Fifty years of marriage is the essence of a journey that spans uphills and downhills, goals achieved; unexpected joys, and times of failure, disappointments, and offenses that sought forgiveness. The thirteenth chapter of Corinthians is a discipline and a constant for the days and years. Love is not arrogant or rude, love glories not in one-upman-ship or being right, love suffers and is kind, love hangs in there. And ultimately this delicate, gentle but tough bond supersedes all else and becomes the one imperishable gift we can have if we are humble enough to receive it.
~ Ross Cameron in DEEP IN THE FAMILIAR by J. C. Borton
And she began,
"I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the Spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and
the women my sisters..."
She looked at him, his eyes dewy, hugging himself, as if he were being filled to bursting. He was too different to be accepted by anyone but another living oddity. She had to put her love somewhere, or it would dry up. Maybe that's what love is– walking willingly into the unknown for the sake of the other. The sheen in his eyes told her he absorbed it like a thirsty desert.
Insects singing, larvae, pupae, seeds celebrating their fecundity, cones opening, draped boughs undulating from trunks connecting earth to sky, everything vital, everything expressing a divine Spirit, God filling all space. A single swirl of energy–birth, growth, feeding, breeding, decay–all of it continuous Life, teeming with mystery, and she a part of it.
She felt an incoming and an unfurling, a momentary mindlessness, a long-awaited union, a beautiful silent Oneness, and she was left with an unutterable calm.
