Sunday, May 30, 2010

The art of things unsaid

One of the pieces of family history that my dad handed over to me when I visited him in Florida last April was a wonderful black and white photo of my favorite ‘aunt and uncle,’ as we say, that is, Uncle Hank and Aunt Irene (we reverse the order when calling them by name). That's the young couple in the photograph above. On the back of the photograph is neatly handwritten ‘April 16, 1950’ and my guess is, it was taken on the back porch of the second or third floor of a flat in Chicago.

What strikes me instantly and deeply is the look on my aunt's face, her beautiful face, a look that cannot be put into words, yet I can read it, full of things unsaid. My uncle looks off to his right with his characteristic ‘you can't pull a fast one on me’ face, or maybe it was just the look of ‘no matter what you say or do, I'm here.’ A look of somewhat light-hearted but matter-of-fact faithfulness. But it's Aunt Irene's look that holds me, I can't get away from it. She really loved Hank, and he really loved her. Till death do us part.
(Click the image to enlarge the photograph for a closer look.)

Uncle Hank was 38 and Aunt Irene was half a year from her 39th birthday. They had been married 15 years less one month. They were dairy farmers, running their southern Wisconsin farm at Slades Corners near Genoa City single-handed most of the time. That meant they almost never got away. We had to go and see them. Their farm was where I spent some of my boyhood summers. Aunt Irene was never able to bear children. Uncle Hank never let his disappointment ‘mount as far as his throat’ as the Desert Fathers say. He simply loved his wife and never let anything get in the way of that, not even their childlessness. And what wonderful parents they would have made. Yet, that's not what the Lord wanted for them.

As they had no children, my dad became the inheritor of their few memorabilia, and now he has turned them over to me. I still use Uncle Hank's bulky cast aluminum electric drill—with two handles to hold onto for dear life—probably from the first generation of power tools. But other than a few small artefacts, and some photos, I have little else… except for their official documents, birth, baptism and marriage certificates. It is their marriage certificate in its dusty grey slipcover that I found most interesting when I first inherited it after Aunt Irene reposed (Uncle Hank had pre-deceased her by ten years or so).

Behind the certificate in its tassled cover was another document, titled “How to Perpetuate The Honeymoon.” The credits under the title read, ‘From Home and Health, by permission of W. H. DuPuy, A. M., D. D.’ In that document are given twelve pieces of good advice for keeping a good marriage. Perhaps in another post I will list them all, but the tenth bit of advice caught my attention and I remembered it, and when I first saw the photograph that I've posted above, I thought of it.
This is the advice…

Do not allow yourself ever to come to an open rupture.
Things unsaid need less repentance.

The first sentence is boldfaced as the header for what follows, in this case only one more sentence (some of the others have a short paragraph). What follows is the instruction for achieving what the header advises. In only five words, it describes a truth of unlimited application. Another version of the same but less pointed might be an even shorter saying, ‘Silence is golden.’ All of these, of course, come from the bible, but in 1935, official documents were already trying to avoid bringing that up. Christianity was on its way to being put in the archives. The modern age was about to begin.

Things unsaid need less repentance. I want to keep thinking about this some more. Father Stephen has just posted for All Saints Day some similar thoughts. He also writes about things unsaid, “We live in a voyeuristic culture that reveals what should never be revealed and finds itself morbidly fascinated by hidden things. The hiddenness of the heart is part of modesty and humility…” His application is slightly different, but in the main I think we're both contemplating the same thing—the value of leaving certain things unsaid.
The longer I live, the more value I see in leaving things unsaid.

Why?
Not to keep people guessing, not as leverage in a situation, but simply because some things cannot be explained or reported using language. This is where other forms of communication come in, like my aunt's look.

And not everything unsaid that can be passed to others by non-verbal means is meant for everyone in the first place, but like that white stone Jesus promises in the book of Revelation (2:17), it's only readable by the one to whom it is given.

As it is the feast of All Saints, I want to commemorate my aunt and uncle, two unsung saints that I was blessed to know, and to hold high their love and faithfulness to each other and to those whom the Lord sent them. Eternal be your memory, beloved Hank and Irene, for you are worthy of blessedness and life in the world to come.
Αιωνία η μνήμη.

1 comment:

Andrew Kenny said...

Wise thoughts Romanos-thanks for sharing.I always enjoy a little bit of personal history from a friend. You mention 'the white stone' from Revelation which we have to look forward to. There are also the words Jesus didn't speak when he was charged falsely and also the words that he wrote on the ground when the woman who had been discovered in the act of of adultery (where was the man who was involved?) we don't know what they were and obviously weren't meant to.
The present generation must know and see everything -NOW.Nothing is sacred,nothing is private,nothing is censored. They can watch every sort of sex act at the touch of a switch-complete freedon with no responsibility. I have heard it said that the previous generation always says the next one has greater temptation to resist. Today I don't think the temptations that young people have to face could get much worse.

Speaking about previous generations I was at my mother in law's 85th birthday bash at the weekend. After the cake was blown out a 93 year old man got up unexpectedly and said a few words. He felt he had a right to speak because it was his birthday the day before. He started'I expected people to say ''speech'' so I will say a few words ( no one did say speech!)Anyway he claimed that he could trace part of his family tree back 2000 years to the time of the Romans and the building of Hadrian's wall.During the war he was also stranded in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for 8 hours when his plane came down!

Well, what he said was that family trees are hard to do when people enter into partnerships rather than marriage.This I think was a dig at his son (his son was there too)who after his wife's death started to live with girlfriend who had teenage kids.
An old man's wisdom-family trees are not as easy to do if people don't marry-it brings confusion both for the person making the tree but also the children involved. Nowadays we want to have our cake and eat it.Those who leave the old ways of Scripture will make a whip for their own backs and also cause pain for others.