Dear D,
How did it get to be Thursday already? Monday and Tuesday were completely taken up with the Consultant at work, but the rest of the time seems to have just flown.
I saw a short article the other day – nothing like as serious as any of the things you’ve been reading, but pleasantly diverting and a light-hearted way to spend a couple of minutes. It’s on the “history of infidelity” (of all things!) and you can find it here. I think the part I knew least about was the paragraph on how affairs were seen in the 1700’s. The bit about the 1950’s was interesting too, although I’ve read the same things somewhere else as well. It’s silly, of course, but fun for all that.
The article about liberal Christianity that you forwarded me is a lot more serious, of course, and I wish I had something useful or productive to say about it. Looking at the Christian churches from the outside, though, I feel a bit at a loss. (This is all the more true when I follow the link to Gary Dorrien's article right near the end, and find myself buffetted back and forth by dozens of names I simply don’t know.) All I can think to add is that it seems in some ways the author (I mean Ross Douthat in the NYT, not Dorrien) is not exactly talking about a religious problem, narrowly-speaking, but about some other kind. What I mean is that the problem he addresses doesn’t appear to have a lot to do with the question how people can better know God, love God, or serve God; but rather with the (related but not identical) question how people who approach God in similar ways can be encouraged to come together rather than drifting apart. He seems to be asking how to motivate people to stand with each other, rather than asking how any of us can stand before God. Isn’t that somehow a question about human beings or about the World, almost in some ways a secular question? Or am I all confused? Probably the latter, of course.
No, I have heard nothing about the food controversies to which you allude, and I am almost afraid to follow the link. I fear to find out that something I have been taking for granted as utterly innocuous all these years will turn out to be deeply wrong and destructive. I suppose the only decent or ethical thing to do is to wade into the middle and learn what the argument is about. But my trepidation is enormous.
You said that the last year “has caused some separation,” and of course you are absolutely right. Ever since last August (here and especially here) I have been inching slowly and inconsistently backwards. The movement has been slow and inconsistent because too often I don’t trust my own feelings. Ironically, my emotions are by nature highly volatile (you and I have this in common, by the way, notwithstanding all those fanciful tales you spin about being slow and plodding) … but for this reason I fear that if I lurch to the left I will wish the next morning I had darted to the right. More seriously, and to mix my metaphors into a complete hash, I fear that by lurching to the left I will burn or smash the only bridge leading to the right; so when the morning dawns and I decide I headed the wrong way the night before, I will be stranded. The result is that I sit stock still for far too long, frozen in a perpetual indecision. People who get used to seeing me dither in this way are therefore shocked the few times that I actually budge at all, at how impulsive I can be.
But all this dithering immobility is an overlay. Underneath it, I have been feeling our romance – our “relationship” – get steadily more difficult with time, in the sense that it seems to require more managing. I feel like there are more and more things that I can’t say to you for fear of you disapproving: not just about big things like politics, but about little things like how my boys spend their summers. I feel like I have to figure out what it is you want to hear, in order to keep you from going off on me: then if it is something I can say truthfully, I say it; otherwise, I change the subject or cushion my disagreement in so much cotton batting that you can’t even tell I have disagreed. And I am honestly frightened by how much you say I mean to you. When you talk that way, I hope to God you are exaggerating for the sake of the colorful rhetoric. But you talk about me like I am the moon and the stars, and I never want to be that important to anyone. Of course it’s not up to me. But it scares me.
Probably I’m just being way, way, way too self-absorbed and oversensitive. Probably if I’d had a more colorful romantic history these past five decades I’d just laugh at the way I’m sitting here now fretting and obsessing. I’m sure that I’m being petty and childish and timorous, and that I am earning nothing but your scorn by it. And I’ve gained huge amounts from the time we spent together, time for which I will always be grateful. For those reasons – and also because I still admire you very much (despite everything I just wrote in the previous paragraph) and want only the best for you – I spent hours trying to weasel-word this letter with umpteen variations on “It’s not you it’s me” and “Maybe we need some space for a while” and all the other horribly cruel things people say when they want to pretend they are not being cruel. Finally I got fed up with my own weaselishness, and for all I know I may be erring now too far the other direction. I’m no judge any more at this point. But right now the facts are these:
1. I admire you in countless ways.
2. I have very fond memories of 90% of our time together.
3. I wish you only the very best.
4. But I am crazy afraid of your disapproval, and right now that crazy fear is completely blocking my ability to love you the way I want to and the way you deserve.
5. And I am crazy afraid of how much you say I mean to you. I wish to God you were joking about that part. But, sadly, I trust you when you say you mean it.
You’ll laugh, but I got so tangled up in writing this letter that I actually googled “It’s not you it’s me” to see what I found. The first five sites I hit (out of 2,280 million!) all said “That’s the cruellest thing to say – just make a clean break instead.” Only a fool takes advice from random Internet sites, of course. But I am too confused to know any better than that what I “really want”. Maybe five random Internet sites (out of two billion) really do have it right. Or maybe I’m a moron and I’ll wake up in the morning kicking myself. What I know for sure are the five facts I listed above. Beyond that I don’t know what more to say.
This letter is a catastrophe but I’m not going to make it any better by continuing to gnaw at it. All that I’ll accomplish is to lose my nerve and delete it. In some ways that might even be better, but probably not in the most important ways.
With love, with admiration, and with crazy fear that blots out everything else,
Hosea
