A Benedictine Monastery is the best example that I know of as place to form relationships, and to make relationships function. The Rule of Benedict is set up precisely for that. Groups come here by the dozens. The variety is extraordinary. Gustavus Adulphus, Lutheran College students. An AA retreat. College faculty retreat. A Beginning Experience-after the loss a loved one by death, desertion or divorce. We ask only one question of you, “Are you a God seeker?”
For a visible example of relationships look at the night sky. How old are the things you see there? Can you tell me what a million light years are, or a billion. For thousands, millions of years those creatures have been there, always in relationship.
Theirs not a static relationship. It is a dynamic relationship, slowly changing, changing in a way that does not disturb harmony. A good relationship is never static.
Human relationships ought to grow, as do all good things.
It took humans hundreds, hundreds of years to develop from a grass-like plant just a simple ear of corn and to know some of its powers, even dynamism. How long will it take for me to know your powers and for you to know mine?
In physics we call the balance of suns and moons and planets the attraction of gravity. Among ourselves we call it the attraction of love.
You are able to resist human attraction. You are able to hate people. And, also, in physics there can grow resistance. The results are called black holes. The Creator didn’t design black holes, I think - chasms into which you are drawn irresistibly. I believe black holes are the result of some kind of resistance to relationship. We don’t know, I surely don’t know, what it is. There is dissonance. The clashing and crashing of one body against another.
Humans are made one for another. We are made to be drawn to each other, to be other-centered. We are made for a harmonious human relationship. But somehow egos grow. The egoist turns more and more in on himself. He becomes darker and darker, more and more broody. He’s still there, but rude and rudimentary. He has lost his sparkle, his attractiveness. A dark hole has consumed him.
The sorriest day of our lives is the day when a relationship comes apart. I wish I could spare you the agony. Maybe you’ve felt it. Unless you have suffered it, you can’t explain it. So I spare you, but I prepare you.
Good or bad we cannot live without relationships. We make practical and contractual agreements, operating relationships, about goods and services all the time. We allow them to come to an end. We are glad, when they die easily and naturally. Such agreements are not designed to be permanent. The relationship of landlord and tenant is not forever. The two, the landlord and the tenant, are joined only by contract.
A contract is defined as an agreement between two who, in essence, do not fully trust each other. To have any power at all such an agreement has to be signed and witnessed by independent observers, giving to each party the most he can get for the least.
A higher and more sacred agreement is a relationship called a covenant. Listen carefully. A covenant is made by two who fully trust each other, asking the least while giving the most.
“I love you” means, I am yours. Is that right?
Enter a covenant very carefully. You ought to know the other person very well. And he or she should know you very well.
A priest’s experience with relationships is often the sad, sad, words he hears bursting through someone’s tears, “I never knew. I believed.”
Indian people entering into agreements, treaties, with the U.S. government entered the agreements with prayer, with the sacred pipe. Because they prayed, they expected the agreement to be a covenant. To their sorrow they found that the agreement, though written and attested to, was something very new. It was a mere contract, a fragile agreement like so many others that can be broken by the one who is the strongest. Learn from the sorrow of others.
Whatever agreement you make, make, on your part at least, in a sacred manner. Make it in a covenanted way. The other person may betray you. You may cry over the separation and be torn by the grief, but your broken heart will be remembered by the One who was witness.
Always keep God as your witness to whatever you do. You will be vindicated, protected.
The Creator is your surety. Your wounds will be healed.