Featured

For Jeff and Sahar

October 28, 2022 / J. F. Riordan / 4 Comments

(From my talk as officiant at their wedding in Istanbul)

Anyone can fall in love. And most of us who have been married will acknowledge that it helps if love is the first requirement. The ancient vows that Sahar and Jeff are about to make confirm it: We promise first “to love”.

But, as we here make a commitment to support Sahar and Jeff in their marriage, we understand that love is not enough. I want to say “mere” love, although that would be at odds with every philosophy and theology in the world. But love can be a fleeting emotion. That’s why when we experience real love, most civilizations suggest that we add something more. We want to vow that our commitment is forever, and that we mean more than only how we feel.

Love, Honor, Comfort, and Keep. They are ancient poetic words, and they bear testament to an essential truth: Marriage is hard.

It would seem at first thought that in the commitment that they are making today, the challenges Sahar and Jeff face will be accelerated by their different cultural heritages. But this is only a detail. Because in many ways every marriage is a melding of cultures…of family…of values…of male and female.

Our work, as married people, is to accept the alien nature of the other. And, come to think of it, isn’t that the work of us all?

Because the fundamental requirements of all human relationships are those we practice first at home, and so, the relationship of husband and wife reflects our relationship with the whole world. That is not a coincidence.

We start with the imperative to love, with all that it entails, but there are also these other requirements:

Honor.

Comfort.

Keep.

Together, they form a hierarchy, with each of these actions dependent upon the other.

Honoring…it means we don’t hold one another in contempt…that our familiarity breeds, instead, respect, and generosity, and patience, and understanding.

And we cannot comfort without honoring, because offering comfort requires an essential respect of our beloved’s individual humanity and need.

Comfort requires, too, understanding the value of offering not what we need, but what someone else needs—which is almost never the same thing.

Comfort is an act of solidarity, but also an act of empathy: a moving out of ourselves and our needs, and into the needs of someone else.

If I need solitude, maybe I need to understand that at the same moment my partner needs affection. And the efforts we make to frame the world based on someone else’s needs is key part of marriage, and, indeed, of any relationship.

And “keep”. What does that mean? We keep watch; we keep time; we keep chickens.

But to keep one another….

It’s vigilance, isn’t it. It means we hold one another in esteem, with honor. We comfort. We pay attention. Sometimes at cost to ourselves and our pressing priorities. But…it also means to give shelter. We smoothe paths…we encourage… we understand foibles…we attempt to care, not just for physical, but for emotional requirements.

Come to think of it, it is a bit like chickens.

We nurture.

We protect.

We keep.

Which brings us back to love. These vows are all encompassed in the act of loving; they are the recipe for all human relationships: To Love, Honor, Comfort, and Keep.

It is more than a philosophy. It is an action; an endeavor; our daily work. And it is a challenge.

A healthy marriage—the keeping of these vows—requires fierce dedication, determination, and commitment, all entered into in the endeavor of love.

Sometimes blindly, sometimes fervently. But deliberately, reverently, joyfully, and not just with our whole hearts, but with every fiber of our beings.

Morning Rows

October 2, 2021 / J. F. Riordan / 4 Comments

It was pre-dawn and I had been working for hours. I had just stepped out onto the porch at the house we’re renting in Maine, and was enjoying the calm, when I heard a soft, rhythmic noise. Tock-tock-whoosh, tock-tock-whoosh. I thought at first that it was drops from the eaves after all the rain we’d had, but that wasn’t quite right. I stopped, listening, trying to identify it. The sound grew louder, and I realized it was moving and coming from the water. I leaned against the railing to look out at the lake, waiting for a craft to come into view.

