A creative force

“Love is a creative force. In a positive relationship a couple affirm each other’s potential, challenge each other’s foibles and weaknesses and salve each other’s wounds. In their togetherness they are stronger individually”

They decided to visit the hospital, where they held a lengthy consultation with the German doctors. As they were leaving they noticed an old woman carrying a baby. One of the American doctors asked a German counterpart who she was and what she was doing. “Oh,” came the reply, “that’s old Anna. She has been here for years. When we have done all we can for a sick child and it does not seem to be recovering we call her in. She holds the baby tenderly and more often than not he or she recovers.”

That little story illustrates, for me, the power of love. Psychologists reckon that unless a child is hugged and kissed in its first six months of life he or she will find it difficult to love afterwards.

We need love from the moment of conception to death. That is why it is important that every mid-February, centred on St Valentine’s Day, we celebrate love. Unfortunately, we can sometimes be cynical about the day, seeing it merely as a commercial opportunity for newsagents, florists and hotels and restaurants.

Also we, in Ireland, can be emotionally reticent, slow to tell the significant people in our lives what they mean to us. We are improving, I believe, but the reticence is still there. A story, probably apocryphal, makes the point. John and Mary had been married for 40 years. They had come to take each other for granted. Mary decided to attend a ‘Marriage Encounter’ meeting and asked John to go with her. He refused, preferring to watch a soccer match on television. She returned from the meeting full of enthusiasm about what she had heard. She asked John why he did not say he loved her anymore. “Sure,” he replied, “Did I not tell you that 40 years ago. If anything changed I’d have let you know.”

As adults, we desire intensely the special love of one person, someone with whom we can share our deepest thoughts and private dreams, and from whom we do not hide our vulnerabilities. In a wonderful poem, ‘Bluebells for Love’, Patrick Kavanagh evokes the exhilarating adventure of falling in love:

“There will be bluebells growing under the big trees,

And you will be there and I will be there in May;

For some other reason we both will have to delay

The evening in Dunshaughlin – to please some imagined relation

So both of us come to walk through that plantation.

We will be interested in the grass

In an old bucket-hoop, in the ivy that weaves.

Green incongruity among dead leaves,

We will put on surprise at carts that pass –

Only sometimes looking sideways at the bluebells in the plantation.

And never frighten them with too wild an exclamation.”

To be aware of friendship deepening into love is one of the greatest gifts we can experience.

Love is a creative force. In a positive relationship a couple affirm each other’s potential, challenge each other’s foibles and weaknesses and salve each other’s wounds. In their togetherness they are stronger individually.

In the children they bring into the world they continue the creative process. They hand on to them the values that will enable them to live well. The Russian poet, Joseph Brodsky, has asserted that we are all called to the task of building civilisation. In the shaping of their children’s lives, a couple contribute to this essential work.

Of course, there can be difficulties and tensions in committed relationships, as there are in all human contact. Men and women see and think differently. That is part of the charm and challenge of togetherness. It helps account for the popularity of the book, ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’.

A story about Winston Churchill and Nancy Astor, the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons, expresses this tension in a heightened way. They disliked each other intensely. On one occasion she said to him: “Winston, if I was married to you I would put poison in your coffee,” to which he replied: “Nancy, If I was married to you I think I would drink it.”

In one of his songs, Christy Moore uses the image of a voyage to describe a marriage. Voyages can be serene and they can be turbulent. For Christian couples the Sacrament of Marriage is a source of help on the voyage. The sacraments are positioned at the crucial moments of our lives. Through the sacrament, Jesus Christ enters the relationship. If couples are open to the quiet grace of his presence, their dreams for their future can come true.

As Valentine’s Day fades from our presence, let us celebrate the creativity of committed relationships in our society. Let us remember those whose partners have died and been left with an aching absence at the centre of their lives. Let us be empathetic to those who are going through marital difficulty or have experienced marital breakdown. The last thing they need from outsiders is harsh criticism, intrusive questioning or to be the subjects of juicy gossip. Most importantly, may we all be forever young in the loving relationships that enrich our lives.