Be a Neo-Luddite!

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Captain and I drove down to the Banner Elk Café this morning for breakfast.  On the way, we stopped at our mailbox to gather the accumulation of deposits from the last couple of days.  Very little of the contents had anything to do specifically with us since most of it was impersonal mass mail.  However, there was one unexpected jewel amongst the rubbish – immediately recognizable by the distinct, meticulous handwriting. It was a letter from your great Aunt Doris (Uncle Bryant’s widow) and, from the delicious plumpness of the envelope, I knew she had penned an epistle.

This is the beautiful thing about Doris.  Her chosen mode of communication is that of time consuming, thoughtful, often tedious messaging by old-fashioned labor – the written word.  No texting – no email – no FaceBook – no Instagram – no Twitter.  And when you are fortunate enough to be the recipient, you can readily understand how these other methods pale in comparison as a means of expression.

I hastily tore open the envelope and read the letter aloud to Captain as we made our way to the café.  The first part dwelled on her enjoyment of Aunt Bee and Uncle Drew’s wedding two weeks ago…..and then an urgent hope that they had found her gift to them – a compilation of Uncle Bryant’s original barbecue sauce recipes.  The last two pages then

focused on one of Doris’s constant refrains – getting together for a visit.  

“Final thought:  you know, sometimes in our lives we can almost hear time whizzing past our ears.  Weddings, graduations, funerals, reunions, baby showers, birthdays – all marker events that remind us to ‘seize the day.’ But if you know your Latin, carpe diem really means ‘pluck the day,’ like you would an especially fragrant flower.  Well, I want us to start ‘plucking’ more days together.

I don’t want us to lose each other.  Because that’s too, too easy to do, especially (I think) in this era of social media, which, to be sure, I personally do not participate in directly, having no computer or even a smart phone.  (And I couldn’t operate either one if I did!)

But it seems to me that – wonderful as FaceBook and Skyping can be – it creates a false sense of intimacy.  A false ‘knowing’ even.  It’s information and images, not face-to-face reality.  Sight, not insight.  A seductive substitute for true encounter, if you will.

And right about now in this missive, all my kids and grandkids are hollering in the background, ‘Oh, Mom/Grandmommy, you’re such a Neo-Luddite!”  Um- yeah – I am! You can’t smell a rose over an iPad.  You can’t hug a neck by Skype.

So can’t we please all start to get together IN PERSON more often?”

We arrived at the café and found a table next to a window.  After placing our order for breakfast, Captain immediately took out our iPhone and dove into it scrolling through some news articles downloaded by an app he enjoys.  At a table across from us, a man and woman sat facing each other, heads down, both poking at their phones, not talking or engaged with each other.  Not having any device in my possession to offer a similar diversion, I sat there watching and Doris’s cautionary words bubbled up in my mind.

Maybe we would all be better off being Neo-Luddites!! 

Married Again

Dear Boo and Bubble,

My goodness!  What a time we just had at the weekend-long celebration of your Aunt Bee and (now officially) Uncle Drew’s wedding.  Wasn’t it a beautiful event with so many family members and friends surrounding us all?  And, the two of you performed your ring duty perfectly.

It’s going to take a while to recover. There was a lot to be done physically to bring all of the details together – not to mention the extra overlay of emotions that well up in a person at such a sweet, significant time. (I find myself falling asleep for no apparent reason at odd hours of the day.) But there is a warm, serene exhilaration now consuming me as my mind absorbs all of the memories, both grand and intimate, from the whole affair.

Months before, Aunt Bee asked me to search the writings of Joseph Benson Cottrell (her triple-great and your quadruple-great grandfather) to see if he might have expressed some thoughts on marriage and the requisite love and commitment necessary to make it successful. As he was an itinerant Methodist minister, prominent theologian and prolific writer, this request made complete sense.  After combing through several volumes of scrapbooks containing some of his newspaper articles, I came upon a perfect composition written in 1873 upon the occasion of the marriage of his son, Joseph, Jr., to a Miss Alice Eubanks. 

