Silver and Grace

Silver, it is a word that conjures up some different meanings.  It is both a color and a precious metal (#47 in the periodic table, with the symbol AG).  But, it also is used to refer to the elderly.  One web site denotes certain positive and negative words associated with the word silver.  Positive words, among those noted in that web site, are: illumination, wisdom, high-tech, and modern.  Some of the negative terms associated with the word silver in the same web site are: melancholy, lonely, lifeless, and deceptive.  A deceptive illumination is an apparent contradiction in terms.   The millennial generation likely thinks that silver-haired persons are not likely to be very high tech.  After all, we count on that generation to help us with our tech issues.  In relation to precious metals, silver is bought and sold daily on commodity exchanges, but plays second fiddle to gold.  Silver is also the color to represent a 25th wedding anniversary, perhaps appropriate since my mustache has turned silver from brown. On the other hand, grace is less well-defined and determinable.  It is more a state bestowed, or reached, than something you simply purchase.

Three roses, one for the two of us and one each for our two sons

While silver is used in manufacturing and other processes, it is also used a great deal in jewelry, it is mainly purchased in jewelry.  Jewelry is one method of self expression, and can be used as a sign of social status.  When a person declares their love for another, a piece of jewelry is often given to the lady, in our culture a diamond ring.  Diamonds, as the sales pitch goes, are a girl's best friend.  Diamonds and silver have demand driven in large part by culture.  It is cultural demand that drives jewelry.  Grace does not require silver, but it probably requires love.  Love does not need silver, nor does it need a diamond.  Love comes from your heart and just as importantly your soul.  Grace is bestowed by a loving and merciful God.    

A nasturtium amid the detritus of fall

As my spouse and I celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary today, the color silver will enter my mind, but only as the mark for such an event. My thoughts for part of the day will of course focus on our past twenty five years together, and what our future holds. Then my thinking will get to the real important stuff—like the upcoming Packer game against the Denver Broncos. Will the Packer offense get back on track against a tough Denver defense? Will their porous pass defense be ripped apart by an aging Peyton Manning? The thing is, my wife would not be surprised if my thinking moved to that direction.

Silver--better than jewelry?

We set a course for our lives only to see life has a way of altering our intended direction. This happened to me when I met a petite red-headed young women. When I asked her out, it was  really to get her friend, who I had met during the meeting of a local civic organization, off my back. A week or two after her friend gave me her number the friend called me wondering why I had not yet called the young lady.  I called the number because I figured it was only evening.  The course of my life changed after meeting that red head. Varied events have occurred that have affected our life as a married couple over the past 25 years. There have been illuminating moments and moments of wisdom. There have been times of melancholy and loneliness. There have been adjustments to the changing world. In a way our silver anniversary is somewhat tied to the descriptive words that web site laid out for the color silver. We have had ups and downs.  Although I hope are trajectory is mostly up. High points include the birth of our two sons.  You see and relish their accomplishments, more than you do your own. As parents you also feel their sorrows, more than you do your own. The past 25 years has seen losses, and just two examples: each of us lost our father, each lost a brother at an age too young. We have seen joys and challenges perhaps not uncommon to those faced by other couples, but there were others more unique to our set of circumstances. As I suggested in an earlier post, you know joy from experiencing sorrow.  Perhaps that is one nature of grace.  What is unique is the way our individual and collective nature has been formed by the joys and challenges that have been presented to us during the course of the past 25 years.  Marriage, like life, is a compilation of what Pope Francis terms that wonderfully complicated experience.

Canned tomato sauce

Life is complicated, We are separate individuals, each with our own DNA, each with our own views, each with our own idiosyncrasies, and each with our own mannerisms. There may be little things that annoy the other, but also little things that form pleasant memories. I am the recipient of her scowls, but also her cute little Mom-bear smile. Together we form the T-team. We make a good pair doing yard work, and freezing or canning produce. We make less of a good pair during Packer games. For some reason she does not think Mike McCarthy can hear me when I, in a firm voice, talk to the TV. She takes more than her share of the household duties. I appreciate her panoply of meals that she makes and realize that her Pinteresting benefits my taste buds at the same time it plays havoc on my waistline. When the boys were young she was the one to see them off to school. She was the one that had to put with the fire-drills. but, she was also there for some treasured moments.  It is some of the trying times that we look back with some laughter, and if not laughter than a sense of wisdom gained. Times of testing teach you more than times of bliss.

Our Wedding! October 27, 1990

Those words describing silver are a metaphor for marriage. From our perseverance we gain strength. We are together. Each marriage is unique; it is formed by the two involved; it joins individual and shared experiences each had prior to and within the marriage. Our gold wedding bands, another cultural trait, symbolize the commitment of one to the other. We study history because our past informs our present and our future  Similarly, a marriage is informed the past and present of the two involved.  Marriage is more than love, it is also about service. It is about putting the needs of another before your own.  Every now and then you come across words in a book, or movie that speak to you. This was the case last Thursday as my wife and I watched the movie “The Painted Veil.” In the movie the mother superior from a French religious order tells a young woman who has been assisting at the orphanage and convent, and where her husband had tended to a cholera epidemic before he succumb to that disease, the following: “But when love and duty are one, then grace is in you.” For 25 years that red-headed lady and I have grown together.  I see the workings of grace in some of her actions and in her smile.  On our silver anniversary, love is important, service is important, but it is those grace-filled moments we find together that is the real strength and blessing.  And so our journey continues as we pass by our silver anniversary and head to the next.