LOVE SHOULD GROW UP LIKE A WILD IRIS
February 16, 2003
The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
Meditation: "Love Should Grow Up Like a Wild Iris in the Fields" - Susan Griffin
Love should grow up like a wild iris in the fields,
unexpected, after a terrible storm, opening a purple
mouth to the rain, with not a thought to the future,
ignorant of the grass and the graveyard of leaves
around, forgetting its own beginning.
Love should grow like a wild iris
but does not.
Love more often is to be found in kitchens at the dinner hour,
tired out and hungry, lingers over tables in houses where
the walls record movements, while the cook is probably angry,
and the ingredients of the meal are budgeted, while
a child cries feed me now and her mother not quite
hysterical says over and over, wait just a bit, just a bit,
love should grow up in the fields like a wild iris
but never does
really startle anyone, was to be expected, was to be
predicted, is almost absurd, goes on from day to day, not quite
blindly, gets taken to the cleaners every fall, sings old
songs over and over, and falls on the same piece of rug that
never gets tacked down, gives up, wants to hide, is not
brave, knows too much, is not like an
iris growing wild but more like
staring into space
in the street
not quite sure
which door it was, annoyed about the sidewalk being
slippery, trying all the doors, thinking
if love wished the world to be well, it would be well.
Love should
grow up like a wild iris, but doesn't, it comes from
the midst of everything else, sees like the iris
of an eye, when the light is right,
feels in blindness and when there is nothing else is
tender, blinks, and opens
face up to the skies.
*****
He was only a Chocolate Chip Cookie, but I loved him.
I met him at a party. There he was at the end of the buffet - a loner, the last one on the plate. He had a certain something - a sweetness, a sensuality.
I felt as if I'd always known him, always hungered for him. When he looked at me with those warm brown eyes, I melted. Before I knew it, I had my hands on him, my mouth on him - in public. After that night, we were inseparable.
With him, I could be myself. He didn't seem to care what mood I was in, how I looked, even if I gained weight. Together, we had the recipe for happiness. No one satisfied me like Chip.
Then things changed. My friends said he was no good for me. He started to give me heartburn. I felt crummy, but I knew it had to end.
Now we've gone our separate ways. I hardly think of him anymore. Oh, if I see a certain TV commercial, a particular magazine ad, a coupon for 10 cents off - that old longing returns. And when we run into each other in the supermarket, we nod.
We're friendly. But it's over.
*******
Those words were on the front of a Valentine's Day card one of my sisters sent me several years ago, and which I came across the other day in a file; my sister knew I'd relate to it, as I'd had that kind of experience far too many times in my younger days of romance and angst.
It's for that reason that I always feel a bit arrogant speaking on the subject of love and relationship; I am definitely not an expert! I married at the age of 20, and divorced nine years later. Since then, I've had several Relationships - with a capital "R," none of them successful. Perhaps it's no wonder that the first wedding ceremony I ever wrote didn't even mention the word "love!" It was not something I had much faith in by the time I began writing weddings!
Nevertheless, I've officiated at the weddings or Services of Union - all of which do mention Love now! -- for probably 250 couples or more; in each case, I conduct at least some of what could be considered "pre-marital counseling." In addition, I've counseled couples during their relationships, and during or after their break-ups. I am told that the weddings I write are good - sometimes the best they've seen. But the truth is, I rarely know whether my weddings have "stuck" or not, since most of the couples have been non-UUs simply looking for a "liberal" minister to marry them, and I usually neither see or hear from them again.
But I am fascinated not so much by the early romantic stages of a relationship, or by the unhappy, sometimes bitter stages of the ending of one. Rather, I am intrigued by the ordinary, day-to-day loving which seems to occur in the midst of the mundane.
And so I want to reflect this morning on that stage of love which is found in the kitchens - in the midst of tiredness, or even annoyance, but which is able from time to time to be tender and "open its face to the skies."
We all know the dreary statistics which hover over couples today as they embark on marriage; it seems that divorce is far more common than not. Indeed, I always contended that divorces would be less common once more couples lived together before matrimony, but the statistics indicate just the opposite. We seem to have no recipe for failure-proof marriages - even those performed by Rev. Anne!
Consequently, I do hold concern for some of the couples I've married. They come into my office starry-eyed and innocent, talking much the same way as the character in the Valentine card: "We felt as if we'd always known each other; we can be ourselves with one another; I've never felt so satisfied"…etc., etc. In most cases, everything has been so perfect, I have to wonder: Do they know, really, what they're getting in to? Do they have a clue as to what the words "For better or for worse" can mean?
Annie Dillard has a wonderful description in one of her books of Catholic worship. She asks whether the people in the pews realize the intensity and depth of what they're doing when they come together and call on their God. She suggests they should be wearing crash helmets to protect them from the danger of what's being invoked. The same could probably be said about love and marriage; couples ought to wear crash helmets for the duration of the ride - with the instructions, "Do not try this at home!"
But crash helmets and warnings are not what couples usually want to hear about when planning their first wedding ceremony! So I give them a packet with sample vows, readings, etc. and suggest they choose what they'd like included in their ceremony. (Actually, I always first suggest they write their own vows, even if they don't use them on the day of the wedding; it's a good exercise to explore just what they are willing to promise one another.) Then, closer to the day of the wedding, we meet again and go over what they've chosen; probably the readings most often preferred are one by the 13th century theologian, Thomas a Kempis, and the one Fran read earlier from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.
Both readings are very poetic. Thomas a Kempis' says that "Love flies, runs and leaps for joy; love knows no limits; ardently transcends all bounds; feels no burden, and sees nothing as impossible." And St. Paul's you know: "Love is patient and kind; seeks not its own good; is not easily provoked; is always charitable, always trustful, always hopeful, always steadfast." And those are good words; but do these young people about to marry have any idea how difficult it is to sustain such love - especially these days? Do they understand that neither Thomas a Kempis or St. Paul were ever married, and so probably had no idea of what true relationship is about?
The Utne Reader had an article once on relationships, in which the author pointed out that relationships today - whether gay or straight - are buffeted by powerful divisive forces: the stresses of job and career, alienation, and lack of community or even extended family. It is not easy to embark on a life-long relationship these days. But then, perhaps it never has been.
I remember when my ex-husband and I went to our first meeting with the priest who was to perform our wedding ceremony. Admittedly, we weren't an easy couple for this young priest: interracial in the mid-sixties, with no jobs, and with a baby on the way; we learned later that we were the first couple this priest had ever married! My, my, my! So I can't blame him that he simply gave us a little booklet to read about marriage, distributed, I suppose, by the Episcopal Diocese. I don't remember much about it, other than how little help it seemed to offer us. As I recall, it was primarily designed to keep us committed to God, as well as each other; and since by that time both of us were atheists, it fell pretty flat.
Fortunately around the same time, Newsweek magazine ran an article about the number of young college-age couples getting married, and the problems they were facing trying to work, go to school, sometimes having children, and remain loving. This article was much more helpful to us, as it let us see the pitfalls ahead, and served as a warning to wear our crash helmets! And while it is true that despite that guidance, we still ended up in Divorce Court, our ability to maneuver the difficult twists and turns of early married life through undergraduate and graduate school was improved because of that article.
So when I perform a wedding or Service of Union ceremony for couples, I like to point out that love isn't something we helplessly "fall into," the way popular songs would have us believe, but rather is something we choose to open ourselves to - or not. And that once we choose to be open to loving another person, we must then face both the ups and downs of "going the long haul together" - of choosing again and again to stay open to love, especially during those periods where it seems to have flown away.
Love and relationship rarely look like the depictions we see in the movies. Oh, it may start out that way; in the beginning our love may "fly, run and leap for joy," as Thomas a Kempis suggests. But after a while, relationships become a bit more mundane; in the midst of paying bills, raising children, nagging about household chores over and over, the passion first felt can somehow get lost. Unfortunately, many couples see this as a sign that their love for one another has also been lost. This is one reason life relationships call for such courage; they don't just float effortlessly along. Yet rarely do couples choose any readings for their weddings that speak of courage!
They don't want to hear the words of Erich Fromm on their wedding day, who said that "love is an act of faith." Or the poet, Ranier Maria Rilke: "For one human to truly love another is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks - the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."
Fromm and Rilke aren't the only people who have written on the intentionality of love. Rollo May, Howard Thurman, M. Scott Peck - all define love as an act of will, in which one puts the development and acceptance of the other person ahead of one's own fears and insecurities.
Dr. Peck, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on love, among other things, says that love is the "will or choice to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own and another's spiritual growth." In other words, love requires effort, care, sacrifice sometimes, and therefore, courage. It does not happen by accident.
Love also requires a commitment to know oneself; a willingness to work on oneself, in order that the relationship can be honest and can grow. Eric Fromm says that two people become one with each other not by merely "falling in love" and lighting a Unity Candle, but by first becoming "one with themselves." Again, it is an act of faith and courage, for one must be able to look at oneself honestly, and embrace one's fears and shame, in order to move beyond oneself to the other.
Of course, St. Paul was right as well: Love does need patience and kindness, faith and hope, humility and truth. But all those qualities take work and intentionality.
If the readings in a wedding ceremony were left solely up to me - which occasionally they are - I would choose three kinds:
First, I'd choose one such as this by Rilke, in which he said, "Only through the task of working on themselves can two people use the love given to them." I want people to know that love calls them to speak to one another honestly and listen openly; to bring to the relationship their whole selves, with all their strengths and with all their vulnerabilities; that to be courageous means to speak and listen with their heart.
Secondly, I'd use a reading by the writer George Nathan, who said, "The man and woman who can laugh at their love, who can embrace with chuckles, will outlast in mutual affection all throat-lumpy, cow-eyed couples. Nothing lives on so fresh and ever-green," he said, "as the love with a funnybone." His words may be more important than all the others read at a wedding.
