An End and a Beginning

Plato wrote that "(n)o man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education." This quote resonates with me this year, as I have two children, out of two, who are now only months away from completing college graduate studies. Here I am, a little more than a half century old, and a quarter century from bringing two children into the world, and can I now say that I have persevered to the end in their nature and education? Probably not, but work with me here. Let's pretend, for a while, that I can.

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My children may both deny that I have persevered in any way in this latest stage of their education (I hesitate to say "last stage," because really it probably isn't, nor should it be). Their graduate work has been theirs and theirs alone. And the cost of their graduate studies is chiefly theirs, as well. Nonetheless, I have been a major player in their respective journeys. I have devoted a great deal of my labors and my life to my two "children" for the last 25 years, and I am pleased and proud to see them coming to these plateaus of education and accomplishment.

Plato correctly taught that "the most important part of education is training in the nursery," and also generically that "the beginning is the most important part of the work." What their mother and I taught them in their early years, and what we modeled, are the foundation on which their natures and their educations rest. So while we may not claim the full credit, nor even the fuller part of it, for their accomplishments, they really did get their start from us.

On the other hand, since we can't claim the full credit for who they become, neither are we ultimately responsible for who or what they finally become. When our children are infants, we have 100% of control over them and 100% of the responsibility for their well-being. If we are parenting correctly, we gradually give our children more responsibility and more control, until, at some point, they have 100% of the control over their own destiny and 100% of the responsibility for what they do. If there is anything my children regret about who they are, about their character, or about what they know or don't know, it might be easy and convenient to blame their mother or me. But they're both smart. They got that from us. And if we taught them anything, we taught them to think critically, and we taught them that ultimately they have to claim responsibility for who they are, and who they become.

The end of childhood is both an end and a beginning, and that's true for both the child and the parents. Similarly the end of a formal education is both an end and a beginning. A new life, and the end of life, are both an end and a beginning. Even a decision to become something other than what you are, and the giving and receiving of grace, are both an end and a beginning.

Now, maybe, my childrens' continuing educations will include new lessons that are as old as man -- lessons that I have learned but which I am unable to teach them -- like that being a parent is both the most wonderful experience in life, and also the most challenging; like that it isn't easy being a parent, and sometimes you make mistakes. You don't always know what to do, or how to do it. It was Aristotle, the student of Plato, who observed that "the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."

And so it is with life. Life really is a dance we learn as we go. And each step we take, each phase of life, each sunset and every new day is both an end and a beginning.

Fullness and Emptiness

Here I am, Lord.

Young and strong and ready.

A pitcher brimming full.

Waiting to be poured out

where you direct.

Here I am, Lord.

Spent and tired and overworked.

A pitcher empty and drained.

Waiting to be filled again

by your grace.

Here I am, Lord.

Sick and depressed and grieving.

A pitcher cracked and broken;

Unable to be filled.

Waiting to be healed

so I can hold your living water again.

Here I am, Lord.

Rested and refreshed and renewed.

A pitcher nearly filled again.

Waiting to be restored

back to fullness in you.

Here I am, Lord.

A pitcher made in your image.

Sometimes full, sometimes empty,

somtimes broken, and sometimes healed.

Waiting to learn

what you can only teach me

by changing the conditions of my existence.

Now And Forever

This past Saturday, together with Cheri, my new bride of six months, I attended the wedding of my stepson, Gary. The wedding was held in a Baptist church in Rochester, Pennsylvania. Gary married a lovely young woman named Jessica (having a daughter of my own named Jessica, I think it is a lovely name for lovely young women).

The bride and groom seem very much in love and very well matched for a long and successful marriage. It was, by all accounts, and by my own observation, a successful wedding. I’ve spent a good deal of the past year, and now this whole past week, contemplating what might constitute a successful marriage, and what it means to have forever-love, because, as we all must know by now, successful marriages don’t always follow successful weddings.

The wedding was American traditional, with modified vows chosen and edited by the bride and groom. Near the end of the vows the preacher asked each of them to recite this vow: “I, Gary (Jessica), promise to cherish, honor and love you, Jessica (Gary), now and forever. (I didn’t write it down during the ceremony, but to the best of my recollection it went like that.) The ceremony included an exchange of rings and the preacher talked about how rings symbolize love with no beginning and no end.

Just six months ago I’d gone through a similar ceremony, reciting similar forever-love vows for the second time in my short life. Sitting in the front pew of the church for this ceremony, together with the other seven parents and step parents of the bride and groom (and living in a society where marriages which end in divorce are more common than marriages which last a lifetime) I was struck by the irony of people taking and speaking such vows of forever and undying love when the odds are so stacked against them.

Romantic human love does end. It happens all the time, and the eight “parents” of the bride and groom at this wedding ceremony were living proof of it. Sometimes love dies, or the loved one dies. Sometimes we kill love. Sometimes love comes to a natural, amicable end, and sometimes the end of love is violent, and terrible, and love is supplanted by its close sibling, hate.

I’d been nervous to meet my new bride’s ex-husband, Woody, the real father of the groom. He attended the wedding with his second wife, Sue. (More irony; Sue was my first wife’s name.) Our meeting and our exchanges over the wedding weekend were amicable, however, and all in all the two real mothers, two real fathers, two stepfathers, one stepmother and one step-girlfriend got along pretty well. There was a palpable tension hanging in the air throughout the wedding weekend between exes and new spouses. But the love and good feelings and well wishes, which manifested in good measure, ultimately prevailed. Life and love are not always simple, and neither are they always easy.

