Faithfulness: Joe and Marjorie

Joe is 92; Margie, a few years younger, keeps her age a secret.  Widower and widow, they have spent the past ten years in a relationship of faithfulness, today’s “Fruit of the holy Spirit.”   She is, more and more, his eyes now, she in whom his eyes would delight.  He calls her “Sweetie”, in that voice that hasn’t changed since I was a kid.  Widow and widower, the y live three blocks from each other in a half-filled subdivision in the Arizona desert that somebody thought would be a great idea, a can’t lose proposition, living in this valley with the view of the Dragoon Mountains and Cochise Stronghold, the monument to a Native American holding out against the inevitable to a life in which he believed. 

Joe gets up early, listening to the news on the television that is to him a radio that flickers dull images, the sound of the words enough to feed his sharp-as-ever mind.  At 8:00 sharp he walks to his phone on the kitchen wall and call Margie.  “Hi, Sweetie, are you ready to pick me up?”  He puts on his light jacket, from the closet by the front door, and stops into his bedroom to brush his not-yet-white hair.  By the time he is out the door,  her four-door Chevy Impala pulls up, and he climbs in.  Off they go to the gym in Wilcox, thirty miles away, after breakfast at their little diner.  He’s proud of that ritual, their three-times-weekly trips to the gym.  He climbs onto the treadmill, walks his mile.  Margie exercises with little hand weights, then rides the stationary bike.  They used to take a swim then.  Now with his eyes and legs failing him, Joe sits in a chair by the pool and listens to Margie’s slow strokes, glimpsing from time to time a movement that he knows is her.   And when the sound of her dripping body gets louder, he holds a towel out to her and says, “OK, Sweetie, I’ll meet you in the lobby.

Lunch follows, and the drive home.  In Joe’s driveway, he leans over and gives her a kiss, the blue of her eyes in the familiar taste on her lipstick that remains with him, as each of them go to their own houses for a nap.  Dinner will be at her place, or at his, or at the little diner along the edge of their subdivision.  On Saturday they’ll go to the Community Center for dinner and dancing.  Joe will dress up, a crisp cotton shirt and creased trousers, and shiny shoes.  Margie will wear a dress, and pearls perhaps, maybe some less-sensible shoes that are nevertheless good for dancing.  Before the suns sets over the Dragoon Mountains, they’ll drive to Margie’s and sit on the couch, right snug against each other, and have a glass of wine, and look into each other’s eyes.  They’ll kiss, and then remain there for a minute or two, just being close.  In Joe’s driveway, he leans over and gives her a kiss, the blue of her eyes in the familiar taste on her lipstick that remains with him, as each of them go to their own houses for a night’s sleep.

There in their stronghold against the inevitable, they live lives of faithfulness.  It’s not a head thing.  Like all of these Fruits of the Spirit, it’s a matter of the heart.  In The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox wrote

It is true that for many people “faith” and “belief” are just two words for the same thing. But they are not the same, and in order to grasp the magnitude of the religious upheaval now under way, it is important to clarify the difference. Faith is about deep-seated confidence. In everyday speech we usually apply it to people we trust or the values we treasure. It is what theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) called “ultimate concern,” a matter of what the Hebrews spoke of as the “heart.”

We can confuse these “Fruits of the Holy Spirit” as “churchy”.  There’s nothing in Joe and Margie’s lives of faithfulness that is churchy.  But all of it is, if anything is, profoundly holy.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.