An an 5

Feeling journey proud, but let's carry on.

In what ways is the encounter between you, God-in-love, and the beloved Other, that aggregate of all who respond to you, or ever have, or ever will, like the encounter between we two, my spouse and I?

This is an old simile, but one which tends to reinforce certain cultural norms: the preeminence of one partner, the deference of the other, for instance, or the initiative of one, the obedience of the other. There implications of love, even self-sacrifice, but not of parity; of an ideal of formal roles, calm order, regular address, but not of debate and even discord.

But that's what we've experienced in our encounter, my spouse and I. We've created a little world, yes, of children, a grandchild, friends, a neighborhood, and even more of shared perceptions and appreciations (nowhere near on your scale, of course, but...), and in it, there's the play of affection and passion.

But our relationship is a continual negotiation of proposals, rejections, concessions, frustrations, celebrations, and all leading somewhere neither planned. Sometimes we don't like each other, sometimes resist, sometimes betray.  We misunderstand, overlook, ignore, even grow tired of each other (and all this as well as its opposite.) Does this happen between you two?

As part of the Beloved, l can report this is sometimes true of my encounter with you. Is it mutual?

Behind it all is what art of all kinds explores: the dance, the song, the image, the story, the drama. Don't we make these things which represent our lives, our perceptions, our experiences, in order to attribute them, on some way, to a context larger and lasting? And could that context be your passion which made making, and introduced doing, and constant until all possible encounters occur, if ever.

For you as well as for us: it's not easy but it's worthwhile.













but maybe, on the occasion of an anniversary, a little reflection on one can shed some light on the other.

Neither my spouse nor I has 'made making, or introduced doing', in short, we are local and



though we are 'Other, yet Lover.' Like you, we each address the Other in a 2nd person fashion.

What

There's that relationship