© 2004 René Felix
© 2004 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
What keeps couples together…?
LOVE? — maybe.
THE HABIT? — possible.
SEX? - why not.
TENDERNESS, COMPLICITY? -For sure.
THE INTEREST? - It happens and it’s not always sordid.
It’s not just Cupid who makes boys and girls drive side by side on the highway of conjugality.
Long live homogeneous couples; that is to say those whose two partners share the same geographical origins, the same religion, the same education, the same culture…
These couples are better equipped to face the crumbling of the years. The bonds created by a religion, a culture, common tastes, will take over from the passion that general opinion displays as eternal…leaving a scent of grayish conformism hanging.
A happy couple…is a mystery!..but an accessible mystery. The true agreement is secret and invisible; it does not exclude the “fight”. A couple, it lives, it scratches, it is not a refuge of beatitudes in the heart of an aggressive environment! A couple, it reconciles!
As for our mystery (that of my wife and myself), born during the troubled period of the last world conflict, it has been shrouded in realities to overcome and events, a source of examples that fade away. A past well known to the elders which, combined with the present, can sow some seeds for the future.
Indeed, when talking about our meetings with friends and relations, many young people judge us based on our age and see nothing else, in our meetings to share our memories, than the taste pleasure of a well-stocked table.
Certainly, this facet is not absent from our encounters. But, our modern young people would quickly discover by looking more closely, that if our gaze turns towards the past, it does not nevertheless deprive itself of leaning towards the future. Because, it is from a clear and objective knowledge of the past, that a healthy orientation can be drawn.
The experience acquired by each person in their professional and family domain, updated as needed, is likely to generate original and fully beneficial dispositions for a youth who often seems to need to experience some enriching constraints, modeled on those we had to experience during our own youth.
And that is, in a way, for us octogenarians of the century, hardened to the test and faithful, our way of planting a few seeds of Hope.
This is also one of our current charms. But, in all modesty, the charm in our youth was to pretend not to know that we were “charming”.
Let us continue in our meetings, to let our mutual memories flourish irresistibly, because what we have obtained is as much by the heart as by the mind. It is the perseverance achieved each day that has allowed us to remain faithful to our commitments.
Generally speaking, let us hope that the example or the disinterested apostolate that we have had the opportunity to exercise around us does not remain without results.
We cannot predict the fruits of the seeds sown; on the day appointed by God, we will see them ripen, hoping that in a peace that we will have finally recovered, our young people will later reap a beautiful harvest.
If the seed does not die…although sown in the good soil of France… mired in materialism, sterile polemics, profit by all means to the detriment of the future of our planet…bogged down in the incompetence that manages…or victim of a few politicians more concerned with the sustainability of their career than the interest of France and the French…nothing grows… or moves forward. In a democracy, the people only have the leaders they deserve.
When the earth, water and air are polluted, man will understand that money cannot be eaten.
But let us have faith, hope keeps us alive! “A gardener once told me this naive and profound word: If Job had planted flowers on his manure heap, he would have had the most beautiful flowers in the world.” Edmond Rostand
This brief glance in the rearview mirror seen in the current context, concerning many of us, is supposed to suggest what we have been or show what we can be in a life… and its social conclusion, a little bitter, is tinged with hope.
Let us not neglect the advice of François Valéry’s song: “Let us love each other while we are alive. Let us not wait for death to find us talented.”
May we, grandparents and great-grandparents of all ages and all times, be the actors of continuity, the relays who give meaning to life, life that continues, life so fragile and so powerful. Life in promise and in becoming then takes on the dimension of eternity… of this eternity that we began or 80 years ago.
The diamond, emblem of this day, is also eternal!
If mystery hovers over what sealed our sixty years of life together, punctuated by sorrows and illuminated by great joys, this mystery would not exist without the presence of mutual respect: no being in the world has the right to impose themselves on another.
Only one hope reflects the current spirit imprinted by the course of our existence: that of leaving this world, as late as possible, in front of the beloved smiling faces. It is a fact, the old ones are not convincing. Perhaps, but we have the physique for the job to age beautifully, keeping hope, thinking of our loved ones, waiting for other springs in all serenity.
This is a way of seeing the future through the imprint of the past.
Rene Felix