Jul 29 2003
Happy Anniversary
From “Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in
exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an
impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is
exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the
ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow
of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never
return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity;
when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth,
in fluidity–in freedom in the sense that the dancers are free,
barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
“A Marriage” by Mark Twain
A marriage…
makes of two fractional lives a whole;
it gives to two purposeless lives a work,
and doubles the strength of each to perform it;
it gives to two questioning natures
a reason for living,
and something to live for;
it will give a new gladness to the sunshine,
a new fragrance to the flowers,
a new beauty to the earth,
and a new mystery to life.
