Life Links

Oh, the white sleeves on the branches of the plum tree.

It's been easy so far in this blog to talk about incidental encounters, the chance meetings, the short-term engagements, the Other that doesn't hang around; but what about the long-term encounters of family, or perhaps marriage? I mean parents and children, siblings, spouses and all the many people we know for years through good times and bad.

I'm thinking of the celebrations and the crises, the vacations and the  jobs, the fallings into and out of love, the career advancements and the health declines, the birthdays and anniversaries, the memories (Oh, I forgot my daughter's birthday two days ago! How could I? Stupid! Stupid!)  What I'm talking about are the complex, evolving relationships that knit us and grip us year after year as our beards grow in and our hair falls out. (Okay, my beard, my hair)

What about sisters, for instance, each loving each other deeply, and yet able to irritate and exasperate the other like no one else. Affection, guilt, pride, anger: there is no emotion sisters can't feel about the other; yet they can never not be connected, never not vulnerable to the joys and sorrows of being linked. The first glimpse of the new baby in the bassinet by her older sibling--curious, resentful, cautious, adoring--is just the beginning of years of looking at and looking away from each other. Each brings out in the other what neither like and both love. There are betrayals and failures as well as loyalties so solid as to make even rocks look squishy.

The image comes to mind of double-stars circling each other in the vast volumes of space, streams of fire pulled out of each, spiraling into the other, plumes of incandescence shooting out into the cosmos--a grand vision for such a humble, heartfelt interaction.

What has God-in-love to do with this Bayeux-like tapestry of small-scale occasions? What if the relationship of God-in-love and the beloved Other, the one already here but coming into being, is similar in texture and intricacy?  What if it's the overall character of a a lifetime of desiring and the doing of deeds of hospitality, friendship and exploration in their many manifestations between siblings, between spouses, between any life-linked that has heft, lastingness, even unto the world to come? Can it be that the cruelties and condescensions just fall away in the end? What if just being in such encounters, open to the way they change and we change, is itself the point, the glorious culmination?

I have respect for the sisters I know, but want to extend that to families and friends generally, and put these extended encounters, which are the warp and woof of our emotional, relational existence, into the largest of all contexts. Persistence in encountering the sunshine through  rain will never not matter.