Total Union

IN *“Les Vergers humains,” *Louis Lefebvre has this charming verse in which the poet addresses his wife:

I speak to God most often in my verse; I speak to my own destiny; I speak to my own son; With every living being, I converse But I speak not to you; you are myself; we are but one.

There are other exquisite examples of such perfect union between husband and wife realized not only in poetry but in the prose of everyday life.

See this husband and wife seated before the fireplace watching the play of the flames.

“What are you thinking about?” queries the wife.

“And you?”

“The same thing you’re thinking of.”

Idyllic, some will say. And why not, just as truly, an exact description?

Then there is the example of another couple so completely in accord at all times that the husband one day playfully petitioned his wife, “Contradict me sometimes, so that we can be two.”

These two fulfilled to the very letter the statement of the Bible, “They shall be two in one flesh.” They were one, not only in their flesh, but one in a communion of thought and opinion. They had become so thoroughly one that they forgot to be two.

This could be an evil if it meant the weakening of one of the two personalities to the point of absorption by the other. Some women when first married are in such adoration before their husbands or the husbands are so infatuated with their wives that unity is effected, but it is a unity through suppression and narrowness. God grant, however, that such a unanimity never be replaced by the less happy state wherein each one clings tenaciously to self-assertion. What should be sought is unity through mutual enrichment in mutual understanding.

In some marriages this unity becomes so complete that not even death can break it. Such, for example, was the union between Queen Astrid and King Leopold III, or between Mireille Dupouey and her husband, a naval officer killed in 1915. During the seventeen years Mireille Dupouey lived after her husband’s death, she continued to write letters to him as if he were still living, and to set a place at table between herself and her son for her dear departed who was forever present to her, forever one with her.

In contrast to these families where union is complete, how many there are in which dispute rages permanently; or, if not dispute, at least misunderstanding, constant bitterness.

It has been said and truly said that it is not easy for a man and woman, two poor human beings, finite, limited, and possessed of individual faults, to spend cloudless days together. “A woman must take much upon herself, to live with a man, whoever he may be,” writes a moralist. “A man must take much upon himself to live with a woman even though she be most loving. How many perplexities between them, how many veiled enmities even in their most evident caresses! How many half-consented-to abdications on both sides!”

But live together they must. How can they achieve as perfect a harmony as possible? Day after day they must seek it, study, meditate, resolve and act!