Especially in a time when news headlines blare the word “Chaos!” to describe what’s going on in the White House, it’s comforting to know that we can still find soothing symmetry in our world. Sometimes we barely even have to look. Recently, I’ve been lucky enough to get a double dose right in my own bedroom.
Raising your eyebrows? It’s OK, you can keep reading without blushing. My main business here will be something really reputable: the Bible.
But first, here’s a nicely balanced painting. Thanks to my husband’s recent efforts in his studio, I wake up to this each morning, on the wall straight ahead of our bed, having had absolutely nothing to do with its arrival.
My guess is that we’re looking from sea to shore, with a kind of inlet there in the middle. But of course I know better than to ask him exactly what he might have been trying to represent. And he also says he might want to change it sometime soon: artist’s prerogative.
In any case, I am definitely fortunate to have a partner who likes to fool around with color and texture. Especially now that he’s mostly eschewing the dark, somber tones in favor of brighter ones, his creations really enhance our spaces.
People who know us are aware that we are not exactly cut from the same cloth; we have some distinct differences. He’s an introvert, I’m an extrovert, for starters. From my perspective (I can’t speak for him) this is generally cause for celebration, giving a whole other kind of color and texture to our life together.
But we also have much in common, see eye-to-eye on a whole lot—the most important stuff, I dare say. For example, we both love to read, especially in bed.
In the early mornings, if we’re especially lucky, we have a chance to share some tidbits of whatever we’re taking in. For me, this varies— fiction, non-fiction, poetry, crossword puzzles. I’m all over the place. For Rob, though, it’s always the right time for the Anglican Daily Office, in a compact black volume with very thin pages. Usually I don’t know what he’s reading, but the other morning he couldn’t resist letting me know about Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians.
I’m so glad he did.
No, it wasn’t the first time I’d ever heard these amazing sentences. They’re quoted so often, especially everything in 1 Corinthians 7. But somehow, on this particular morning, it was not so much the content of the sentences that struck me, but the symmetry of how they were constructed. His pronouncements also have a “make no mistake about this” quality to them. Apparently, and I read up on this a bit, Paul wrote the Epistle during his stay in Ephesus around the year 53 A.D. to administer some stern advice to the people in Corinth, a place where he had already invested much effort in launching Christianity, because they were having some serious troubles around morality.
In this painting, he’s older, and tired looking. But wouldn’t you be, too, if you had to get people behaving all the time while you were trying to keep a fire lit on a new religion?
For someone who stayed single, he had some very specific expectations about couples:
The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.(3-4)
Wow… here’s a vision of marriage as a state of complete commitment, entanglement even: what’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours. It’s beautiful in its balance, although slightly unsettling too, because aren’t we always taught from a young age that each of us does have individual autonomy over our own bodies? Then it gets a little amusing, when he can’t resist saying that his celibate way of life is really the best option.
But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. (8-9)
Funny, isn’t it, how all of us married folk got into this from a lack of self-control? He may have regarded marriage as a kind of second option, and apparently his belief in the likelihood of the Second Coming – or the Eschaton— was a factor, but he seemed ready to recognize that it would be the way of the future.
In any case, I was glad for Paul to be with us briefly the other morning, because as my husband read aloud his words, the cadence alone provided a lilting start to the day. Taken together with the painting, and all that beautiful sky-blue and the two mysterious red lines beneath, it made for a nice dose of tranquility.
Chaos and unevenness are not always bad, although we’d prefer them not to be regular occupants of the West Wing.
Balance, though, has much to recommend it — in any age, and in any house.
S