Thursday, November 22, 2012
Are you married or divorced? Yes!
Married, single, divorced, widowed- those are the options I
can check on forms in hotels, hospitals and national surveys. So where should I
make my cross? For one, I don’t consider myself single, being a monk and thus
no longer eligible; but I am also intrigued by the divorced category. What does
it mean to be divorced? A bond which I entered with another person broke,
through my or her fault, through circumstances, whatever, and now we are no
longer, at least legally, tied to one another. Using this very general
definition I would consider myself divorced, even though I have never been
married: there are people with whom I had a firm and committed relationship and
somewhere along the way, that relationship broke- we got divorced. Whose fault
it was and whether we could have kept the relationship going is now no longer
worth discussing, we are divorced. The pain might not have been as severe as
when husband and wife separate, but it was just as real. So yes, I am- even a
multiple- divorcee.
When the first group of Jesus’ followers ask him about
divorce, his answer sounds radical, strict and disconnected from reality: “What
God has joined, let no one separate”. When probing further, his followers find
out his reasoning: divorce is an institution which accommodates for our human
condition (hardness of heart is the term he uses), but the original design was
different. Human beings were intended to enter lasting, committed relationships
which would not break down under the strain of different opinions, cultures and
points of view. Surely another instance of Christianity’s outdated and
profoundly unrealistic teachings!
The French author Marcel Proust writes in “In Search of Lost
Time” that “there is not a woman in
the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she
reveals to us by causing us to suffer.” Political incorrectness aside, Proust
has a profound insight: one of the things that relationships do is that they
cause us to suffer, but that very suffering reveals truth. One could of course
take this too far and look for dysfunctional and toxic relationships in the
hope of discovering truth. But if we are honest with ourselves, many of us
would agree that the most valuable relationships in our lives are the ones
which have caused us pain; but when we came through on the other side it was
all worth it. The easy option would have been to give up, get out, shut the
door. And that is indeed the temptation: not staying in those relationships,
possibly not even getting into them in the first place, but to set our hearts
on other things, objects, pursuits. Yet only human beings are our equals and
thus able to satisfy our relational thirst. That is why the Biblical story of
the creation of Eve describes Adams delight when he finally, after having met
all the animals, finds “flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone”.
The discussion
with Jesus’ followers becomes discouraging, and many of us, looking at our own
divorces, can share that same feeling; isn’t it unrealistic to hope for lasting
relationships, commitment, understanding, unity? And what do we do when we
fail, as we all have done. Jesus, in the version of the story reported in the
Gospel of Mark (chapter 10) ends the argument by setting a child in the middle
of the crowd. He praises the qualities of the child, as if he were saying that
in their need of help, children understand something which many of us seem to
have forgotten. Life in general, and the good life in particular, cannot be
lived without serious accidents. But healthy children do not stop living life,
for fear of accidents; rather they trust that somebody will be there to help
mend things should accidents happen.
This is
ultimately the lesson of the Gospel, that there is somebody there to help mend
things when accidents happen. As a result we can set off into the land of
relationships, looking for “flesh of our flesh” and actually attempt to live
committed relationships with them; if and when we fail, we can go and get help.
Relationships get mended, new ones formed, our lives healed, every day. In that
way we are single, married and divorced, all at the same time. So next time I
will tick all the boxes!
