Spin Cycle

Rewind 41 years - “yep I’ll do it, let’s get married.” With little more than a spark of faith in its permanence and no direct evidence that it would last, other than our stated commitment and confidence in shared principles, we sailed, believing we’d be bound together for as far into the future as we could imagine. “This game and none other shall we play” was our vow. Do not touch, we promised, what must necessarily remain sacred. Otherwise, the center cannot hold and things fall apart. Implicit in that vow was the idea that God and our marriage would be our something around which everything else arranged itself. The immovable sacred center. 

Inevitably, the fringe, the stuff life is made of, clamors to be centered. And when the fringe presses in, the fringe of the fringe appears and seeks residence in our orbit as well.  Both, the fringe and the fringe of the fringe, are predators of that which we vowed would remain sacred. Take focus off the sacred even for a moment and the profane appears. It lurks just out of sight waiting for a glance in its direction because it knows the novelty of what it offers will tempt you. It will be an aphrodisiac appealing to your appetites, whatever they may be. And if your center shifts, even a little, it changes the orbit of all things and introduces wobble. Any transgression, and the novelty that accompanies it, elevates hunger for more and, without you really noticing, demands growing numbers of servings to satiate its accompanying appetite. If left unchecked, (code for repentance) soon, like an out-of-balance washer on spin cycle, you’ll be headed every way and no way at all. And like an out-of-balance washer on spin, the cure is to stop and redistribute the load so the center is once again that around which all things are arranged. 

When the profane, whatever it is, gains any kind of increasing foothold, people first question then subvert, perhaps without wishing to do so, their identity or purpose and end up lost in the desert; anxious, depressed, and devoid of hope, maybe bitter. All because the sacred center has been overthrown or corrupted by that which is not sacred. It changed either through deliberate action or by introducing ideas or behaviors that challenged the status quo. And it only took a glance.

We've had to stop and redistribute a number of times. Each time we've stopped our wobbling unbalanced spin cycle life and it comes to a rest, we look around. And like sailors seeking the north star after a violent storm at sea to regain their bearing, we seek that around which we vowed all things would be arranged.  The sacred center always welcomes us home and says to us, "start again, you'll be fine."

 

Signed

 

John The-Not-So-Beloved