refilled, the water cool to the touch, yet overflowing.

The Disease of Word-Breaking

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

 

The forsaking of all others is a keeping of faith, not just with the chosen one, but with the ones forsaken…  One is married to marriage as well as to one’s spouse. But one is married also to something vital of one’s own that does not exist before the marriage: one’s given word. It now seems to me that the modern misunderstanding of marriage involves a gross misunderstanding and underestimation of the seriousness of giving one’s word, and of the dangers of breaking it once it is given. Adultery and divorce now must be looked upon as instances of that disease of word-breaking, which our age justifies as “realistic” or “practical” or “necessary,” but which is tattering the invariably single fabric of speech and trust.
~Wendell Berry from “The Body and the Earth” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Covenant between two married people, between parent and child, between coworkers, between countries, between God and His people — is too often broken, irrevocably shattered when convenient and deemed necessary.

I see the sequelae of broken vows, broken words, broken covenants every day in my work.   Divorcing parents destroy the integrity of a family built on trust and commitment.  Relationships wax and wane with the ebb and flow of one’s mood and need for something/someone new.

It is a chronic disease of acute trust deficiency, this lack of keeping faith with one another, this brittle bitter breaking of word and promise.

Our only hope is in the one who kept His promise fully and wholly, renewing His covenant with us until His last breath.
And so, it is finished, having been paid in full, and our faith will never again be broken.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten