There's an old story about a little old man, named Ezekiel Johnson, sitting on his front porch rocking. Ezekiel, who was in his 90's, was looking at his wife of nearly 75 years, Martha. Martha, a little hard of hearing, was sitting in the porch swing. Ezekiel thought back to all the hard years they's spent together and to all the many things she'd done for him and for their family. How she cooked all the meals, kept the house clean, cared for their children, nursed him when he was sick -- and how she never, ever complained. His heart just filled with gratitude and finally he said to her: "Martha, I'm proud of you!" She looked over at him and didn't miss a swing. "Yeah, Zeke, I'm tired of you too!"
At one time, you must remember, marriage was an institution, not a relationship. And institutions go on and on, whether they are needed or not. Whether they are working or not. It was easier then. A marriage was formed by one's parents, or by the economic exigencies of the times. And it went on forever and ever, till time immemorial, amen. Love? That was never really a question. One doesn't need love to keep an institution going. All one needs is a piece of paper and the weight of public opinion.
But now we no longer have institutions. We have relationships. Meaningful relationships. Every marriage is supposed to be a meaningful relationship (although every meaningful relationship does not necessarily have to be a marriage.) In some circles, we are supposed to find meaningful relationships at the drop of the proverbial hat. The typical discussion topic at a South Florida singles group is: "How to Find a Meaningful Relationship on a One- Night Stand."
I'm really not sure -- to be perfectly honest -- what the word "meaningful" is supposed to mean in that context, but I think an examination of the concept of "relationship" might prove valuable.
A relationship presupposes an involvement between two, or among more than two, people. There can be relationships that are purely contractual -- like the institution of marriage. Relationships that are purely genetic -- like that between parent and child, or sibling and sibling. And relationships that are economic -- like between client and clerk, or employer and employee.
But the important relationships are those which are based on whatever it is we want to call love. Relationships that are formed by free will (not purely genetic, contractual or economic) and that involve an altering of the identity of each as a result of that involvement.
You and I meet. For an instant we contact one another in a special way. HELLO, we say. Then we pull apart: GOODBYE.
"Sometimes when we touch," the popular song goes, "the honesty's too much." We encounter each other. Become one with one another. And the closeness is frightening. HELLO we say to each other and then you become scared. GOODBYE you say. I hear the goodbye as rejection. So I say GOODBYE. And then you feel rejected. And the final GOODBYE ends the encounter.
What happened? Why does this seem to happen over and over again? Sometimes it happens all in one evening, over the blink of an eyelid. Sometimes it happens over a period of months. Sometimes, it takes many years. HELLO, GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE.
About the same time Sigmund Freud was publishing his classical work Das Ich und Das Es ("The I and the It," or as American psychiatrists prefer to say, "The Ego and the Id"), another German was publishing what to my mind was an even more important work, called Das Ich und Das Du, "The I and the Thou."
This man was Martin Buber and he wrote of encounters -- relationship encounters -- as being contacts between two familiar beings (as opposed to the normal contacts in human relationships which consist of contacts between alien beings).
Buber used the term I-Thou (ich-du) to describe this special relationship. "Thou" is not a good translation of the German du, however. (The Spanish have a similar word in their tu.) Let me explain.
When a German uses the second person singular, he usually uses the word Sie, which literally is the same as the German word for "they." Technically, Sprechen Sie Deutsch means "Do they speak German?," though it actually means "Do you speak German?"
The familiar form of the second person singular in German is du, which is used only with close family, very close friends, with children, servants, dogs and cats and other inferiors, including the deity.
Buber was saying that most of our contacts with people (and with things and with God) are contacts between aliens. Formal contacts exemplified by the uninvolved use of the pronoun "they" or "it."
It's saying: "I see you as something separate from myself, a they, an it." It's saying: "I don't have to really get involved with you because we are separated by such a gulf -- an abyss of reality that separates the me from the you.
But sometimes, contact is made that is different. Sometimes, the formal forms collapse. And two souls make real contact. Each suddenly sees the other as a thou -- as a real person. Fusion takes place momentarily. For the instance, we become one person. Time stands still. Space dissolves. All reality becomes concentrated in the "usness" of our combined being.
This is an "I-Thou" experience, and "I-Thou" encounter. This is what a relationship begins with. Not what an institution begins with, mind you, a relationship. (A relationship, of course, is more than this. We'll get into that later.) And such an encounter is the reason we say HELLO and, paradoxically, the reason we say GOODBYE as well.
When do we experience such encounters? I have experienced them in encounter and consciousness-raising groups, at conferences, at worship services. I've felt an I-Thou encounter alone with the ocean at night. I've had an I-Thou experience with the touch of another person's hand on mine, while sharing a piece of music or a sunset with another person.
This process of union with another person is what Erich Fromm defined as love. I become one with you. We mutually affirm the other's existence. This is why love cannot exist one way only. It is not a feeling that I have for you -- it's a condition that exists between us. The Islamic mystic R m� wrote:
Never, in sooth, does the lover seek without being sought by his beloved.
When the lightning of love has shot into this heart, know that there is love in that heart.
When love of God waxes in thy heart, beyond any doubt god hath love for thee.
No sound of clapping comes from one hand without the other hand.
So you an I come together as one -- for the nonce, mind you. For a lifetime of the habit of relating to the world and all the other articles in the world as alien things screams against union.
Dualism is an intrinsic human experience. That I know myself to be, means that I know you to be apart from me. The act of saying "I am" simultaneously says "You are." We are born alienated. We live alienated lives. All our lives we know ourselves to be alone, different, apart. I am myself and you are you and never can be become unity.
But suddenly, something happens. For a moment. You and I become one. We discover love -- interpersonal union. It's a powerful feeling. As Fromm puts it: "This desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striving in humans. It is the most fundamental passion, it is the force which keeps the human race together, the clan, the family, society. Without love, humanity could not exist for a day."
When teenagers experience this intense feeling for the first time, they become so lost in trying to recover it that they lose themselves in their relationships. Trying to recover something they don't fully comprehend and don't know how to find again.
For the I-Thou experience is elusive. We find it now with one person, and perhaps never again. Or perhaps we can find it over and over again with the same person. But we always search. We always yearn for fusion, for oneness, for confirmation of our non- alienation.
And when we find it? When at last we say HELLO? We find happiness. But we also find fear. I am afraid of losing that identity that society has spent so long teaching me to have. I'm afraid of losing that sense of me-ness that is called my Ego. Even as you and I touch each other, we both begin to recoil. GOODBYE comes on the heals of HELLO.
There's another, existential reason why GOODBYE always follows HELLO. When you and I encounter. When we share some reality between us. We change each other. And at the moment of change, the encounter ends. Love alienates and alienation necessitates love. Opposites become identities. We love, and we pull away from each other because the love was successful.
The foundation of all emotional relationships is the I-Thou encounter. Love. Fusion with another person. But having such an encounter with another human being does not mean having a relationship with that person.
A relationship is more. It is an encounter extended into time and space by means of something called commitment.
You and I come together. We interrelate. We touch and fuse and become one with each other. If we want a relationship. If we want to build something further. If we are interested in love as an active principle. We must become committed, one to the other. The commitment is not: "I will love you only if you will love me." Such contractual love is the essence of an institution, not a relationship. The commitment is not: "Let's share our material worth and perhaps this neat thing will come back." Economic relationships are also nothing but institutions. The commitment is not: "What the hell, let's hang out together and maybe something will happen." Involvement is much, much more.
If we want this magic moment to last. If we want to continue the encounter. We must commit ourselves to a process of giving and being, alone together.
Let's break that down a bit.
Giving. Love, as Fromm says, is a process of giving. An active process, not a passive one. Love is never received except as it is given. If you and I are to maintain a relationship built around the exorcism of alienation, we must both be committed to giving -- selflessly, totally. And this means -- if you remember Fromm's The Art of Loving -- that we totally and completely love ourselves. Fromm wrote that selflessness and self-love are the same. Selfishness and self-love are opposites. We must be completely giving, both to ourselves and to the other.
Being. We must emphasize being as opposed to having. Let me quote Gabriel Marcel on the subject of having:
"In a society dominated by technology, everything becomes a 'problem' to be solved by reasoning and calculation. 'Having' here is more important than 'being.' 'Having' is a source of alienation. Objects which we possess -- houses, books, factories, gardens, or ideas and opinions which we regard as our 'possessions,' in a specific sense 'have' us. We are in danger of being imprisoned or devoured by them. People concentrating on having are in danger of becoming captive souls cut off from other persons and not responding to their 'presence.' They suffer a loss of being."
"Being" or "To be present" means, according to Marcel, "to be in immediate contact with," "to respond to," "to be at the disposal of." We can be in the same room with someone and not really be "present" to them.
Or we can be a thousand miles away from someone and feel their presence very strongly. Marcel says we must de-emphasize "having" or "possessing" in our relationships and emphasize "being."
The last element, alone together. We must maintain our independence, our separate identities at the same time as we maintain our one-ness with the other person. A relationship is a process rather than a state of existence. HELLO. GOODBYE. HELLO. GOODBYE.
A loving relationship is giving and being, alone together.
Most relationships today follow the pattern outlined in the title of this talk: HELLO, GOODBY, GOODBYE, GOODBY. We meet. We greet. We affirm and we separate. Our relationships are not a process of coming together but rather a process of moving apart. Most of our time is spent in separating ourselves.
There is not enough love in our world. There is too much alienation in our existence. We are too afraid of losing our own identities and are afraid of finding our identities.
Relationships exist among us here in this Fellowship. We have experienced great heights of I-thouness at times. But there are too many goodbyes. We forget too soon our commitments to each other here within this free-choice family.
Commitments to care for each other. Commitments to be considerate of each other. Commitments to be gentle with each other.
Sometimes I feel we are so hung up on being "real" and on being "open" that we forget the need for loving and caring. We bring confrontive encounter into our social lives. We allow our angers to spill over into our loving relationships.
Sometimes I wish we had some of the traditions of the orient to keep us always mindful of the value of each others' emotional space. If we only had the Hindu tradition of saying -- every time we met or parted -- NAMASTE, which means: "I honor that place in you where the entire universe resides ... I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace ... I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us."
Could we ever be unkind to one another if we said that each time we greeted? And if we really meant it?
For that ancient Hindu saying expresses the modern existentialist position on human relationships. When you are in that place in you where the universe resides, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.
What a beautiful way to express Buber's I-thou encounter! What a beautiful way to describe Marcel's "being with another"!
May we strive for more HELLOs and for less GOODBYEs.
May we try to be more loving to those around us.
May we work on having less, and on being more.
Through the process of loving ourselves and others, we can.
NAMASTE!