LETTERS

Book by Richard Rohr needs to be read by all parishioners

The Editor: Thanks to Anne Strachan for the timely article, “How we are blind to the signs & wonders” (March 31 PM).

May I suggest that one wonder that seems to be “locked out” is a simple little book by Rev. Richard Rohr: The Naked Now.

If I could afford it, I would stand at the door of every church in the city and hand out this gem for everyone to enjoy. To encourage anyone to search for this treasure, I can only quote from The Naked Now:

“How could I have gone through life without anyone teaching me this? How is such a great truth unknown to or forgotten by so much of the world, and even by the church — or what our teachers themselves had never experienced?” — John Williamson, Calgary

Ideal of married love goes back to Old Testament times

The Editor: Is marrying for love relatively recent? It is according to Stephanie Coontz (PM, April 14), who claims that marriage was never the romantic, altruistic ideal often associated with a brief period in the 20th century. Coontz should read more literature and listen to more lyrics.

The language of love is universal, from the Old Testament Song of Songs through Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and beyond.

Not so long ago, scholars contended that it originated with 11th-or 12th-century French troubadours, who were mainly celebrating adultery. Marriage, by contrast, was a union of convenience without affection. Now, however, most medievalists reject the myth of courtly love. They point out that medieval poetry celebrates married love as much as illicit attractions, if not more so. 

They also point out that romantic love has blossomed in poetry and even graffiti far removed in time and place from the troubadours, for example, in ancient Egypt and Rome, medieval Byzantium, seventh-and eighth-century Islam, eighth-or ninth-century Anglo-Saxon England, and 10th-century Iceland.

Based on historical and anthropological studies, Ferdinand Mount confirms that men and women have married for love in all times and places. He describes the nuclear family, “based on choice and affection,” as “a biologically derived way of living which. . .  generates an emotional force of enduring and unquenchable power.

Even the lyrics of popular songs recognize that love transcends time. Ira Gershwin knew it in 1938, when he said that love is here to stay, “not for a year but ever and a day.” Stevie Wonder understood it in 1976, when he stated that “life has given love a guarantee to last through forever and another day.” Keith Urban saw it in 1999, when he declared, “you’ll be safe here in my arms forever and a day.”

Come on, Ms. Coontz, get a life. — Joe Campbell, Saskatoon