 The title intrigued me – “Married Again.”  I knew historically that this was the first marriage for Joseph and was a little confused by the heading.  But as I read his words (several times because that it what it takes to comprehend them – and, trust me, my words are excruciatingly paltry compared to his), it became clear that he was explaining how the marriage of a child offers the opportunity to reflect on and recommit to one’s own union and how, through marriage, a family is enlarged – daughters and sons added into circles of relations with unique connections to those already in them. 

As I sat in my place on Friday, overlooking the sparkling, reflective lake at Camp Pinnacle and I observed Lyn and Drew pledging their fidelity to one another, Joseph’s significant and apropos words came to me in a wave.  The life that I have shared with Captain for the last 42 years began in such a humble, hopeful way.  Fortunately for us, time and circumstances have woven a very strong netting upon which our marriage rests.  We have grown together, not apart.  What began with two doubled to four when your mom and Aunt Bee came along.  Now, with the addition of your dad, Uncle Drew and the two of you, we have expanded our immediate circle to eight. 

 

What, you might ask, seems to be the glue that holds it all together.  Joseph answers that question as well – love.

Married Again

Joseph Benson Cottrell - 1873

A letter from the land of the orange – from the soft, sweet clime that whispers healing welcome to the almost hopeless ones who, at last, make the venture, and try the virtue of her balm; a letter from Watula, the home retreat my boys have made, to receive at length the worn-out, itinerant father, when he may no longer be in requisition, brings the news of the first marriage which widens the circle from which, in the good Providence of God, no link has yet been stricken in an itinerancy of twenty-seven

Such an event vibrates all the cords!  It smites the mind, and awakens it to a most searching inquiry into what is essential in such a covenant.  The whole family is reconditioned.  A daughter, before unknown, and a sister, is incorporated with that unit heretofore blending nine personalities, and it is as if it were the power of a new birth to all; as if it were the power of a marriage anew of the Father and Mother who hear of the joy of their boy.  How wonderful we are inwrought and membered with an organism vital with life in its highest, holiest degrees and expressions!  That we may filter and refine our own experiences of marital blessedness by sympathy that draws in, as by a mighty swirl of the current of domestic life, that sacred venture of a son or a daughter, as a genesis of the old over new! – the repetition, under more genial and gracious dispensations and ministries, of what is central and inspiring to ourselves.

Questions of fortune and provision – of advantage or disadvantage, are of a nature most incidental and insignificant in comparison of the only one worthy of consideration of a true soul – the one of love!  Yes, we write it, love. That’s the word.  That’s the power.  That’s the qualifying, informing, inspiriting, an assuring element; and it creates all else that is requisite.  All else without it is but fully elaborated curse.  The slightest touch of the finger of what is mercenary in this relation turns all to poison.  It vulgarizes.  It kills.  That highest enthusiasm of the soul which makes the joy and gladness of every other soul its own, is born alone of what is ultimate in virtue; it comes of that whence all else has come – of love; - for “God is

Love is not a volition.  It is an inspiration.  If there be not the heart-throb in our converse; if our words pulse not with that life which comes right out from God himself, then, deceit attaches to all – vitiates

“Signifying unto us the mystical union which is between Christ and His Church,” has ever been a most powerful expression to the ear of my soul.  All true marriages are strung along upon that celestial cord developed from out the depths of the divine relations; for in the reciprocal offices of Father, Son and Holy Ghost have obtained, ever, the substances of that which vitalizes and sanctifies associative human life.  According to definitions, Catholics err in calling marriage a sacrament; but certainly the emphasis they give to its sacredness obliges me to a feeling of gratitude.  In the economy of life as projected from out the divine wisdom and love, we have it under condition of reciprocity; and it is only as other are as dear to us as being is to ourselves that we may be said to live; and according to this high ordering --- according to this full affranchisement – we may claim a repetition of our own marriage in that of the son or daughter when we feel to be married “according as God’s word doth allow.” 

The letter that brings the full description of the marriage of Joseph B. Cottrell, Jr., and Miss Alice Eubank of Yalaha, Florida, on Wednesday night the 3^rd of September, 1879, in the beautifully decorated Methodist church, before the presence of the whole community – so many choice friends of the olden time attending bride and bridegroom – suggests the heading as it was written above, for it is an experience as if were married again."