I believe that when two people get together and pursue the possibility of long-term survival as a pair, it's Circle The Wagons Time. I get that from my family, I think. I always knew that come hell, high water or tramp in hot pants, my father and my grandfathers and my uncles were bound by cords of honor to their wives. I always knew that when you say you love, you don't get to take that back absent some MAJOR intervening circumstance. There hasn't been a divorce on my father's side of the family tree in all of recorded time. We have a history of Meaning It.
So what happens when someone who Circles The Wagons to incubate a relationship meets someone who is the product of broken honor, empty promises, and fleeing family? What happens when a narcissistic (My Therapist's word, not mine) sonofabitch (my word, not My Therapist's) meets up with someone looking for honor and fidelity and a chance to make it work? Disaster, evidently. But how do you know in advance? And how do you let yourself off the hook if you had every reason to know in advance - yet did it anyway?
I saw The Rooster today which is why The Man On The Radio caught my attention, I think. I don't miss him anymore. I do still feel a reaction, though, that is 3 parts anger to 1 part pity. Radio Man said he wakes up as a father and a husband wondering not what he'll do to satisfy himself on any given day, but focused on what his family needs from him. Two possibilities exist: He's a pathological liar with a radio program (no shortage of those) or he's telling the truth and there are people like that. Do we call people like that martyrs or are they simply honorable in a world that no longer honors honor? Are they devoid of self-worth or simply selfless in the best sense of that word? And how do you know the difference? How do you find those guys?
Is it, as they would have us believe, impossible for a man to find a man with appreciation for the old-fashioned, some might say "biblical", values of honor, fidelity, and worth? I don't buy it. I think they're out there. I believe that there are men who honor one another and put each other's good above their own. I believe that there are men who commit and Mean It. I believe that. I have to. There is no reason to wake up otherwise.
This week alone, I've been invited to have sex with a stranger in a public restroom in a park at a lake. Scenic, to be sure, but SO twenty years ago for me. I said yes out of being flattered but will call him back and cancel. In the last week, I watched 20 minutes of a silent video that was an Asian man with an enema bag. It was train-wreck riveting. In the last week, I stood in church and raised my hands and could not stop my eyes from welling up as we sang, "Holy, Holy, Holy". Half in and half out. Neither hot nor cold. Dedicated to more than one direction.
I know what my faith says about these things. I know what my culture says, too. I wonder if either of those voices in my head are my own. I know that my heart connected with the lyrics to Sunday's song that I'd never heard:
We fall down
We lay our crowns
At the feet of Jesus
The greatness of
Mercy and love
At the feet of Jesus
We cry holy, holy, holy
We cry holy, holy, holy
We cry holy, holy, holy
Is the lamb (By Chris Tomlin)
Nothing else is connecting like that is nowadays. I wish I had someone with whom to go on this part of the journey. The spirit trip is the hardest one to take alone, I think. I manage the day-to-day of this world pretty well - better than most, probably. But the song of the heart, the soul, the spirit, the mind - whatever your paradigm allows... That's the hardest solo to sing.
I can remember being here before. It's a life path déjà-vu. The confusion becomes too great and I bail out before I can achieve reconciliation (which presumes it can be had). One gets thrown overboard and one gets inflated beyond its reasonable role. This isn't new. Talking about it, though..... That's new. I wonder if it changes things. I wonder if it changes things for the better.
Can we talk?
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