For a sense of humor in a relationship offers perspective. To laugh at ourselves and at life occasionally allows us to stand back from a situation, and see it more clearly. At times, it may be the only thing that can save the relationship. Some of the relationships that have seemed the most healthy to me are those where both partners laugh and play a lot, even in the midst of hard times.
And the third type of reading I would choose speaks of the lulls in love. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in her marvelous book, Gift from the Sea, suggests that "when we love someone, we do not love them all of the time." She points out that relationships have an "ebb and flow" to them, just like the ocean; and the problem is that "we leap at the flow of tide, and resist in terror its ebb." We must accept that "relationships are like island," she writes, "continually visited and abandoned by the tides."
Carl Rogers and M. Scott Peck spoke also of these periods in relationships where love doesn't seem to be present any longer, but that real love is the choice to stay with it - as long as such a choice is not destructive to oneself, of course, or to the other person. Another way of saying this, perhaps, is through the poetry of e.e.cummings, who wrote of "the voice under the silences," to which we must listen; that thread of quiet strength which keeps us afloat - buoys us up -- during the ebb of the tide. This "ebb" of tide may be the aspect of love that requires the most faith, and the most attention.
I have a friend who years ago fell in love with a woman with whom he'd been friends for some time. He told me what so many people newly in love say: He felt fully understood by this woman, as if he'd known her all his life, and soon they were inseparable.
Unfortunately, however, it didn't take too long for my friend to become scared. As the "c" word began looming before him, he started talking about feeling stifled by his new lover; as he reacted to that by retreating, she, not surprisingly, succumbed to her own insecurities, and the relationship became an agonizing roller coaster ride for them both.
Nevertheless, they hung in there, working on themselves as well as on the relationship. They knew that there was a core there that was good, and they didn't want to lose it to fear. Eventually, they settled into a deeper and calmer relationship, one that was not only very loving, but quiet and comfortable as well, with a tide of both flows and ebbs. The passion that had been experienced in the very beginning of the relationship, and which encircled the roller coaster ride, wasn't there in the same way any longer. A calmer passion existed, and everything was steadier than before. I was delighted for them.
But then, as they moved closer to moving in together and committing to the "long haul," my friend again became uneasy. This time, he told me, things seemed too "comfortable;" shouldn't there be more excitement, even after all this time? Wasn't love about passion, about wildness and angst? And so he "fell in love" with someone new, with whom he could be more the "wild iris in the fields, unexpected;" he broke off the "comfortable" relationship - this time for good.
Now, five years later, with still no intimate relationship in his life, my friend concedes that he made a terrible mistake back then. He had thrived on the intensity of conflict, and was frightened by the quiet and calm of an "ordinary" or "comfortable" relationship. He'd thought such ordinariness signified a lack of love, when what it really pointed to was a maturing and deepening of love.
He did not realize that real love does feel ordinary at times. It may not "grow up wild like an iris in a field," but rather grow in the midst of everyday chaos. But it does grow; its roots deepen, its colors become clearer, its intricacies thicken - often without our even knowing it. That is the beauty of love.
And that's why it's important to "renew one's vows," from time to time. Elizabeth Barrett suggested that I include today a ceremony for couples in this Fellowship, in which they could renew the promises they'd made on their wedding day. And I know such ceremonies are taking place today and tomorrow - sometimes in huge public gatherings. But I prefer vow renewals to be for one couple at a time, when I can meet with them beforehand and help them talk again about what these vows mean to them. I haven't yet figured out a way that I'm comfortable with to perform a "mass" renewal of vows; maybe by next year I will.
But I do want to encourage all couples in this congregation to use tomorrow - Valentine's Day - or your own wedding anniversary, to seriously "renew" your vows. Indeed, I encourage you to take a moment every day, alone or together, to make such a re-commitment; it really is what gives those original vows their power.
Yesterday, on "Prairie Home Companion," Garrison Keilor read some Sonnets which people had written and sent in to him. There must have been hundreds sent, and of course he could only read a few examples. It was amusing how many people used food imagery as a metaphor for their love; no wonder Americans have such a high obesity rate! I was touched by the number of people who wrote beautiful sentiments to their spouses after many years of marriage.
But the one that touched me most deeply, and for which Keilor awarded the poet and her husband a special dinner out somewhere, was a sonnet written to her husband as he was fixing their washing machine. She said she loved his 50-strong laugh, and his pants pocket for her hand at his hip; but that watching him work on their washer gave her a "trust for tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that."
Love does not grow up forever wild and unexpected like an iris in the field; it grows instead where we least expect it - in kitchens, over washing machines, in the midst of children arguing and the paying of bills. Love therefore does take great faith, honesty, care, and a trust of the ordinary. But if we are patient and watchful, we will see Love, from time to time and in great tenderness, blink, and open its face up to the skies.
© 2003 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
