Some years ago, Christianity Today published the following poem by Eugene Peterson. Having just enjoyed the Valentine's Day reminder of my love for Sharon and the incredible journey we've been on for almost 35 years (31 of them happily), I pass this along. (And yes, I had to look up the definition of fissiparous, billet doux and pas de deux.)
Committed by command and habit to fidelity
I'm snug in the double bed and board of marriage:
spontaneity's built-in
to the covenantal dance,
everyday routines arranged
by the floor plan of the manse.
This unlikely fissiparous alliance
embraces and releases daily surprises.
The ego strength we'd carefully hoarded
in certain safe-deposit boxes
we've now dispersed, unlamented,
in dozens of delicate paradoxes.
A thousand domestic intimacies are straw
for making bricks resistant to erosion:
with such uncomely stuff we've built
our lives on ordinary sod
and grow, finally, old. My love is
not a goddess nor I a god.
"Asunder" is the one unpronounceable word in the world
of the wed, "one flesh" the mortal miracle.
What started out quite tentatively
with clumsy scrawls in a billet doux
has now become the intricacy
of bold marriage's pas de deux.
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