GOD'S LOVE

'Only gradually did it occur to me that these complicated responses - grief at the other's rejection, terror for the other's well-being and guilt for endangering it, attention to the minutest aspects of another's condition, defense of the other's right to choose his own way - are the marks not of repulsion but of passionate attachment. Everything  in my experience and education had suggested that "love" was reactive, an upwelling of delight caused by the the beloved's pleasing looks or ways. My beloved did not please me. In fact, much of the time he drove me stark ravers. But he absorbed me utterly. And still does. Just this morning we were playing computers. a sport that highlights not only the quickness and grace of his mind but also his tact as a teacher. I'm installing a new system and turning my old one over to him, a process that would render me paralytic with stupidity if he didn't keep reassuring me that we're having here is fun. Now he's gone off, and my studio, which generally looks as though a whirlwind had recently torn through, has acheived a new apotheosis of chaos, crowned by his forgotten black felt hat on top of the bookcase. We're just like that. Matthew and I.

If this is love - and it is - then I can faintly glimpse what the love of God might be, So long as I understand it as a response to my pleasigness - if I was good, then God would love me (and contrariwise, if I was bad, then God would throw me into hell, the most hateful gesture imaginiable) - I couldn't believe in it, since the chances of my ever being good enough to merit the love of God were slenderer than a strand of silk. But suppose God takes no particular delight in me at all. Suppose God finds me about as attractive as I found Matthew during the the years when razorblades dangled from his ears and his room was littered with plates and glasses growing long green hairs and his favourite band was called Useless Pieces of Shit. Suppose God keeps me steadily in sight, agonizing over my drunken motorcycle rides and failed courses. laughing at my jokes, putting in earplugs and attending my gigs, signing for my release at the police station, weeping with me as we bury the dead dog...'

Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time, p.146.

LOVE

'Oh, how I quail at using that word! It's been so sentimentalized in contemporary culture that almost all its resonances have been smothered in a drift of red hearts and teddy bears: I LOVE NY, I LOVE MY VOLVO, JESUS LOVES YOU. It's a transitive verb whose object is always pleasing; the instant the object ceases to delight we switch the verb to "like" or "can live without" or "downright detest." But the great commandment permits no lexical shift, without regard to your pleasure: (1) God; (2) everybody else, yourself included. If you love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and also love your neighbour as yourself, you will naturally carry out all the other commandments as well. Of course, this is a harder task than any they set. I've had far less trouble refraining from adultery, in the years since I've discovered I had the power to choose fidelity, than I've had loving Ronald Regan, for instance, in fact, I've never quite accomplished the latter.'

Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time, p.138.

MARRIAGE

'Marriage As Process, not a state of wedded bliss (or, less thinkably, a slough of shattered dreams) but a sustained negotiatry association between two creatures who speak, at best, only pidgin versions of each other's language. I'm not referring here to theoretical linguistic differentiation according to gender, race, class, age, and so on; I have in mind the even more profound idiolectical differences that render each of us (except perhaps identical twins) capable of only the roughest sense of what on earth any other, no matter how beloved, is talking about, "I know exactly what you mean," we tend to say, trying through sympathy and good will to deny the slippage along the fault lines between us, the way we drift together and apart but never merge, our radical insular grief. To be honest, at least half the time I, for one, don't know exactly what I mean, much less what you mean. If I tell you I do, you will expect from me something I can never give: an end to never being alone. Better I should tell you I know approximately what you mean. No, not even that. Better I should shut up.'

Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time, p.114.

MARRIAGE

'Marriage offers culture shock enough without any other change in locale or routine.'
Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time, p.73.

FAITH

'Religious belief is something like masturbation: You may do it - and it won't even make you crazy or give you warts if you do - but it's the sort of thing you keep to yourself.'

Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time: Cycles in Mariage, Faith, and Renewal, p.4.