1+1=1

The first year of my marriage was the hardest year of my life.  I was 25 and very used to the kind of freedom that being a bachelor entails.  I had spent 8 years doing what I wanted when I wanted.  I went to work, I came home and ate chicken wings, chips, and drank mountain dew.  I read, I played video games, I looked at porn and that was pretty much my entire life until the day we married.  And I took this poor, young girl, Cheyenne won't care for that characterization but being married to me definitely entitles her to pity, and I took her 2 1/2 hours from her family, to be dirt poor, completely alone, and scared to death.  Her shyness and a terrible economy combined to prevent her from finding a job or making friends, she was just alone and miserable whenever I was gone.  We loved each other and had a sort of honeymoon period, it lasted every day until it was time for me to go to bed so I could get up for work the next morning, time for her to have nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to.  In my mind, the few little dollars I made was the only thing keeping us from being starving on the street so I did whatever it took to be ready to get to work the next day, I went to bed at 9 o'clock, I threw myself into work trying to find a way out of our crushing debt taking a second job and doing anything I could to make a dollar.  To her, I was ignoring her and putting other things ahead of her when she was so much in need.  She forced me to pay attention to her.  She would yell at me, hit me, break my stuff, slash my tires, in short spare no effort to make me see how much she was hurting.  And I would keep ignoring her, trying to show her that her bad behavior couldn't force me to do anything, that whatever she could dish out I could take, and that being nice to me was the only way to get what she wanted.  We both knew that it was an impossible situation.  She would go to her mom's for weeks at a time and really had no interest in coming back home to Hell, fortunately for me being with her family was pretty hellish in its own ways, but more to the point there was some incomprehensible bond between us, something kept dragging us back together so that we could fight and hate each other some more.


We had been married about 8 months when she printed divorce papers off the internet and demanded that I sign them.  It seemed like the only thing keeping us together was my stubbornness, it wasn't but it seemed that way.  It wasn't really stubbornness, I mean it was but there was more to it.  Whenever we were pulled apart, something brought us crashing back into one another like some demented yoyo.  It was the most toxic of all relationships, but the poison that we were to each other was the only air we could breath, the only food and drink that could satisfy our hunger.  I didn't understand it, but I knew that nothing that a judge said could change this.  The Law was utterly powerless to change this basic fact of our existence, that we were together, that we were one.

And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. 

All of the good things that God had made were presented to Adam, it might as well literally have been on a silver platter.  The whole of Creation was his to pick from.  And all of Eden was empty to him.  He walked with God through paradise and He was desperately alone.  I can't read this without thinking of a dad with a depressed child going out and getting him a puppy.  If you ever want to know who is really your friend, who really loves you, take your wife and your dog, and lock them up in the trunk of your car and leave them there for a few hours.  Then when you open it see which one is happy to see you.  I love man's best friend, and my dog Darby is literally my best friend, faithful, loyal, always happy to see me.  God gave Adam a puppy though, and it just didn't do the trick...

But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.  And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.And Adam said:
“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

When Adam looked, when we look, into the universe there are tons of great and wonderful things, and behind it all there is the God to whom none of it compares.  But all we can see is "Otherness", it isn't us.  Each of it individually, including Darby, and all of it together, including God in His Glory, fails to meet our needs, because it isn't us, it is different, and He, God not Dog, is the most different of all.  None of it can take away the emptiness in the depths of our soul.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Genesis 2

What is it that can take away the emptiness of the world?  It is that psycho sitting next to you.  And let's be honest.  Our spouses are the most fucked up people in the world.  No one will ever hurt you like your mate.  Our society talks a lot about broken marriages, but truthfully, your spouse could literally eat you like spiders do their mates, and She would still be the only thing in the universe to you.  And this is a great mystery, which brings us back to the paradox at the heart of Christianity.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.  1 Corinthians 6

The words which first introduced the mystery in Genesis 2, are the words to which Paul constantly recurs.  I have railed often enough about trying to reduce life and Christianity to formulas, but after all of that the formula of Genesis, the formula of Paul really does work, "Two shall become one flesh" "1+1=1", the addition which adds nothing, because it adds what is already there, your self.  I introduced Paul's words from 1 Corinthians 6 to make a particular point.  You see, what he is talking about, what we are talking about, is not a legal, moral thing, it is not a judge or a preacher saying "You may now kiss the Bride".  It is so far from that that it may even be an illegal, immoral thing, like being with a whore.  It is not a ceremony that makes a marriage but the night after, even if it comes before.  The Law recognizes this, recognizes that even if all of the forms have been filled out and the legal ritual performed, and the part that we are talking about is lacking, the marriage is "annulled"-empty, it has not been "consummated"-completed.  I said earlier that no judge could take away what Cheyenne and I had, well they couldn't give it either, neither could a preacher.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Ephesians 5

If all of this seems mysterious and subtle, I have only been talking about physical, human marriage.  This is all true in a much higher degree of the marriage between God and man.  It is Christ who placed himself in a toxic relationship with us, literally in Hell.  It is He who hung on through the long, dark night of the soul.  It is He who was alone, even when He was in Heaven with His Father.  It is not good for man to be alone.  He is the Man who was more alone than you or me or Adam can even conceive of.  The whole universe was His puppy, and without you it was all nothing to Him.  He is not "God in His Glory" who I said earlier failed us and left us alone, He is Immanuel, God with Us, God the Same as Us, God the One who added to Us is One.  And as ridiculous and childish as it sounds, His Cross is a giant plus sign that only adds Our Selves to Our Spouse, 1+1=1.  And that is why we eat Him, like the female spider does Her Husband, and nothing is lost because they are already One.  1-1 also equals 1.  And no math, no Law can contain, can add, or subtract to this sacramental arithmetic.

Wish You Were Here