MORE TEAKETTLE, MAESTRO?

After forty years of coming home from a day of teaching to face the immediate challenge of putting supper on the table for our family, Caryl was only too happy to relinquish that task—about ten years ago—when I took to cooking as kind of a hobby. Now in retirement, I find it very satisfying to see her actually sitting down, reading or working a crossword, while I busy myself in the kitchen.

For me, one of the best parts of fixing a meal is listening to music while I’m cooking. And it has to be loud, or, should I say, of appropriate volume. My theory is that the music

My little Sony kitchen speakers can really
pump out the sound!

coming from the set of Sony bookcase speakers that I’ve put in the space above the kitchen cabinets should be at least as loud as what one would hear in a symphony hall or honky-tonk bar. 

One day last week I had just downloaded a new recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony and was using my supper prep time for its first listen. I punched “play” on my iPhone music app, and as the tremendous sounds of the Eleventh filled the kitchen with the cacophony of the 1905 Russian Revolution, I turned to my cutting board. As the music built in tension and sonority, I set my knife down and turned up the volume just a bit. My eyes might even have been glistening a little to the thrill of it all, when my reverie was rudely interrupted: Caryl, standing in the doorway, finger poked in the page of the book she was holding, “Does it have to be so loud?!” she shouted. I started to reply, “Have I ever told you my theory about how music should be loud enough…,” “WHAT?...” she shouted, cupping her ear. “MY THEORY…” I started again. “Oh, never mind, “ I said in something of a huff, “I can listen on my headphones.” (Despite my sweet, husbandly description, above, I actually didn’t realize that she was sitting in the next room, reading.)

Caryl returned to the living room and her book, I plugged in the headphones and turned again to the tasks of chopping, dicing, boiling water, and preparing the spices. The preparations were coming along nicely when Shostakovich got to the great second movement, the Allegro: “The Ninth of January.” That rapid, repeating gunfire assault: Staccato snare drums at full volume! The shrieking violins were the screams of the innocent protesters under attack. Once again, I put down my ladle and stared off into a kind of musical-historical haze. Once again, I was wrenched back into the now: Caryl, at the doorway: “WHAT IN THE WORLD…?!!!”

“But,” I started to say, “I’m wearing my headpho…” when, at that instant, I became aware that the teakettle was fuming at full steam about eighteen inches away from me. In that same instant, I realized that it had been screeching at full throat for about three minutes! “WHAT IN THE WORLD…?!!!”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, as I took off the headphones and removed the kettle from the heat. And then I explained, “You know what’s funny? It’s not that I didn’t hear the teakettle. I heard it—and I thought it was part of the symphony! It fit right in! Pretty funny, huh?”  Then we both had a good laugh. At least I think Caryl was laughing as she turned once again into the living room. I know I saw her head shaking.

In my defense, dear Reader, I urge you to listen to this movement, the Allegro from the Shostakovich 11^th. If you want to get right to it, you can start at about minute 14. But you must listen loud—loud enough so that a tea kettle at full throttle will sound like part of the ensemble, subtle as a flute.

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Dmitri Shostakovich, 1906~1975

DECEMBER 27th (for Caryl)

Here on the forty-ninth anniversary of the years

that are our years

you are downstairs at the piano

and I’m up here in this garret, at other keys,

trying to wrest the Good News into my annual doggerel

for the First Sunday of Christmas.

Because—as with that startling announcement to the shepherds—

it must be poetry. And it must be music.

“Glory to God in the highest…”

“Let there be spaces between your togetherness…”

said our 60’s prophet Gibran.

So I’m up here—you’re down there.

Good Spaces.

But not so far apart that I can’t hear your glissandos

wafting up the stairs, teasing my leaden verse into life.

The Word become flesh.

The morning stars singing together for joy.

Word. Singing. Joy.

Christmas Eve was kids, grandkids, a dog!

Words, Singing, Joy!

