Sea of Love

I was startled in reading Henri Nouwen recently, to see him say of God, "Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover." This in the midst of an extended metaphor: God, "you are the sea." Thus, God's is a "sea" of love-- in Nouwen's word, "unwavering."

It might seem unfair to deconstruct Nouwen's beautiful prose and, er, deep thoughts, like this. He may not have succeeded in helping me understand God better, but he certainly made me think about what it means to be a "faithful lover."

Now Nouwen was a priest, and so his sense of how faithfulness actually works in love may be a bit on the imaginary side. But his insights into the human condition are consistently charitable and compassionate, and there is something to be affirmed about someone who views us less cynically than most.

So what does it mean to be a "faithful lover"?

My first thought goes to a comparison often made between "attachment" and "detachment," the latter more often than not being held in higher regard than the former. Nouwen himself implies this when he writes that "sadness is the result of attachment. Detached people are not the easy victims of good or bad events in their surroundings and can experience a certain sense of equilibrium." Ah, but this is not the "equilibrium" of the sea, which could easily be said to be an "easy victim" of the events of its environs. And if fidelity in love has to do with "detachment," well, how involved in the actual loving is that lover? I've been in love before (as the song goes), and I cannot seem to love without a certain degree of attachment, and therefore sadness. But I've also been loved before, and I can tell you, that being loved by a "detached" lover is like being embraced by an idea: it might warm the heart, but it does nothing to keep the body warm on a cold night. So, for me, I want a little attachment in my loving and being loved. And if that means sloshing about in the events of each others lives, then so be it.

My other thought turned to those I've known whose "faithfulnes" would almost universally be confirmed. (And heavens, I do NOT mean myself! It probably could be said of me that I practice a form of fidelity that best suits me and does not likely meet any universal standard.) A friend of mine is one of these people. He is a "faithful lover" to his wife and children. He knows himself to be such, and his family sees him that way as well. But I see something missing in his fidelity: he seems to me to be faithful to his wife at the expense of being faithful to himself. He loses himself, and even betrays himself, in his constant effort to be a faithful lover of his wife. This occurs, in part, because his wife's fidelity is more to herself than to him-- and being a faithful lover means, to her, being less than active on the "lover" side of things. Faithfulness has turned into a form of indolence and indifference for her.

So doesn't being a "faithful lover" mean, in some sense, activity, and involvement, and interest in the life of another? And doesn't being a "faithful lover" also entail a fidelity that does not result in a betrayal of oneself? In this active attachment of loving, surely "faithfulness" entails a kind of balancing of self and other-- like the sea, shifting, the waves evidence of the dynamic balance being attended to and maintained.

All life seeks to maintain this constant balance-- constancy, "faithfulness," being a dynamic not a static experience. Rocks do, too, as well as bodies of water-- and Nouwen may actually understand this-- but rocks' efforts are lost to the narrowness of the human frames of time and reference. The sea, on the other hand! Ah, there is a dynamic "sameness" we can--sorry, gotta say it!-- see...

I think that maybe if we understood that God's being our "faithful lover" manifests a kind of dual refusal on God's part: a refusal to betray Godself in loving us, and a refusal to be "detached" from us in that loving; I think we might find in that a divine model for human fidelity in relationships. Maybe not "sameness," then-- for, indeed, the sea is constantly changing; it is never the "same." But maybe the dynamic constancy of balance, of losing regard neither for other nor for self, and holding both, somehow, in a relaxed, non-anxious tension. Perhaps that is how God is our "faithful lover." Perhaps that is how we can be "faithful" lovers of each other.

Come with me to the Sea of Love!