I am merely an armchair psychologist and watcher of demographic trends, and I do not profess to be qualified to say why, or even if, marriages “fail” more often now than they once did. I am also not really qualified to say too much about why romantic human love ends. But it seems to me that one reason romantic human love ends sometimes is because we are human.

Being human means we are self-centered. This is practically a tautology. We want what we want and we want it now. It’s hard to honor and cherish another person, even a loved one, when they fail to properly and timely honor and cherish us. Can you believe what she did to me?!! Why I oughta ….

And let’s be honest. We are, none of us, perfect. We make mistakes. We forget. We get focused on our careers and our kids and our hobbies and our friends and our doing-good-to-others and we get too busy to do all the right things love requires to stay strong. Sometimes we get angry and mad and mean and demanding, and we blow it. We sin and we stray and somehow, before we know it, though we once never thought it possible and it’s not what we wanted or intended, love is sick, and love is wounded, and sometimes love dies.

The brother of the groom, Doug, is a Christian believer who once stated to me that “no marriage can succeed without God.” It is an interesting postulation, but, even though I believe in God, I don’t completely agree with that statement. Surely there are some atheists and agnostics and Buddhists out there who have succeeded in their marriages. What I can agree with, though, is that no love can last forever, and consequently no marriage can last, unless the participants emulate the model of love God uses – which includes forgiveness of wrongs, and grace, and wanting what is best for the other. Christians use the Greek word “agape” to describe that kind of love. The agape kind of forgiving love is different than romantic love, which is called “eros” in the Greek.

I also think we soft-sell the word “commitment” in the wedding-vow ceremony. Sometimes when romantic love flags or fails, it simply takes a gut-check kind of commitment to stick it out for better or worse, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad. This is not to say that I believe everyone should stay married no matter what. I don’t believe that. Still, you get the sense that some people are throwing in the towel before they give it their best shot.

But nobody starts out in marriage intending to fail. Nobody says “I do” love you, or vows “I will” love you forever, when all along they really mean “I don’t” and “I won’t.” Well anyway, no decent person does. And yet, despite our best intentions, despite our promises and our vows, romantic love ends, and marriages end.

All the happy wet and tearful eyes at the Gary and Jessica wedding, my own included, were proof enough to me that we all still believe in romantic love. We root for the young lovers who take the forever-love vows. We’ve seen love succeed and we’ve seen marriages succeed, and we know it is possible – if not easy. And we are suckers for new beginnings. This love will last! This marriage will succeed!

But broken vows and ended marriages aside, what is a “successful” marriage? I suppose if we agree to use the phrase “their marriage failed” when speaking of divorce, then a divorce, itself, could be the sole measure of the failure or success of a marriage. I don't think so. I've seen a few marriages that, while they didn’t end in divorce, could never be called “successful” marriages. Conversely, one should ask, must a marriage last forever, or “until death do us part,” in order to be called a success?

My late first wife, Sue, and I were once part of a church planting effort in Clovis, California. A small group of a dozen or so people planted a new Christian church. Over the course of eight or so years that church saw attendance grow to over 100 people, saw a significant number of believers’ baptisms, featured hundreds of meaningful worship services, bible studies, home group meetings, celebration meals and events. Our children were raised in that church. Through that community of believers we all were connected to God and blessed. But then, for reasons hard to understand, the church eventually shriveled and died, and closed its doors forever. Some would say that church was a failure. But I would say that, while it ended, and the ending itself was a form of failure, during the time it was alive that church was a success. And for those of us who were a part of that church (especially those who received salvation and baptism), the good experiences were worth it, and will continue to be a part of who we are forever.

The Gary and Jessica wedding weekend featured a lovely young couple and their lovely siblings, and even a couple of lovely grandchildren, who all exuded a joy and mutual love and caring that usually only come from loving parents and loving homes. Somewhere in their marriages the real parents, and even the step parents, must have done something good – must have had and modeled real love – and these young people were born of that love, and were and are the living proof of it.

It was clear to me that the love between the former marriage partners of the bride and groom was once very real, and while their marriages ended due to human failures common to humans, there still is a remnant bond of love. No, the marriages won’t be resurrected. But on this happy occasion of a new marriage, and of these new pledges of forever-love, there were knowing looks of pride for how their children turned out; there were hugs and handshakes and genuine words of affirmation and well wishes to their children, and to each other, amongst them all.

So it seems to me that when a marriage ends, notwithstanding the human failures to keep the forever-love vows, we ought not always use the phrase “the marriage failed.” It’s too harsh and frankly it is not always true. If something good came from the years of marriage - good love, good experiences, good children, growth, life, living, learning - we simply cannot look at all of that good and call it failure. The good part is success. The love part is success. The love of children who come from a broken, ended marriage, and their love and their children, are all a part of the continuation of the success of love.

And though the marriage has ended, and though lives take irrevocable new courses, people are still connected by unseverable relationships, and forgiveness, redemption, and a form of love more like agape love are still possible. Even though romantic human love sometimes ends, the purer form of love, agape love, never does end. And that, after all, is the true now-and-forever love.

As for Gary and Jessica, they are the new hope for a true now and forever romantic love. As for the rest of us working on a second or third try, well, love is a powerful thing, and hope springs eternal.