My friend Brian called a few months ago to say that he is getting married. (The wedding is scheduled for later this month.) Before I had hung up the phone, I had begun composing a short bit on my best marriage advice to give the newlyweds. I finally checked my punctuation and added a poem that I wrote for my own husband.
The Space Between
I have been to a lot of weddings and a common theme among many of them is “two become one.” At first glance, I have to admit, its quite a romantic notion. Who doesn’t want to feel that after their long wandering in the desert of life alone that they will be solaced with a wholeness found in marriage to a soulmate?
Now, after two marriages and a little life experience, I’m guessing that it had to be someone who was never married that came up with that one. No matter how hard we try to throw two whole human beings into some sacred Hermaphroditus, it just doesn’t hold up over time. Why? I think the answer lies in the question, “Who will support you when you can not stand, if you are one?”
And yet so many of us begin marriage with the idea in our heads that we are one with our partners. It hurts to move apart especially when you feel that such a contract has been broken. To change in different ways, when no space has been left between you, when indeed you were to be one, is frightening. And yet it is inevitable. Sooner or later, we all hear the deep call of the self asking to have its needs met. Is it not better then to leave the space between you from the start?
Our bodies are mostly made up of the space between. Swirling clouds of electrons make momentary appearances and leave so much of their globe-like orbits uninhabited. And then there is the space between those orbits and between them and the nucleus. But what occurs in this space between is miraculous. This is where attraction exists, electricity, the powerful bonds of agreement that make this world seem solid and real.
When two lovers first meet, their first enjoyment is not in falling into each other’s embrace. Their first enjoyment, the one that makes the meaningful embrace possible, derives from the space between them. It is in the attraction, the chemistry that pulls them closer and, with agreement, creates a bond over time. If two become one, where can this electricity between two souls reside? Where is commitment to find a home and to be strengthened?
In maintaining the space between, you leave room for the holy to enter into your relationship, as a guide and a comforter. You also allow each other the opportunity to attend to individual spiritual, emotional and intellectual needs. In turn this personal growth is brought back and shared providing the relationship with vigor and the partner with renewed interest.
Instead of oneness of being, let your oneness be of purpose. Let your call to one another be, “Come be with me the first two pillars of this home we will call our family.” Move together like the two wings of a dove. Each wing must possess the strength to press against the current and each must take its turn to steer; but ultimately they share the common goal, to keep the bird aloft. As Kahlil Gibran says, “Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone/ Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.”
The Space Between, a poem for my husband:
There is a gentle buoyant rift between your pulse and mine,
A canyon of beating drums and celebration,
Where you are yourself and I am myself, together.
The space between lays over loss
Holds the place of mourning for the mourner.
Through this gateway God enters
And then leaves us to our love.
What will we do with it when the Nameless One is gone?
The space between—
Will we empty it out
Or fill it with the ten thousand things?
Or could we dance there
In the space between
Where you are yourself and I am myself together.
The Space Between
I have been to a lot of weddings and a common theme among many of them is “two become one.” At first glance, I have to admit, its quite a romantic notion. Who doesn’t want to feel that after their long wandering in the desert of life alone that they will be solaced with a wholeness found in marriage to a soulmate?
Now, after two marriages and a little life experience, I’m guessing that it had to be someone who was never married that came up with that one. No matter how hard we try to throw two whole human beings into some sacred Hermaphroditus, it just doesn’t hold up over time. Why? I think the answer lies in the question, “Who will support you when you can not stand, if you are one?”
And yet so many of us begin marriage with the idea in our heads that we are one with our partners. It hurts to move apart especially when you feel that such a contract has been broken. To change in different ways, when no space has been left between you, when indeed you were to be one, is frightening. And yet it is inevitable. Sooner or later, we all hear the deep call of the self asking to have its needs met. Is it not better then to leave the space between you from the start?
Our bodies are mostly made up of the space between. Swirling clouds of electrons make momentary appearances and leave so much of their globe-like orbits uninhabited. And then there is the space between those orbits and between them and the nucleus. But what occurs in this space between is miraculous. This is where attraction exists, electricity, the powerful bonds of agreement that make this world seem solid and real.
When two lovers first meet, their first enjoyment is not in falling into each other’s embrace. Their first enjoyment, the one that makes the meaningful embrace possible, derives from the space between them. It is in the attraction, the chemistry that pulls them closer and, with agreement, creates a bond over time. If two become one, where can this electricity between two souls reside? Where is commitment to find a home and to be strengthened?
In maintaining the space between, you leave room for the holy to enter into your relationship, as a guide and a comforter. You also allow each other the opportunity to attend to individual spiritual, emotional and intellectual needs. In turn this personal growth is brought back and shared providing the relationship with vigor and the partner with renewed interest.
Instead of oneness of being, let your oneness be of purpose. Let your call to one another be, “Come be with me the first two pillars of this home we will call our family.” Move together like the two wings of a dove. Each wing must possess the strength to press against the current and each must take its turn to steer; but ultimately they share the common goal, to keep the bird aloft. As Kahlil Gibran says, “Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone/ Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.”
The Space Between, a poem for my husband:
There is a gentle buoyant rift between your pulse and mine,
A canyon of beating drums and celebration,
Where you are yourself and I am myself, together.
The space between lays over loss
Holds the place of mourning for the mourner.
Through this gateway God enters
And then leaves us to our love.
What will we do with it when the Nameless One is gone?
The space between—
Will we empty it out
Or fill it with the ten thousand things?
Or could we dance there
In the space between
Where you are yourself and I am myself together.
1 comment:
Brilliant - I hope you're speaking at the wedding.
You bring to mind the lyrics from one of my favorite Alanis Morissette songs, "Not The Doctor": I don't want to be your other half, I believe that 1 and 1 make 2."
:)
Laura
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