Now they’ve gone—north, south, east…

And, on the very date of our 49^thyear,

just you and me.

I’m going to bring what’s left of this bourbon-and-tonic,

come down that glissando stairway,

sit in that orange chair by the piano,

and listen to you play.

THE NEXUS: THE PLACE OF BECOMING WHO WE ARE

We need friends in order to know anything--even ourselves.   ~CS Lewis

For the last few months—in preparation for a class that I’ve been teaching—I’ve been in the company of two good friends: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Although I am an admirer of both of these writers, the friendship I am referring to is between them. The story of how these two bookish Oxford professors produced some of the best-selling titles of the twentieth century (“The Narnian Chronicles” and “The Lord of the Rings,” among others) is a fascinating account of intellect, faith, and loss; but it is most interestingly a story of friendship. Tolkien and Lewis contributed to each other’s work not by writing together—each was far too much an individual genius—but by listening, supporting, goading, and even criticizing. In Lewis’ phrase, they “acted as midwives” in the process of bringing one another’s books to completion. They were friends.

Lewis and Tolkien, both combat veterans of World War I, met as new faculty members at an Oxford garden party in 1921, and remained friends until Lewis’ death in 1963. Of course a friendship of four decades is not going to be one long garden party, and their association had its share of tensions, jealousies, and disappointments. But through it all, they considered each other to be brothers in the faith, and they gratefully acknowledged what their friendship had contributed to making each the writer—and the person—he had come to be.

It’s impossible to determine what Lewis’s Narnia would have been like without Tolkien’s influence, and whether Tolkien would have quit dithering with the Silmarillion and gotten on with finishing The Lord of The Rings without Lewis’s prodding. Yet it’s no exaggeration to say that the literary works that flowed from their pens was, at least to some degree, a product of their friendship as well as their individual talent.

This is not an exercise in sentimentalizing friendship—as though Tolkien and Lewis had pledged that they were BFFs—but I see their relationship as a laboratory example of a profound element of reality: What the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead calls the “nexus.” In Whitehead’s “process” approach to philosophy the fundamental basis of everything—in the microcosm and the macrocosm, the atom and the galaxy, the material and the relational—is not the individual entity (to use a favorite Whitehead term), but the evolving relationship between entities.  Essence, then, is not located in “being,” but “becoming.” And the ever-emerging realities-of-the moment are connected not by a static link, but at an ever-changing point between what has been and what will be: the nexus. (Just try to pin that nexus down!) In fact, an “entity” itself becomes what it is at any given moment only as a stage in a continual process of change. This all sounds very deep, but it is easily illustrated by the difference between King Midas’ living daughter and a golden statue, between a person and a corpse. “Life is change,” the old adage truly says. When the “becoming” stops, so does the “being.”

This is readily seen in the slow-motion video of a caterpillar-becoming-a-butterfly, or the fascinating spring growth of a tree. But, although it is not so “material,” the constant-becoming of a relationship is no less real: Here is C.S. Lewis, and here is J.R.R. Tolkien, and here—at the nexus—is the friendship.  If the friendship were an aspect only of one or the other of them, it would not be a friendship. It is a life-force that flows between them, no less real than the corporeal being each of them is. Of course the joy of this—and the potential sorrow—is that, like all nexuses, it is not only always changing. It is “change” itself.

Beyond Lewis and Tolkien and the nexus-geyser out of which sprang their delightful books, I have been thinking about other historical friendships which have become historical precisely because their accomplishments are, in fact, products not of one or the other of them, but of whatever that life-force is between them. Let’s call it their nexus: Lewis and Clark, the Wright brothers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. (I know it is a subtle difference, but I am not speaking of two people who get together to work on a project--rather of something that comes about because of a living connection.) C.S. Lewis describes the genesis of friendship as that moment when one says to the other, “What? You, too? I thought I was the only one…,” and the two new friends open together the doors of their isolation; the doors open onto a new place.

