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 Surely another instance of Christianity’s outdated and profoundly unrealistic teachings!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!




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