When Two Become One Flesh

Diane Ackerman on married people who manage to reclaim a corner of Eden:

While they were both in the psychology department of Stony Brook University, Bianca Acevedo and Arthur Aron scanned the brains of long-married couples who described themselves as still “madly in love.” Staring at a picture of a spouse lit up their reward centers as expected; the same happened with those newly in love (and also with cocaine users). But, in contrast to new sweethearts and cocaine addicts, long-married couples displayed calm in sites associated with fear and anxiety. Also, in the opiate-rich sites linked to pleasure and pain relief, and those affiliated with maternal love, the home fires glowed brightly.

A happy marriage relieves stress and makes one feel as safe as an adored baby. Small wonder “Baby” is a favorite adult endearment. Not that romantic love is an exact copy of the infant bond. One needn’t consciously regard a lover as momlike to profit from the parallels. The body remembers, the brain recycles and restages....

During idylls of safety, when your brain knows you’re with someone you can trust, it needn’t waste precious resources coping with stressors or menace. Instead it may spend its lifeblood learning new things or fine-tuning the process of healing. Its doors of perception swing wide open. The flip side is that, given how vulnerable one then is, love lessons — sweet or villainous — can make a deep impression. Wedded hearts change everything, even the brain.

They Almost Stole The Show

Aidan and Ally were the ring bearer and flower girl at a wedding at which I officiated Saturday at St. John's.

In Sickness And In Health? Well, Sometimes

A "Newsweek" article makes discouraging reading. A new study, seconded by doctors' experience, shows that when a man gets a disease such as cancer or MS, his wife tends to slip naturally into the role of caregiver:

But husbands were more likely to take off, even if that meant the wife suffered more. And the study found that the medical consequences were considerable. Abandoned spouses, the researchers found, were more likely to be depressed and less likely to complete prescribed treatment or enroll in new therapies. They also spent more time in the hospital and were less likely to enroll in hospice care, probably because that's a service that generally takes place at home, Chamberlain says.

One answer, according to experts, is for doctors and other medical professionals to make sure couples get early access to counseling and other forms of support.

"Hard Job": Sermon for 18 Pentecost

One of the loneliest moments in Job's story, once it appears he's been cruelly abandoned by God, is his own wife's failure to provide what therapists call affirmation and support. As we begin four weeks with questions that have no absolutely satisfactory answers (Why do the innocent suffer? Why is there suffering at all?), we also hear Jesus's teaching about marriage as a twinning into a stronger one, a union which boldly anticipates the perfect union with God that we are promised in faith.

If we're lucky, we stand by one another in adversity more dependably than Job's wife. But what if we're not married? What if we're not allowed to be? What if we're married, and it's not working out that well? Where is our shield against sorrow, the balm to ease our suffering? When it comes to human community and connection, surely our God in Christ recognizes a broad range of alternatives to loneliness and solitude. Indeed perhaps the one good thing to be said for suffering is that it can draw us closer to one another and our God. My Sunday sermon is here.