{"id":1709,"date":"2016-02-10T08:49:25","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T12:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1709"},"modified":"2016-02-10T09:06:06","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T13:06:06","slug":"rollercoaster-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1709","title":{"rendered":"Rollercoaster of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

This essay first appeared in the Durham Herald-Sun<\/i> on February 7, 2016.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I stayed up way too late last night following social media about the Iowa Democratic caucus. \u00a0My house has a pink and blue homemade sign in front proclaiming \u201cThe Green Street Girls [Heart] Bernie Sanders.\u201d \u00a0The last time I had this much love in the game was during Obama\u2019s first primary run. \u00a0I remember talking to a good friend in Chicago about the race. \u00a0He and his son were traveling to campaign for Obama across the Midwest. \u00a0\u201cDo you really think Obama is going to change things?\u201d I asked him, hopeful but also trying to be realistic. \u00a0\u201cHe is going to break our hearts,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I am campaigning for him anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not easy to put your heart back into a game after your heart has been broken. \u00a0After I went through divorce five years ago, I was talking to a new friend about trusting in love again. \u00a0He and his wife train horses, and they likened the task to getting back onto a horse after you have been thrown off of one. \u00a0You cannot let your fear rule you. \u00a0You have to trust again that the world is more safe than not \u2013 that people are more worth loving than not. \u00a0I have found this to be true not only for trusting in romantic love, but also for trusting a new church after a congregation has thrown you off the horse, so to speak, or for trusting a new classroom after you have gone through a really rough ride with a group of particularly rude students. \u00a0Investing your heart, truly risking a part of your soul by loving a person or a group of people, can be harrowing. \u00a0\u201cNothing ventured, nothing gained\u201d may be true, but it is not easy. \u00a0To venture a sufficient part of yourself truly to be open to love is scary. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another friend compared dating after divorce to being in freefall. \u00a0He is older than I am, and I had confessed that I felt like I was twelve again, and that it was unsettling. \u00a0He reassured me that he often feels twelve also, and added that he often feels like a twelve-year-old in freefall. \u00a0Members of funk band The Ohio Players were definitely grown-ups when they wrote their 1976 hit-song \u201cLove Rollercoaster.\u201d \u00a0They are singing about loving a sweetheart, and the sense of both exhilaration and barely-controlled panic that go along with such love. \u00a0The writers of the 1989 movie \u201cParenthood\u201d use the same exact image for what it means truly to be part of a family. \u00a0The grandmother in the film puts it this way:<\/span><\/p>\n

You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Richard Thompson has a song that says something similar about love. \u00a0He wrote it around the same time that his marriage to singer and songwriter Linda Peters was coming apart at the seams. \u00a0It is called \u201cThe Wall of Death,\u201d referencing a circular track where people ride a motor-cycle or other vehicle sideways, basically. \u00a0You will have to look up images yourself, because words fail me. \u00a0I cannot begin to imagine riding a motorcycle sideways. \u00a0But Richard Thompson sings \u201cyou\u2019re going nowhere when you ride on a carousel,\u201d which is true. \u00a0Grandma is right. \u00a0As one saying about family goes, having children means consenting to allow your heart to walk around outside your body. \u00a0I have seen this be true also for love between sweethearts, and love of children for parents. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Investing your heart with fidelity is not always exhilarating. \u00a0Putting your heart into a game \u2013 venturing, risking, trusting \u2013 is also about the tiny little steps that make love possible. \u00a0Bernie Sanders tied Hillary Clinton in Iowa not due to something giant, but through one little phone call after another, one conversation after another, made with patience, not so much with valor. \u00a0Love between two sweethearts is similar, like kindling, as one of my favorite television shows put the matter recently. \u00a0Life together is made little stick by stick. \u00a0That same series has a very astute argument against couples writing their own wedding vows. \u00a0In one episode, a young couple writes absolutely ridiculous vows to one another, describing love as an up-front, 100% sure sort of thing, thereby confounding other young couples in the congregation. \u00a0I am grateful the marriage vows in my tradition are set in stone by old people, who, even though they sometimes feel like twelve-year-olds in freefall, know that love is also about getting back on that horse, trusting daily that the world is more safe than scary.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This essay first appeared in the Durham Herald-Sun on February 7, 2016. I stayed up way too late last night following social media about the Iowa Democratic caucus. \u00a0My house has a pink and blue homemade sign in front proclaiming \u201cThe Green Street Girls [Heart] Bernie Sanders.\u201d \u00a0The last time I had this much love […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-organizing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-rz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1711,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions\/1711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}