We All Want To Believe

Disney's Beauty and The Beast (1991)

   The concluding question of my last post has stayed with me the last few days. It's become less about TIME Magazine's article, and more about what it all means to me personally. I suppose I just want to believe. Despite my own brokenness as a sinful human being. Despite what I've experienced, read, seen and heard. Despite the circus acts that play out around me in the name of 'love'. Deep down, I still want to believe. I think we all do - even if we're battered, bruised and crawling on the ground. But it's so hard.

   And an awesome, timeless tale came back to me:

   Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' fascinated me when I first watched it. Not initially because of the romance or the great love story, though I've come to love that too. My attention was riveted by the Beast, because I saw myself in him. Time and again as I have watched this movie, I have followed his face, his eyes and his expression - even in the scene above. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I still can't.

   The Beast reminds me of myself, in times past and present. Rather than the spell of an enchantress, I see my wounds of childhood years that turned the heart that could have been into the heart that is. I remember my heart that resorted to building layers of "emotional armor", finally shutting everyone out in some form or the other for the past 11 years or more. I am saddened as I remember the many ways in which it hurt and pushed away those who cared about me . I reflect on how it was driven like a wounded animal into wilderness, following a broken road that finally led it into the loving arms of Jesus. But scars and memories still remain, and I often see the Beast looking back at me in the mirror, wishing the transformation would happen faster or sooner.

   But as much as I am spellbound by the Beast, I cannot shut out Belle either. I must admit her pivotal role in the story that brings upon the Beast the crushing realization of all that resides in him. Without her, he cannot look at himself and recognize what he has become. I believe that this provides an essential clue that differentiates true love, romance and marriage from the bad comedy in North America that TIME Magazine has reported on.

   I am convinced that a truly, truly beautiful woman shaped by God has this effect on a man whom God is molding, when He brings her in front of him. I believe that her "Belle" is contrasted by God to show him the "Beast" that still exists within, desperately wanting transformation. I also believe that God uses the Beast to transform her "Belle". And that only propels both closer to God in search of that change within. When that happens in the context of a relationship where there is genuine love and romance, no one will ask the question: "Who Needs Marriage?"

 We all want to believe in this. Somehow, we must. Can we?

   I wish my Beast would transform.

- The Wisdom Seeker.

Broken Love

How We Love, by Milan & Kay Yerkovich

"Namaste, I am Sushmita Sen from India, where love is the essence of life!"

   Sushmita Sen, who won the Miss Universe title in 1994, introduced herself during the first round of the competition with those words. I remember this line from a magazine article that I read a few months later featuring both her and Aishwarya Rai, who won the Miss World competition the same year in South Africa.

   It was, the latter half of that statement that made an impression on me - "...from India, where love is the essence of life!". That phrase was dredged from the depths of my memory by the TIME Magazine article that I mentioned in my last post, "Marriage Gets Mangled". Given the current state of affairs outlined by the TIME/Pew report, it doesn't seem that love is the "essence of life" anywhere.

   And that's the point I want to start off with:

Love is broken. And I'm broken too.

   I came to this realisation in early summer, through the book "How We Love". One of the "family" had been reading it, and recognized first himself and then me in a chapter covering one of the five damaged love styles or imprints - Avoider, Pleaser, Vacillator, Controller and Victim. "That's totally Kevin!", he said, pointing it out to my room mate. They both had to push through my usual obstinacy in order to coax me to read it, but when I finally did, it was a bombshell. The chapter described me with unnerving accuracy - childhood experiences, molding, adult mindset, core nature, thought processes, reactions and much more. I had been searching for these answers for more than a decade, but never expected them to be laid out with such lucidity. That book got passed around our "family" circle; I believe the reaction was pretty much the same as we each recognized ourselves described in there.

   After my initial shock wore off, the after-effect was pain and consternation; I contemplated anew the depth of my brokenness and all that needed healing. With so many answers crystallizing at once, I saw myself as never before. "Mirror, Mirror on the wall..." conjured up a shattered and fragmented visage reflecting a deluge of memories of abandonment, neglect, bullying, insults, submerged anxiety, anger, and much more.

   The realisation, when it hit, was like an arrow:

I don't know how to love.

   The next shaft was aimed by the Bible and struck even deeper: "We love because He first loved us." (1 John 4:19, ESV)

   As conviction sunk in, I was transfixed by implications of the 'because' straddling that sentence.

   Because I didn't know how to really love, but God did. Because He loved me first with real love. Because His love warmed a cold, hard soul. Because His love showed me the genuine from the forgery. Because I love people with His love, not my own. Because I'm incapable of loving anyone without knowing the deep, deep love of Jesus first. Because without this, anything that we claim to be 'loving' is a farcical sham. Because bogus love destroys relationships and marriages, sinking the ships of hopes and dreams.

   I am convinced that TIME Magazine asked the wrong question: "But if marriage is no longer obligatory or even - in certain cases - helpful, then what is it for? It's impossible to address that question without first answering another: Who is marriage for?" I believe the right question to ask, sung by The Black Eyed Peas is:

   Where Is The Love?

   It seems that "love" in North America has now become the proverbial dead horse under the flogging of bogus marriage. More reflections in upcoming posts.

               

- The Wisdom Seeker

REFERENCES:

[1] Sushmita Sen

[2] Aishwarya Rai

[3] How We Love

[4] The Black Eyed Peas

Marriage Gets Mangled

TIME Magazine - November 29, 2009

   This is my significant post of today, and also this blog's 25th posting! Curious that it should be on this subject, though. 

   The above issue of TIME Magazine caught my eye while grocery shopping at Price Smart, so I had bought it on Monday and had a cursory look. Done in association with the Pew Research Center, it looks at the seismic shifts in American society's view of and attitude toward marriage, family and "evolving notions of what constitutes family in our society". Given the magnitude of osmotic influence that our southern neighbour exerts on Canadian economy and culture, I believe it is quite safe to assume that the shifts described will be seen in our society as well, if not already underway.

   Given what I've seen and read so far, it's quite an explosive article.

   The caption on the 'Contents' page reads "The marriage conundrum: We don't really need it for procreation or security, so why do we love it?". From there to the observations and statistics in the main article, the assertions and implications run the gamut from incisive and brilliant to ludicrous and asinine. It is equally noteworthy that my own emotions and reactions have been simultaneously and proportionally driven from shock and disillusionment to provocation and fury.

   So in addition to the posts that will be appearing this month, I intend to devote quite a bit of thinking and real estate in the coming weeks both to this article and the related issues that surround the whole sorry state of affairs. It got me thinking about a related blog post that I put up earlier last year, titled "To Hold Someone's Heart". I don't think I'll ever forget what I was feeling while writing that.

   This, on the other hand, is too much.

- The Wisdom Seeker

REFERENCES:

[1] Who Needs Marriage? A Changing Institution

[2] The Decline of Marriage And Rise of New Families