One of the deepest locations of finding reality at the place-of-coming-together is marriage. Studies in marriage therapy show that members of relatively healthy couples use the word “we” a lot; an emphasis on “I” when describing what one wants in a relationship is a red flag. One well-respected marriage counselor notes that—when they argue—members of happy marriages are concerned about the marriage (and their partner) and not just “winning the fight.” As one of my teachers liked to put it, “I may win the argument, but I may lose you!” Marriages (and friendships) die when “we” becomes “I” and the nexus is severed as viscerally as Solomon’s proposed dissecting of that baby; or when one or the other tries to freeze in place that life-force that must, in order to live, continue to grow and change.

Love is both formed and sustained at the nexus. In a marriage, each one pours himself, herself, into this living space, and pours him or herself out for the sake of the other. Rather than being consumed in the process, each is constantly renewed as the nexus is constantly reborn. The result is not a cut-out valentine heart pinned to the wall, but: “home,” “family,” “daily life,” “forgiveness”—a place of safety and welcome not just for these two, but for “all who enter here.” In a wedding sermon, written from prison to a young couple, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Up till now, it is your love that has made the marriage; from now on it is the marriage that will sustain your love.” The nexus.

__________________________________________________________________________
At the request of a few friends, I will write a more complete account of the relationship and work of Lewis, Tolkien, and "the Inklings" in a future post.

Although "infinity" or "eternity" is beyond our ability to grasp, some approaches to cosmology posit that the universe itself may be infinite, and always changing--always "becoming." Whitehead suggests that "god" is eternally changeless and eternally open to change. I explored these mysteries in this meditation.

Alfred North Whitehead

JRR Tolkien

C.S. Lewis

MARRIAGE? WHAT DO I KNOW?

Many accepted truths about marriage can be challenged with at least anecdotal (if not statistical) contradictions; there are sixty-year marriages that had their genesis with the preacher sighing in hopeless futility as the couple recessed down the aisle, and there are failed marriages in which the unhappy husband and wife each came from happy parental marriages. Nevertheless I have come to believe that much of what we know about healthy relationships – including marriage – is time-tested, founded in real experience, and is worth passing on, which I will do below as a sort of outline (of course with some commentary). Caveat: I’m not going to add after each proposition (as I could), “It’s true – except when it isn’t.”

Although some of what follows is stated as “statistics,” this whole piece should be read as my opinion. And I’ll be the first to admit that this is a hodge-podge.

(In almost every example below I intend the meaning "him or her," even if I don't always state it that way.)

STATS

No one is just a statistic, but lasting marriages seem statistically tied to:

• Age at time of marriage (over 25 is better)
• Length of time you’ve known each other
• Educational level
• Health of parents’ marriages
• Stats on living together before marriage are mixed, but not necessarily positive.
• Untreated, the disease of alcoholism will destroy a marriage.
• Marriages that begin as a way of escaping a difficult or abusive family situation (usually at a relatively young age) do not have a good track record.
• Marital difficulties (conflict, communication, finance, in-laws, sex,) are most challenging in the first seven years. These are also the years when members of a couple are getting to know each other, which seems to have a natural tie-in to how long they've known each other before marriage.

MARRIAGE 101

Most of us don’t take a class in how to be a husband, how to be a wife. But we have all taken just such a class: the family in which we grew up. Learn from it. Talk with your betrothed (or your spouse) about the families of your childhood – what do you want to carry into your own marriage and family? What do you want to leave behind? I always ask an engaged couple, as a part of our pre-marital conversation, “Do you like the marriage your parents have? Would you like a marriage like theirs?" About 60% of the time at least one says, “Yes,” (usually with some qualifications); about 40% of the time one will say, “No,” or “No way!” Often, the partner who is dissatisfied with his parents’ marriage will say, “But I like her parents’ marriage – I’d like to have a marriage like they have.”

