Let's Bring Heaven Down Here

We had borrowed as a theme some words from a song by the jazz duo Tuck and Patti: "I don't want to wait for the angels; let's bring heaven down here." That was our plan in getting married -- to "bring heaven down here," but we knew we needed help. Given the fact that we were combining two adult households, and that therefore we neither needed nor could find room for any material gifts, we asked instead for "prayers, wisdom, advice or blessings" on how to have a happy marriage. Many complied -- in pithy sayings; in extended treatises; in songs composed and stories told and dialogues recounted. Wisdom, prayers, and blessings. We bundled all those responses into a notebook that each successive year we have pulled off the shelf and reread.

Looking back over the collection this evening on our 12th anniversary I was struck by how often the subjects of patience and communication came up -- these, plus time; communication no doubt because we can't read each other's mind, and if we are going to live with each other we had better be on the same page. Patience because...well, let's face it, anybody can be hard to live with; because all of us aren't holy with one another or lovely at the same speed. And time, because our allocations of it seem always and perversely to favor everything except our marriage. Communication, then, and time, and patience. Patience, in and of itself, a willful and determine devotion of time, as if to say, "there is nothing more important in my life than waiting for you to catch up."

It reminds me of some words by that great theologian Bruce Springsteen:

We said we'd walk together,
Baby come what may,
Then come the twilight,
Should we lose our way,
But if as we're walking',
A hand should slip free,
Well, I'll wait for you,
And if I fall behind wait for me.

Patience and communication. Talking -- always talking, because we need to understand each other -- and waiting for each other to catch up. Because we don't ever seem to live and move and love and learn at the same pace.

I have come to believe that heaven is a good bit like that: to listen and to be heard; and hearing, to understand. And when we are slow -- when a hand slips free; when we are obtuse and distracted and selfish and lost -- to not be left behind. To have someone waiting and watching for us to crest the far hill and draw near.

At least it sounds like heaven to me -- and for the past 12 years, experienced it to be.