51. On Romantic Love,

Dearly Beloved,

In these times perhaps human beings are attentive to nothing as much as they are to romantic love. As the wise say “the course of true love never ran true” -- romance is substantially chaotic – but when it comes to self presentation, we love to pretend otherwise.

When I was about 15 years old I met one of my first girl friends at a local riding stable. She had a good seat on a horse and was a delight to watch on the canter. Unfortunately for me, she also turned out to have an even better seat on a motorbike. She was last seen, through clouds of dust and exhaust, accelerating into the distance on the back of a Hell's Angel's conveyance. Not long afterwards, a friend pointed out her marriage notice in the local paper, she could not have been more than 17. In that way, the competitive nature of romantic relationships was impressed upon me.

Inevitably pain, especially the pain of jealousy, is part of romantic relationships. Shakespeare put it best with the most wonderful of puns on the word “wake”. At the end of Sonnet LXI he writes:

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake; 

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake:

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near.

I read that sonnet during a particularly painful episode. It was revelatory, because it taught me I was not alone, I was just part of a romantically suffering humanity.

But surely the most positive thing about early romantic love is that perhaps for the first time in one's life one's conscious and sentient attention is fixed upon another human being? It is a major advance in our comprehension of the world; an awakening as if from sleep. As John Dunne wrote:

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

(from: The Good Morrow.)

Many of our early romantic epics inevitably founder, but, none the less, they may teach us to perceive the most wonderful aspects of our fellow human beings. John Donne (who became Dean of St Paul's) shows that we can apply that throughout our lives. During a period of illness he contemplated death, and wrote a set of meditations, one of which (XVII) is famous:

Any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

it tolls for thee.

I beg to suggest that, once we are weaned, our awareness of, and our involvement in Mankinde starts at a young age with our capacity for romantic love and if we are fortunate, our loving attention to others continues until we go to our long home.

May Peace and Grace be Yours,

Paul.


Poster for an exhibition for the painter Chagal


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
76. On The Anti-Christian Nature of the Small State Ideology. Nearly Beloved*, The first time I heard the cry for a “Small State” in the political context, it was uttered by those involved in a dispute over US grazing lands. The “s cofflaw” , Cliven Bundy, refused to pay the Federal Grazing Fees or recognise his obligations to the US government's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on whose lands his cattle grazed. In 2014 and 2016, the Bureau's response was to round up his cattle and remove them. That led to the congregation of armed anti-government activists, including the Proud Boys. These armed groups forced the BLM to back down because the Bureau was worried about the safety of its staff and of the public and felt unable to protect them. The US Government failed to support its own laws and regulation in the face of armed threat. This, and similar range land incidents, occurred prior to the assault on the US Capital by armed activists in an attempt to reverse the result of t...
Read more
Image
  An Introduction to T he Manifold Letters. These letters were produced as part of a brilliant project managed by the Rev. Robert and Sarah Van de Weyer. During the Covid-19 pandemic. Letters were written every day for two and a half years by both ordained and lay members of the congregation of St Clement's Church in Cambridge and distributed to others both in the congregation and people outwith St Clement's as Dearly Beloved letters. (DB letters). They dealt with manifold issues including psychological survival during the pandemic, personal stories and experiences of life, philosophy and theology, music, the beauty of creation, wildlife and secular and church politics, the mysteries of the Christian faith and the exigencies of the pursuit of a Christian life. Each letter was accompanied by a photograph all of which can be enlarged by clicking on them. The Rt Rev. Rowan Williams was a contributor for six months whilst he worshiped and officiated at the St Clement's during...
Read more
Image
24. On War. Dearly Beloved, It is difficult for us to cope with a war in Europe so close to home, especially because it is a war within Christendom between Christian communities. Apart from the civil war in Herzegovina, there has been peace in Europe for 77 years. My father was 28 years old and my mother 22 when war broke out in 1939. My father was already in the Royal Navy and my mother joined the Auxillary Territoral Service. “The War” in my family continued in talk and discussion long after the fighting had actually stopped. It was the background to my childhood and was made more prominent when my mother organised her family to fly us out to Malta in 1953 where my father's ship lay in Sliema Creek. We lodged close by whilst he finished an extra year of service obligated by the Korean War. One my earliest memories is of looking down from a prop driven Vickers Viscount aircraft at the ships on the Mediterranean sea shining in the sun far below. That was the same Mediterrane...
Read more