A number of years ago my sisters and brother and our spouses surprised our parents with an anniversary dinner. At the end of the meal, my newly-married sister-in-law asked my parents (whose marriage she admired) to talk about marriage – how it had been over the years, what advice they had. This led to a delightful (and instructive) conversation about marriage among all of the couples around the table.

MARRIAGE 102

Problems experienced before marriage will not automatically improve after marriage, and certainly not because of marriage.  They will only get worse, unless they are dealt with by means of open communication, listening, a creative, respectful, non-anxious approach to conflict, and other ideas listed here. If so dealt with, they can be the cause for reminiscent laughter fifty years later. (Of course many nettlesome issues do improve over the years when they are part of a healthy, growing relationship; my emphasis here is to warn against the assumption that serious problems will go away automatically because "now we're married.")

Similarly, one should not expect to “change” one’s partner after marriage. Marriage is a mutual acceptance pact, and as such reflects the gospel itself. The vow of marriage is “I love you just the way you are,” not, “Now that I’ve got you I’m going to change you into the person I want you to be.”

Ironically, one should be open to changing oneself – not into a different person, but to compromise on or eliminate those attributes or behaviors which irritate the other – as an act of love. As I once read, “Ok, you’re married. Now, take five minutes and 'find yourself.' Got it? OK, now devote the rest of your life to her.” Marriage is certainly about “us,” and (for you) it’s about “her” (or “him”). It’s most certainly not about “you.” Research shows that both members in a good marriage talk more about what "we" do than about "I" or "you."

COMMUNICATION & CONFLICT

One of the things you will be learning about each other in those first seven years is that you have different approaches to conflict – and how to resolve that conflict. All healthy relationships have conflict. The important thing is how that conflict is approached and resolved. You might want to talk it out right now; she may throw herself on the bed sobbing. She may appear at your chair-side saying, “We have to talk,” you may want to read the paper. She may be calm and cool, you may be climbing up the wall. It certainly does need to be talked out -- but after a little respite, if necessary, and when both are ready (and calm).  Sweeping an issue under the rug until it emerges again later is not an option. You need to talk it out. And kiss and make up.

Speak the truth in love. It is possible to speak truthfully but unlovingly. (“That’s the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen.”) If it doesn’t meet the Apostle Paul’s three criteria, it should probably be left unsaid: 1) Is it truthful? 2) Is it loving? 3) Will it build up (rather than tear down) our relationship?

Another bit of practical advice from Paul: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” (Note he doesn’t say, “don’t be angry.”) If the disagreement is unresolved at the end of the day, let the marriage bed be the place of non-anxious reconciliation. A lot of married folks recommend applying this literally, some figuratively, but either way, it is a caution against accepting a pattern of going for days (or even very many hours) without speaking to each other. An old guy dispensing advice at his fiftieth wedding anniversary once said, “In all these years we never once went to bed angry. (Pause…) We went to bed pretty late sometimes!”

In a loving argument you don’t back your partner into a corner – you lay off a bit and leave him an out. You are not trying to "finish him off" (or you may finish off the marriage). You don’t push the known buttons. You speak in “I” statements and not “you” statements: “I am angry because…” not, “You are a no-good…” (“You” statements always cause or escalate fights. I mean always.)

According to a leading marriage researcher, eye-rolling is a bad sign. It is a sign of disrespect. We all do it a little – but if it is a regular part of your arguments, this researcher is going to predict your marriage won’t last. He says he can tell by watching a video of a couple arguing for fifteen seconds whether or not the marriage is going to last. He looks for things like eye-rolling. He looks, basically, at how (or if) a husband and wife are caring for each other even in an argument.

This same researcher – no kidding – says that there is statistical evidence that one sign (not cause) of a healthy marriage is when the husband says, “Yes, dear.” The more I say that, the healthier my marriage becomes. Because it’s almost always an expression of the truth.

