he Inner Marriage is all well and good, but it
doesn’t warm my feet at night." If you get the joke
then you’re probably familiar with an important, yet
troubling theme from relationship psychology. It’s the
idea that in order to have good loving with another person,
you need to have a good loving with yourself. The opposite
of any great truth is true as well, and perhaps the joke
points to it.
Nevertheless, the search for the Beloved is both a
romantic search for our soul mate as well as a spiritual
search for God. We often confuse the two, looking for God in
all the wrong places. Somehow, we’ve got to look within
ourselves. I regularly forget this fact, but at this moment
remember it well as I’m reading the bittersweet book, The
Eden project: In search of the magical other (Inner City
Books). Written by Jungian psychologist James Hollis, it’s
based upon his near impossible job helping couples find
happiness. He points to the inevitable wounding we receive
as children when we are dumped from Paradise and begin our
long walk back Home. The story of traveling from Separation
to Oneness is a spiritual odyssey with many plots, but the
one which captures the bulk of our creative imagination
today is the romance of the soul mate, the search for
spiritual elixir in that special loved one. The sad fact of
the matter, as Hollis reports, is that when we expect our
relationship partner to be a healing god to make up for our
childhood wounding, we are bound for disappointment.
I’ve had my share of relationship experiences, both
satisfying and disappointing, as well as a few mystical
experiences and other blessings, both enduring and illusory.
To enhance my appreciation for Hollis’ book, I’m reading
it while nostalgic, Muzac-type, romantic music plays in the
background. I’ve gone through a few stages, and I expect a
few more to come, of changing perceptions and understandings
of "what it’s all about," where I learn that
what I thought I wanted wasn’t what I really wanted and
what I really needed wasn’t what I thought I needed, and
whatever it was, it wasn’t what I thought it was. I’m
sure you know what I mean.
When one door closes, Hollis observes, another one opens.
Following disappointment lies the possibility of a new
beginning. Bittersweet it is to be wise enough to sense the
potential learning awaiting us in our disappointment.
Although reading Hollis’ book is a reminder of the
essential disappointment lying in wait in all externals when
we hope to find God there, it is also exciting to have him
explain that these disappointments are necessary if we are
ever to find God within. Finding that inner God, he says,
opens our eyes to the God outside, as well. Hollis further
hints that our relationship with our all too human partner,
once we release that person from the obligation to be the
"Magical Other," can actually help us realize the
presence of God at home.
It’s easy to talk this talk, as they say, but harder to
walk the walk. One path I’ve been walking along is right
in my kitchen. For years I was blessed with a wife who
cooked wonderful meals for me. I didn’t realize how much I
had counted on being fed until I no longer had that luxury.
Doing without it, doing on my own, I had to acknowledge that
I had relied on a "mother-wife" to care for me.
Now I had to do it myself. I had never really cooked before,
so for awhile I got by with functional meals, TV dinners,
boiling water for pasta and tossing on some of Paul Newman’s
own sauce--stuff like that. Gradually I ventured out into a
broader menu. But still, I wouldn’t put much energy into
cooking and I felt pretty lonely eating by myself. Cooking
for a guest, however, who might venture out here to Flying
Goat Ranch, was easier and definitely more fun. One day it
dawned on me that I needed to cook for myself as if I were a
guest at my own table, not simply to get the body re-fueled,
but to feed the soul as well. I began to nurture within
myself the realization that I had imaginative taste buds,
and that I could treat myself to the delight of learning to
cook up attractive meals and to enjoy them! That was a real
breakthrough.
I no longer look at women as mommy chefs and waitresses.
I’m not saying I’m self-sufficient and don’t need
anyone. Not at all. But I can enjoy, in a way I couldn’t
before, the delight of cooking with someone, discovering
different ways of preparing familiar ingredients, and the
special pleasure of sharing a meal we cooked together.
And when I walk the hills with my goats, the hills God
grows and I tend, I begin to sense the creative juices
flowing both within me and around me, swirling as if in one
almighty stew. It’s a happy meal, whoever cooked it.
