Rising to the occasion - Letter to a Daughter - Column

Christian Century, Feb 16, 1994

DEAR ELLEN: I want to try to write to you regularly while you're at college. In part it's because, as you wrote in your letter, checking for mail is an important part of the day--especially if you get some. In fact, when you wrote that it reminded me that the best reason to have a job is that it gives a person two chances each day to get some mail. Most of it is junk, of course, but checking it is always an occasion for hope. No doubt I'll write you with news on occasion, but I also want to write now and then about what it means to live as a Christian. Perhaps I can entice you into writing back.

Recently you set me to thinking when you recounted what had been said at your dorm meeting about the "informal" understanding governing the presence of men in women's rooms (especially overnight). I recounted it with dismay (though without surprise) to Mr. Hollander, but he took quite a different view. "Look," he said, "college students are at an age when their hormones are raging. But they're far too young to marry. Indeed, they don't yet know who they are, and the formation of that self is what college is about. So of course we have to recognize that sexual activity apart from commitment (much less marriage) will be common. But it's far better than rushing them into marriage before they're fully formed."

And suddenly I realized why I believe in early marriage. (Relax. Not all that early. It's fine if you wait a few years.) What a false understanding of life this is--and what a mistaken picture of the place of marriage in life. The point of marriage is that self-formation becomes a joint venture. I do not form myself. I am formed by another to whom I have given myself-- another whom I love, yet who will prove to be strangely different and resistant.

This strikes me now as an illustration of a much more wide-ranging principle. The covenant of marriage is just that--a covenant. It cuts deeply into our personal identity. It takes time and history seriously as the matrix in which we are formed and within which we must learn to be faithful. It accepts the fact that along the way we may often encounter what is unexpected and, indeed, could never have been planned or predicted. A seriously ill husband. A disabling accident. A lost job. A child. "Let it be to me according to your word," Mary said, when her plans were rudely interrupted. The Christian life is supposed to be in large part learning to rise to the occasion, to accept the unexpected.

This is because Christians take time seriously. How could we not since God has entered it? If we suppose we must be fully formed before we marry, what can be the significance of the marriage covenant? Only self-fulfillment, I suspect. Two people, knowing who they are and will be, come together for their mutual satisfaction. I don't mean to underestimate the happiness that may bring to people, but it's not the point of marriage for Christians. For us marriage should be an arena in which we are formed over time--in unpredictable and sometimes unwanted ways. We don't stand outside the flow of time as if we could say for sure who we are and what we will be. We stand together within time, with only the image of God's faithfulness to guide us, and then we enter a covenant in which God will begin to reshape us in that image.

The rejection of time seems to me a characteristic of our age. We've lost the sense of life as a story in which we are characters--in which the idea is to play our part well, not to suppose that we are the author. This shows itself in lots of ways; maybe I'll write about some of them another time. One result is clear: we have lost our appreciation for the virtue of fidelity. But you should remember that we cannot give ourselves wholly unless we include the future. Try out that idea at the next dorm meeting.

Love,

Mom