One thing, however, marriage has done for me. I can never again believe that religion is manufactured out of our unconscious, starved desires and is a substitute for sex. For those few years H. and I feasted on love, every mode of it — solemn and merry, romantic and realistic, sometimes as dramatic as a thunderstorm, sometimes as comfortable and unemphatic as putting on your soft slippers. No cranny of heart or body remained unsatisfied. If God were a substitute for love we ought to have lost all interest in Him. Who'd bother about substitutes when he has the thing itself? But that isn't what happens. We both knew we wanted something besides one another — quite a different kind of something, a quite different kind of want...
~~ C.S. Lewis
~~~ from A Grief Observed
All I can add to this is: Indeed!
2 comments:
Hugs and love on this special day.
Once, months after John died, at the grocery store, in the parking lot, a sudden storm produced lightning. I quickened my steps to reach the shelter of the store. Only after I got inside did I realize that I apparently did want to live after all.
Mary
Mary, thank you for your continued presence here. I prolly trust your gut on this more than any one I know. Children, parents, siblings: whole different kettle of fish. Even mates, after long marriages and/or relationships. Just in the flush of the first joy, the first relief at finding Heart's Ease. Cut short. Well, you know.
My head knows I do want to go on. Heart hasn't got there yet. For one, I'd hate to hear what he say to me if I got there too early. . . . But looking ahead to a boobytrapped year isn't making me much want to do it. . . . I know: no choice. And therein lies the outrage. . . .
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