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18Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him [lit. “one with mutual fit,” “helper” is not in the original, which has been used to contend for the inferior status of woman]." 19So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said,
"This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman [ishah],
because she was taken out of Man [ish]."
(This statement is emphatic in Hebrew: the man was enthused at what he was seeing.).
24Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (ESV)
I visited the movie rental store over several weeks and kept resisting the temptation to rent “The Notebook,” though it appeared to be a very good movie. On the front is Ryan Gosling, who plays young Noah, and Rachel McAdams, who plays young Allie, holding each other and about to kiss, while being drenched by pouring rain.
See, I am one of those persons that, generally, avoid renting romance movies. Now, there is nothing wrong with the genre “Romance.” But, I am like more and more persons in their 40s and beyond: single, once-twice-or-more divorced, and a long way from those days when we dreamed of meeting that one-meant-for-me-by-God and living happily ever after.
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Some of you, like I do, know the years of trying to make a marriage work, the slow and grueling path to letting go or being let go of, and the shame of it ending. You know the blaming the other and blaming oneself. You know the feeling at a wedding, when two young lovers say “I do,” and you hold in memory that day you said the same, only to find it seem so untrue later. You know, some of you, pure betrayal and the struggle to trust again.
So, I ask you—Is romantic Love a fictitious myth, a childish fairy tale that has to be surrendered to the real facts of life? Or, Is romantic Love a challenging but wonderful Path between two persons, a way chosen by our Creator, who is Love, for us to learn of Grace? If we look at the divorce rate and the state of many marriages, even long-term ones, we might reply, logically, “myth.” Or, we can listen to our hearts, as we read and view love stories and, not least, catch the light in the eye of two lovers who have found love and prove it to be true, even after previous seeming failure. We can choose.
Yes, I believe romantic Love is a myth, a spiritually true myth that speaks to the true longings and meaning of life, universally. In fact, I believe romantic Love is only rightly understood in the context of being such a deeply true, universal myth of Divine origin, manifesting the nature of the Creating One and the Purpose of human life.
The older Noah, played by James Garner, the narrator of the story in the 2004 romance “The Notebook,” sums up his life. The scene is in a care home, where he reads through a notebook, repeatedly, to Allie, now in her later years. The story is about two young lovers who had fallen in love one Summer in the late 1940s. But, social cast divided them. Allie belonged to a wealthy family with servants. Noah lived with his father in the woods, in a simple little house, and he worked at the local wood yard. However, after being separated for years, Noah and Allie found each other again.
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