After many years of marriage, Caryl said to me, “When we argue, you make me feel stupid.” This is ironic, because Caryl is one of the smartest people I know. But I figured out what she meant. Sometimes in disagreement I escape to my “high horse,” and lecture from on high – all cool and rational. I think I’ve finally learned my lesson. (Dear?) I hope I'm an example of how even in marriage one can learn, grow, and change. (I've tried to think of something I'd like to change about Caryl, but all I can come up with is the way she whisks my coffee cup into the dishwasher before I'm done with it.)

SEX

Sex is another one of those things that you will get to know about each other – in the first seven years and for the rest of your lives. Here’s some things I believe:

• One partner may express more interest in genital sex. One may express more interest in romantic touching and holding. Both are right. We can learn from each other.
• “Always be open to trying something new, and never force anybody to do something they don’t want to do.” 
• “I like it when…” is a great thing to say to each other at all times. “I like it when you cook the chicken that way…” “I like it when you wear your hair that way…” And it’s equally good in sex: “I like it when you touch me there.”
• Having children does affect our sex lives – adjustments must be made.
• Headaches happen.
• Men, you will read articles that say that our evolutionary background pre-disposes us to “roaming.” This theory may even be true. But it is referring to our LIZARD BRAIN. The faithfulness of marriage is what is called “civilized.”
• Statistics say that one out of four women are sexually abused before the age of eighteen. If it applies in your marriage, this is cause for some tender talk and understanding – perhaps with the help of a counselor. It probably ought not be kept as a secret from one's spouse. (Again, I know there are exceptions….) It may have an effect for years on the sexual fulfillment of both partners. 
• You can have great sex in the first years of your marriage, and forty years later you can say, “It’s even better now!”
• Good sex combined with loving communication is an essential part of a healthy marriage.

MONEY

• Shared finances in a joint account are expressive of the unity of marriage. I have heard the arguments in favor of separate accounts, and I am not closed-minded about it, but going into marriage with separate accounts sets up -- right from the outset (at least on paper) -- a division between two who are becoming one. 

• Money problems can be a cause of blaming and tension. Let husband and wife be united against the problem; do not let the problem become a wedge that comes between you. (This same advice can be given for in-law problems, child-rearing, sex, etc.)

• Although both husband and wife need to be fully aware of the general financial picture, "The one who is best at it should keep the books." (I actually read this in a newspaper ad for a bank many years ago. And I agree.)

THE MULTIPLE HONEYMOON PLAN

If you get to a point in your marriage when it seems -- whether through exhaustion, familiarity, or irritation -- that "the honeymoon is over," plan another one -- and another, and another -- as many as you need through the years. Sometimes a quiet dinner, sometimes a trip to Hawaii. Practice the "Multiple Honeymoon Plan."

A GOOD MARRIAGE IS GOOD FOR EVERYBODY

There are no perfect marriages, and some marriages, alas, need to end for the good of everyone. But good marriages are constitutive of a good society, they are the best possible nursery in which to raise children to be presented as healthy-minded adults to the next generation, and they are like a garden – the garden of love (weeds and all) – in which two people can fully flower. God bless your marriage.

I hope this post invites your response: Agreements, disagreements, and... "What have I forgotten?"

Thanks to Lowell and Carol Erdahl for "The Multiple Honeymoon Plan" in their book, "Be Good To Each Other." (Caryl and I have put it into practice.)

Here's a good article on some of the issues discussed in this blog post.

HEAD OVER HEELS INTO AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE

It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a wedding sermon written from prison for his niece.

