More seriously this time...

Amber Lee's comment on the previous post really has me thinking. Amber asks, "What is whole?" That's my question, too, Amber. (Isn't it marvelous to hear the words buzzing in your head spilling from the lips of a friend? "You, too? I thought I was the only one.") What does it mean to be whole? How do we recognize it when we see it? Is 'wholeness' really what the Christian life is all about?

When I look at the life of Jesus, I think that if Jesus embodies full, authentic human life, it has very little to do with the kind of wholeness our contemporary world thinks is important. No home. No money. No prestige. If this is wholeness, it turns our notion of fulfillment on its head! And if Jesus is fully (not half!) human and fully divine, then maybe we should rethink some of our attitudes toward Christian singleness and celibacy.

Here's an area where we could really learn something from our Catholic brothers and sisters. (Did I just hear C of C gasps?) They maintain that both marriage and consecrated singleness ("holy orders") are sacramental - that is, they are visible signs of God's inward grace. Both are venues for authentic participation in the mystery of God's gracious presence. Our tendency has been to downplay one in favor of the other, but we need not do that; it's detrimental to our communities. It is not a matter of one being good and the other being better - both are equally valid expressions of discipleship. Could it be that we, single and married, need one another in order to be a community that experiences God in a full, "whole" way?

This topic is volatile. We get up in arms because it is so personal, and there's no middle ground - you're either one or the other! It is not my intention to disregard the beauty of Christian marriage. I think it is to be highly valued and celebrated. I'm glad that married people feel that they've found something so special in their relationship with one another that they want to "proselytize" the rest of us! With the now happy, formerly bitter bachelor, Benedict in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, they say, "Why art thou sad? Get thee a wife [/husband]!" I think that's hopeful! There's a reason why the biblical writers use marriage as an metaphor for God's relationship to God's people! This is Good News!

But I'd like to balance the conversation by recognizing the value of unselfish singleness in which a person has dedicated a period (or all) of her or his life to undivided service for the Lord. Paradoxically, there is "wholeness" in renunciation, and that wholeness, while it may be different, is certainly not less than what two lovers experience in their lifelong intimacy with one another. This too is something beautiful to be celebrated! Is this not Good News as well?! In fact, I think this lifestyle especially embodies the radical, upside-down-ness of the Gospel in a unique way. Why would we want to do without it?

I think that the reason it is so tempting to describe a healthy marriage as ultimate human wholeness is because there is an element of truth here. We are beings especially created for relationship and community! I've been reading a book lately that describes Christian salvation in terms of relation: relation to the triune God, to one another, and to all creation. That resonates with me. Perhaps that longing for relationship is why we speak so highly of marriage, the most intimate of human relationships. But the marriage relationship is at best penultimate, not ultimate. The wholeness in relationship that we seek cannot be found even in marriage, and we'll be disappointed if we expect to find it there. To suggest otherwise might just be idolatry. Our ultimate relation can be found no where else but in communion with the triune God, which is available fully to us all, single and married.

This Week's Best One-Liner

Kudos for the best one-liner of the week goes to... (drum roll)... David Todd! (*raucous cheers, virtual high fives*)

The abridged background: in the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of talk about singleness, marriage and life in the church in my social circles. We watched a video in church last week about love - it sort of implied that unless you're married (and happily married at that) you're not a whole person. (And I've been thinking all this time that there is something about self-emptying that's central to the Christian story - how foolish of me!) As we were joking around about this topic in my mentor group, Tera quoted David Todd's response:

Jesus Christ: fully divine, half human

(And I've been laughing about it ever since...)

the ritual

Every Sunday I meet my grandmother and her brothers and sisters for lunch. Aunt Yvonne and Uncle Roger are two of the most precious people I know. Roger is slow-moving and quiet with a little studder that has gotten progressively worse over the last 5 years. He always tells me that he loves me just the way I am. Yvonne is spunky, opinionated, and a lot of fun. She's had multiple knee replacement surgeries, and moves about as slowly as Roger does. They're a great match! This spring, I noticed a little ritual of theirs which I never took note of before, and now I look for it every Sunday.

Everytime they arrive in a restaurant, Roger slowly pulls Yvonne's chair out for her and holds her cane and purse while she carefully sits down. Roger's becoming more feeble, but he always tries to help Yvonne scoot her chair closer to the table. It's a team effort. When it's time to get up again, Roger rises from his seat and offers his hand to his wife as she struggles to get up. Yvonne has a hard time working those knees, and Roger does his best to provide her with a sturdy grip and any upward pull he can manage. When Yvonne at last makes it to her feet, she presses her lips to the back of his hand in a tender gesture of thanks. It's beautiful! Like wine, love gets better with age!

Lovely

This morning I awoke to the sound of my parents twittering and giggling back and forth. Is there any sound more lovely than that? Here they are in their 32nd year of marriage and they’re still as flirtatious, teasing, and affectionate as they were in their first. (Well, I assume – I wasn’t around then!) Today Mom blithely told me that it just gets better the longer they’re together. Another lovely thing: to be married for three decades and still be a hopeless romantic about it! And still be playing tug of war with the covers (which I found out later was the reason for all the giggling).

That’s not to say that they don’t face any hardships in their life together – they face difficulties far more serious than stealing the covers! But they’ve discovered that sticking it out together is far better than throwing in the towel. Perhaps it’s their persistent joy and love in the midst of difficulty that truly makes their marriage a beautiful thing. You might even say that it’s foretaste of something even better to come.