It's for Life

Years ago, at another church we belonged to, the wife in a fairly prominent couple stopped coming to church. She moved out the family’s home. She told pastors and friends that she had fallen in love with someone else, and God wanted her to be happy. The marriage ended in divorce.

At the risk of sounding anti-American, I have to say she missed the point. Marriage isn’t about happiness. It’s never about happiness. That’s a non-existent magic elixir that doesn’t exist, sold by the boatload by movies and television programs, and not a few books, not to mention the Declaration of Independence calling the pursuit of it an “inalienable right.”

The Christian view of marriage, says C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, is also not about a feeling of love for someone. Feelings are transient; they can change, ebb, flow and disappear. If marriage was based on feeling, even a feeling of love, then every marriage would be doomed from the beginning.

Some marriages, some good marriages and some good Christian marriages, break. The church I was raised in – the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod – accepted only two reasons for divorce – the same two Jesus recognized: adultery and desertion. Some churches accept no grounds for divorce; others fling open the doors to any and all reasons. But I believe a stricter definition is better.

Marriage is about a commitment, a serious commitment. Marriage is about being faithful to a commitment, a commitment to your spouse and a commitment to God. As Lewis points out, you may make that commitment in the flush of young love, but it is still a commitment.

Next month, my wife and I will celebrate 38 years of marriage. When we married, she had just turned 21 and I was two weeks shy of 22. While we were both ignorant of what that commitment meant, I was more ignorant than she was.

We learned something early on: marriage is hard. Romantic expectations will likely be disappointed, and early on. We’ve had our share of arguments, misunderstandings and disappointments, although I usually cornered the market on doing stupid stuff.

At some point over the years, it got less hard (I didn’t say easy: I said less hard). We became more understanding, more tolerant of each other’s weaknesses and failings. We began to understand that marriage wasn’t about changing the other person but about loving the other person, even when they were at their most unlovable. Marriage isn’t about my needs being met, but working together, being “one flesh,” to do the things God sets before us.

We still screw up (particularly me; it’s a best practice). But she loves me anyway. And I can’t imagine not being married to her. I just can’t. We become too much a part of each other. I’m more in love with her now than when we first met. I always will be.

And our marriage is for life.


Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter have been hosting our discussion of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. This week’s chapter is “Christian Marriage.” To see more posts, please visit Jason’s blog, Connecting to Impact.

Anne Overstreet's "Delicate Machinery Suspended"

My review of "Delicate Machinery Suspended:Poems" by Anne M. Doe Overstreet has been posted over at TweetSpeak Poetry. It's a wonderful collection published by T.S. Poetry Press.

You can find the boook on Amazon here.

Physical Therapy

Shift your weight,
she says, to the left,
breathe deeply
to lift the right;
my brain laughs
at the novelty
until I laugh back.
Focus. Left. Focus.
Re-teach the brain.
Re-learn, brain,
counterintuitive
as it is. Lean into
the pain, she says,
place the weight
on the pain. Don’t
fight it; move into it.
Surprised, the pain
complies.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more submitted poems, please visit One Stop Poetry. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Charlie White's "Fatfingers"

I was born and raised in New Orleans, a city utterly unlike any other in the United States. Its culture has always been more Caribbean than American, with a rather high tolerance for political corruption, for example, that’s distressing but factual (remarkably, Illinois – the “Land of Lincoln” – seems to have captured that dubious crown worn so long by Louisiana and New Orleans).

Undergirding this tolerance in New Orleans is a kind of dark humor. Hurricane Katrina was barely over when the first t-shirts showed up in French Quarter souvenir shops, sharing choice comments about Mayor Nagin, FEMA and its hapless administrator, Michael Brown, President Bush and then-Governor Kathleen Blanco. That’s New Orleans – laughing in the face of calamity and making a little money on the process, while washing down a shrimp po-boy sandwich with a Dixie beer.

Welcome to Charlie White’s Fatfingers, A Tale of Old New Orleans. It’s a historical novel that’s shot through with that classic and contemporary sense of what New Orleans is.

It’s the 1760s, and the British are beginning to expel the Acadians from Nova Scotia. Pirates roam the Caribbean, the Spanish have taken over Louisiana from the French and the British can also be found in nearby Pensacola and Florida. Hapless carpenter Etienne Gaspard works in a Nova Scotia shipyard under a cruel and vicious taskmaster, Thomas Cudgel. Etienne and his brother-in-law Jacob are forced into hiding and eventually expelled. They travel with other expelled Acadians southward, stopping for a time in Charleston, South Carolina before alighting in Santo Domingo, or Saint Dominique.

Somehow, Etienne’s nemesis Cudgel ends up in the same place. Mishaps and upheavals ensue. Etienne and Jacob, accompanied by two women they meet, find their way to New Orleans, where they --- what else? – open a restaurant. Cudgel ends up in New Orleans as well, working as something like a sheriff or police chief for the Spanish authorities.

