Husbands and wives

So as the institution of marriage is attacked almost daily in America, I become more interested in it.

To me, marriage is organic sustainable locally-sourced romance prepared medium well and served on a bed of radioactive thumbtacks.

Business end up.

I hope if you don't realize I am being at least a trifle sarcastic, you'll click out now.

Those lacking a sense of humor should not read this blog.

Anyway I am setting up a home photographic studio where I intend to learn the ins and outs of taking pictures (of human beings) in artificial light.

And air conditioning.

In the midst of that endeavor I visited in the lovely home of a client of TG's and I admired the way she had arranged her hundreds of books on her spacious built-in bookshelves.

They live on the lakefront and there is a comfortably-furnished screened porch just a few yards from where the water gently laps the shore.

Said literature-laden bookshelves loomed only a few feet from a thickly-upholstered rattan chair with matching ottoman and I wanted so badly to cull a few volumes from the stacks and park on the porch.

But alas I could not; it wouldn't have been seemly.

I did however, come home and look at my own hundreds of books and I decided to arrange them sort of the way the lake homeowner had arranged hers.

My shelves will serve as the backdrop for some of my portraits when the subject is not seated before the muslin.

In rearranging books my eyes focused on a volume I have owned for over twenty years and have never read.

It is the late Alan Loy McGinnis's The Power of Optimism.

If I'd read this twenty years ago, who knows how things might have worked out.

I tend to pessimism interrupted by bursts of optimism both brief and ... well. Let's just say it doesn't happen very often.

So on Saturday during a rest break from my labors I picked up the book and began reading.

It's not new-age or spooky or humanistic or anything. In fact it's extremely practical and Bible-based.

I mean, attitude is everything; right? In Biblical terms: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

And: Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

Anyway I was struck in the early pages of the book by two passages and I want to share them with you.

The first is a story told about the late author Sinclair Lewis, who wrote such books as Dodsworth (made into one of my favorite movies of all time) and Elmer Gantry.

Alan Loy McGinnis relayed the story in teaching Strategy #3: Anticipate problems.

It goes thus:

Sinclair Lewis once received a letter from a very young and very pretty woman who wished to become his secretary. She said she could type, file, and anything else, and concluded: "When I say anything, I mean anything."

Lewis turned the letter over to his wife, who wrote to the young woman saying: "Mr. Lewis already has an excellent secretary who can type and file. I do everything else, and when I say everything, I mean everything."

That was not cynicism. It was enlightened self-interest which headed off problems before they developed.

Bravo, Mrs. Sinclair Lewis.

Enlightened self-interest just became my new mantra. I wish I'd been familiar with that concept twenty years ago too.

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A few pages later Dr. McGinnis, in driving home his Strategy #5: Look for the good in bad situations, relayed a story about the author C.S. Lewis (no relation to Sinclair Lewis).

If you haven't read much C.S. Lewis or even seen the movie Shadowlands, you may not know that Lewis married late in life and was widowed four years later.

His wife was the American author Joy Davidman Gresham, and Lewis originally married her in a civil ceremony just so she could stay legally in Britain.

Then she got sick and they fell in love and they were truly married by an Anglican priest as she lay in her hospital bed, in March of 1957.

But even after enjoying a couple of years of relatively good health when her cancer was in remission, Joy died in 1960, at the age of forty-five. 

Alan Loy McGinnis writes:

Though Lewis knew these reprieves must eventually end, he was inconsolable when, at last, his wife died. 

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear," he wrote in a notebook. "I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning ... She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me ... If we had never fallen in love, we should have nonetheless been always together, and created a scandal."

Then Mr. Lewis wrote his brilliant work A Grief Observed, which if you have not read, you should.

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And I must conclude that if TG and I had never fallen in love (and married), we should have nonetheless been always together, and created a scandal.

And if you want to know the truth, I would have liked nothing better.

Would you have created a scandal with your truest love? I want to know.

That is all for now.

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Happy Monday ~ Happy Week

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Comments

[irene]

Scandalous indeed, I can't imagine you and T.G. not married. However I did love the note Mrs. Lewis wrote to the want to be secretary. Can you even imagine writing such a note, I cannot. Not sure my husband and I would have been a scandal...I love the photos of your book case, now I have to go and rearrange my books.

[Mari]

Great post on marriage - and I agree with you on it's importance. We would be scandalous too. We just celebrated 32 years last week!

[Paula]

"Enlightened self-interest" is a great concept. It reminds me of "Christian hedonism," a philosophy developed by John Piper who, in my opinion, is the greatest living American preacher. Christian hedonism, as Piper explains, reflects the idea that a Christian experiences exquisite pleasure and joy when God is first and foremost. In other words, we are most happy and fulfilled when we worship God alone and make Him our treasure. It seems to me that "enlightened self-interest" is a similar theme. Your context is relational (marriage); Piper's is spiritual. By the way, Jenny, you captured a lovely scene with the books and the beach. I couldn't imagine a better way to spend a summer afternoon.

[Sue the Hobbit]

Mr. Osborne and I did get married and yet we seem to create scandals nevertheless!

[Donna M.]

I'm not sure that we would create a scandal. But we could certainly create some mischief. I like to describe myself as an optimistic pessimist. I expect the worst to happen (because it does more often than not, LOL), and when it doesn't happen, then I am pleasantly surprised.

How wonderful that you are creating a studio space! And artificial lights - bravo! Comfortable conditions (dry and air-conditioned) are wonderful motivators, LOL!

[Skunkfeathers]

I've known a love twice in my life that I would have taken the step with; the first -- the "one who got away" -- was in college, and has never been forgotten. The other -- a current dear friend who needs me more as a friend than I need her as a wife -- well, 'enuff said there. These two women are, at my age of 56 plus years, the finest two I've ever known. And perhaps ever will.

Guess I fell in the category of "if I can't have the one I want, I'll do without the rest".

[Donna (Texas)]

Hahahaaa....loved Mrs Lewis' returned reply...and I do mean everything!"
Great post Miss Jenny! And setting up a little studio? I've toyed with the idea of doing the same thing, but, where to start?!!
hughugs