It was a shell with one rower. Elegantly thin, moving at a great clip, and leaving geometric designs in the water that widened and faded in its wake. The sound of the oars reverberated across the lake. I thought about the rower’s early morning, rising to be on the water before the sun rose, and felt a bit of envy at the pleasures of deep exercise, alone, with the sun just hidden behind the mountains at the east side of the water. I rise in the dark, too, but depend on hot coffee—although, perhaps, the same combination of joy and willpower—to sit comfortably on a chair, my legs crossed under me, pressing toward my writing deadline. I count words every morning, gauging my progress. Only two months left.

As he rowed back twenty minutes later, his pace was still strong, but just barely slower. Tock-tock-whoosh. The sound rose and fell as he approached, then moved off into the distance, fading into the morning’s birdsong.

It was a moment of deep and unexpected beauty.

It’s surprising sometimes the things that can make life magical.

Spring and all

May 16, 2018 / J. F. Riordan / Leave a comment

It is the time of year when life blooms. The frogs are singing, the geese are still flying overhead to the place where they will spend the night. The robins chirrup the call that means, to me, dawn and dusk. But if I stand in my driveway, with the dogs lying still, I can hear things growing. Literally. There is a rustle in the woods that does not come from an animal’s movement. It is the slow, steady creep of leaves and stems and flowers, finding their place in the light and air.

The time of year is nostalgic with memories of childhood spring concerts, graduations, proms, life events. The soft green nacensce of leaves and flowers, the scent of bloom; the memory of love; of longing. Spring smells of all these things.

My job is ending. I don’t know when I will work again, but my husband has declared it a day of liberation. We drink old champagne, the sound of birds and lawn mowers in the background, the birds singing their old, unchanging songs. I hear the robins, the cardinals, the sparrows, the meadow larks; the woodpeckers, and the phoebes. The bird songs are mixed with the soft insistence of puppy Auggie, whining under his breath that I should pay attention to him, to his green ball.

The lilies of the valley are still coiled in tight rolls, waiting to unfold. The bluebells have begun to bloom, but they have not yet burst into riot. The narcissi spill their scent upon the air. The peonies push their red shoots up, and I look for a careful placement of the metal rings that will keep their blooms from lying on the ground a few weeks hence. I dream of them all winter, of their exuberant, joyous explosion.

The turkeys rise up, no longer visible on the ground in the woods, from green bowers into their now hidden roosts. The deer chuff in the woods as they browse, but the green leaves hide their movement. A big raccoon makes her cumbersome way down a tall tree to begin her nighttime rambles.

It is spring. The world is poised. A great writer died last night, and I feel the world’s aftershocks. We are smaller now, without him.

Nevertheless, this old song sings. The frogs, the geese, the robins, the rustling leaves. It is soft-scented and sweet.

The world goes on, beautiful and ruthless. We watch– worn, enchanted, hopeful, but powerless to change the slow, hard progress of life.

BOOK LAUNCH EVENT!

April 25, 2018 / J. F. Riordan / 3 Comments

I hope you will join me at the Milwaukee launch of Robert’s Rules, Book Three of North of the Tension Line on Thursday, May 24th at 7 pm, at Boswell Book Company. For writers like me, operating a bit below the radar, these things are very much group efforts. I need your help to get my book off the ground. That’s why they call it a launch!

Here’s a blurb from the book: “Robert’s Rules is Book Three in the award-winning North of the Tension Line series, set on a remote island in the Great Lakes. Called a modern-day Jane Austen, author J.F. Riordan creates wry, engaging tales and vivid characters that celebrate the well-lived life of the ordinary man and woman.”

First of all, please come! I would love to meet you, or if you’re an old friend, to see you again. A big crowd tells the bookstore that my books are worth the effort. Bring your friends, your book club, your Moose lodge, your groupies.

Second, please call or visit Boswell, and pre-order. Pre-orders are a very big deal in the publishing industry, and can make or break a book. If you can’t make it to Boswell, please go to your favorite bookseller, or online. Please let me know that you can join me in giving Robert’s Rules a successful launch. Let’s boost it so high that everyone can see it!

I hope to see you there!

J.F. Riordan