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the intimacy of scrolling through someone’s spotify playlists... it is akin to running your fingers along the spines of the books on their shelves

[smallfondlocal]

the mystery of your loved ones 💓✨ 

1 & 2. benjamin alire sáenz, aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe / 3 & 4. caroline paul & wendy macnaughton, lost cat: a true story of love, desperation, and gps technology / 5. mary oliver, the whistler / 6 & 7. kerry egan, married to a mystery man

image 1: benjamin alire sáenz, aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe

“I don’t know. Something else. A T-shirt for my birthday?” I looked at my Mom. “I guess I just don’t understand him.”

“He’s not that complicated, Ari.”

“He doesn’t talk.”

“Sometimes when people talk, they don’t always tell the truth.”

image 2: benjamin alire sáenz, aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe

“Mom? Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything.”

“Is it hard to love him?”

“No.” She didn’t even hesitate.

“Do you understand him?”

“Not always. But Ari, I don’t always have to understand the people I love.”

image 3: caroline paul & wendy macnaughton, lost cat: a true story of love, desperation, and gps technology

venn diagram with two concentric circles - the “everything you know” circle is subsumed by “all the things you will never understand”

image 4: caroline paul & wendy macnaughton, lost cat: a true story of love, desperation, and gps technology

6. You can never know your cat. In fact, you can never know anyone as completely as you want.

7. But that’s okay, love is better.

image 5: mary oliver, the whistler

THE WHISTLER

All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean that for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war- bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and an- kle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

image 6: kerry egan, married to a mystery man

The work of chaplaincy dabbles in mystery all the time. The mystery of God, the mystery of death, the mystery of life. What was it all for? What does it all mean?

Add love to that list of mysteries.

In chaplaincy, a mystery is not something that cannot be known. It’s the opposite. We say God and life and death are mysteries in theological language not because they are unknowable, but because there is so much to know that you can never know the depths of it; there is always more you can learn. They are Mysteries, with a capital M, because they are infinitely knowable. The more you learn, the more you want to know.

image 7: kerry egan, married to a mystery man

Why, then, would any of us leap into marriage, knowing that the future is unknowable, knowing our spouse is a mystery we can never fully understand?

I suppose it’s faith. Belief that there is something deeply good in the mysterious heart of the infinitely knowable other. And hope that this goodness will be enough to face the future together. Sometimes that works out; sometimes it does not.

In the end, Alex didn’t go to jail for his bachelor party escapades. He paid a fine, just as he predicted. He still doesn’t understand why I cried all night the day after we got married.

I still believe there is something deeply good in him. I still don’t understand him at all.