Caryl and I didn't get any pre-marital counseling. I recall a twenty-minute session in the pastor's office. Then he ran off with his secretary six weeks after our wedding. So he probably wasn't in the mood for counseling. We survived that (and an ill-starred honeymoon -- another essay for another time) and have been married for forty years. I’ve been a pastor for almost that long. In that time, I’ve officiated at over 300 weddings, each of which included some pre-marital counseling. I believe in marriage and I believe in pre-marital counseling, not because it will guarantee success, but because it’s a good time to talk about the realities of life and relationships, and just may trigger some ideas that can be put into practice with salutary results. (Real successful pre-marital counseling is that which prompts a dysfunctional couple to call off the wedding. ) I have many ideas -- even tested ones -- about healthy marriages (in fact, I'm going to blog about them in my next post), but, ironically, and upon reflection lately, I’m not sure how confident I am in answering the question, “What makes for  a successful marriage?”

I certainly think there are some markers of a good marriage, but I’m not sure to what degree those “markers” are a blending of what each member brings to the partnership because of who they are coming into the marriage, and to what degree they may result from effective counseling, learning, growth, …and time. Undoubtedly it is all of these. 

One of the things that gives me pause -- and hints (unsuccessfully) that I should stop right here -- is that there are, no doubt, as many exceptions to the description of marriage I will explore here as there are models that illustrate it. 

Sometimes I think all I can say about marriage is: Make sure you marry a beautiful young woman named Caryl Nasby, make sure that she is the daughter of feisty Olive and stolid Bob Nasby, and make sure she grows up with the farm in her soul and the city in her eyes. And make sure you grew up as the child of Violet and Leon – so doggedly devoted to each other that they helped to define for you what “for better or for worse” means.

And then make sure the two of you go to the same college.

I sometimes reflect on our marriage as being very close to an “arranged marriage.” And if not arranged, certainly fitting a formula: You go to college, you meet someone, you date for a few years while at that college, and then you get married almost immediately upon graduation. A marriage arranged, if not by the parents, then by good old Augustana College. The cold eye of analysis might certainly see a problem here. Two people committing themselves to each other for life just as they are being launched into the wide world to, well, meet other people.

But the same caution could be made about traditional arranged marriages, which survive to a much greater statistical rate than do western “romantic” marriages. (And it is not just that they last, but that husband and wife, often, actually fall in love with each other over the years.)

One of the reasons that arranged marriages work (when they do) -- whether arranged by mom and dad or by dear old alma mater -- is that they provide the couple with a foundational gift: shared history. In the traditional form, the families have known one another, perhaps for generations; in the less formal “arrangement” of college (or a similar intense community), you grow to know the same people, the same experiences, and one another, in the same setting for up to four years: History.

Attendance at a place like a regional college probably offers the potential of another contribution to that shared history: a common background. My parents were one generation off of a farm settled by their Scandinavian grandparents; Caryl grew up on the farm of her Scandinavian great-grandparents. They hadn’t known each other, but could have discussed crops and livestock at their first meeting – which they probably did.

One of the reasons that marriages which result from meeting an old classmate at a high school or college reunion work as they do is that the two people pick up where they left off, with shared history. (This is best, of course, if both are single. I once read an article about do’s and don’ts at a high school reunion. The author recommended strongly against rekindling the old flame if one is already married!)

Although I know even less about online dating than I do about the things I’ve been opining about heretofore, it seems that the good sites offer the promise – through the miracle of software – of assisting the coming together of two people with at least a virtual shared history and common background: the soil in which a relationship may grow.


Marriage is based not on loveableness, but on love. Loveableness comes and goes. Love accepts the beloved as much in spite of as because of; otherwise it sinks the first time the beloved does not look so beloveable.  Statistically, it takes seven years to learn the difference.

Caryl and I certainly entered into marriage for romantic reasons, but the point of my rambling here is that our marriage has as many attributes of an arranged marriage as it does of a storybook romance. We were in love when we got married. We’ve grown to love each other through the years.

Footnote: I am only too ready to acknowledge that marriages of the kind I describe here may fail at the exact same rate as those of the general population. (I’m not sure.) So I refer the reader to the line at the end of my first paragraph: (…Upon reflection, I’m not sure how confident I am in answering the question, “What makes for a successful marriage?”) I am liable to the critique: "What you have said makes sense -- for you."