This story of Etienne and his friends is rollicking, and simultaneously dark and humorous. It’s populated by finely drawn, vivid characters who occasionally wonder how they’ve managed to get themselves into such a tale. Most of the characters are fictional, but some are historical, like the Spanish governor Ulloa and General O’Reilly.

The story moves geographically – Nova Scotia, Charleston, Saint Dominique, New Orleans, Barataria Bay, Pensacola and Havana, before returning to Louisiana – much like the times moved; the stories of empires and competing empires are stories largely of geography. And the details author White includes – both real and fictional – are marvelous, including lessons on sailing ships, indigo production and history, and rather tongue-in-cheek speculations on the origins of the Poor Boy (po-boy) sandwich and Southern Comfort bourbon.

Fatfingers is a highly entertaining story. I haven’t read one that so captures the New Orleans I know since John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces.

And I don’t know whether to laugh or shudder that the characters of the novel are like the people who are among my own forebears, and Fatfingers is a kind of family history.

Freedom

Flags flown
barbeque pits fired up
fireworks exploded
parades watched
picnics planned
food consumed
work holidayed

because

a doctor left his patients
for certain inalienable rights

a farmer set aside his plow
to fight at Bunker Hill

a hale good fellow had
only one life to give

words spoken
words written
words believed

words more than words

and blood spilled

freedom’s not
just another word

This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems, please visit the site.

This poem is also submitted for the Warrior Poet Circle, hosted by Jason Stasyszen. To see other poems submitted for the prompt of “freedom,” please visit Connecting to Impact. The links be live on Monday morning, July 4.

Photograph: American Flag by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

We visited the Saint Chapelle Chapel when we were in Paris some years back, and it is everything the Wall Street Journal says it is. And how can you possibly rejoice in the midst of pain? Jennifer Dukes-Lee answers that question. A poem about Portobello road in London, photographs of Balboa Park in San Diego, and a wonderful video showing the view from a tram car in Belfast – in 1901. All this and so much more.

Prose

“The Parisian Jewel for the Jerusalem Crown:” The Saint Chapelle by Ina Caro for The Wall Street Journal.

“The Assignment” by Karen Eck at Karenee Art.

“Ernesto Cardenal” by D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

“One nation, under God?” and “Fight for America” by Matt Appling at The Church of No People.

“Rejoicing in the Midst of Pain” by Jennifer Dukes-Lee at Getting Down with Jesus.

“Carwashes and Real: My Proposal Story” by Kelly Sauer.

“Prayers and Band-Aids Needed” by Duane Scott.

“Are you a Corporate American? Take this test” by David Murray at Writing Boots.

“Fort MacPherson and the Horror Movie” by Harriet Gillham at The other Side of the Mountain.

“The Autocoprophagy Of Mark Twain” by Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

“In the Image” by Jeanne Damoff at The View From Here.

“Hope: It’s Not Just for Kids” by Sara Zarr at The Image Journal.

“I am not powerless” by Jessica McGuire at Jezamama.

“On taking the Lord’s name in vain” by Mike Duran at deCompose and "When Not to Take Writing Advice" for Writer Interrupted..

“I am grateful” by Louise Gallagher at Recover Your Joy.

“A father’s presence” by Billy Coffey at What I Learned Today.

“The Symphony of My Days” by Linda Chontos at Linda’s Patchwork Quilt.

Poetry

“Business Lessons” and “Alive in Every Sense” by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

“Poetry by Heidi Stahl” via Mike Dodaro at Lyric Arts Forum.

“This afternoon” by Milton Brasher-Cunningham at Don’t Eat Alone.

“Portobello Road” by Steven Marty Grant at Urbanality.

“Sitting Outside at Starbucks” by Duane Carter at Songs from the River.

“Shame” by Heather Truett at Madame Rubies.

Paintings and Photographs

“Reluctant” and “A Little Cracked” by Susan Etole at Just…A Moment.

“How Small a Whisper” by Jeanne Damoff at The View From Here.

“Location Shoot: Balboa Park, San Diego” by Kelly Sauer.

“Dusk on the Channel,” watermedia on paper by Randall David Tipton at Painter’s Process.

“Tape Drawings” by Chris Hosmer (hat tip: Andrew Piper).

Videos and Podcasts

“Ride on the Tramcar in Belfast, 1901” and “Not on the Football Team, I See” via Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

Photograph: Red Strips by Nancy Rosback. Used with permission.

With you, always

I see the poor, I know them,
those people on welfare
spending their food stamps
at the supermarket, living
in those red row houses,
brick-baked in summer,
space-heatered in winter,
in that very specific and
avoid-after-dark part
of town. I tithe, give my time,
serve at Thanksgiving (more
dressing, sir?), clean up,
weed yards, plant gardens,
rehab houses with Jimmy
and never once do I
look in the mirror,
except to smile.


Photograph: Row houses, N. 13th Street in Old North St. Louis, 2005, by Preservation Research Office.