Column To send the very best, try more than Hallmark
By JEANNETTE
BATZ
Hallmarks hijacked our feelings. The crime is apparent if
you shop for cards (an inane paean to consumerism in itself -- whatever
happened to the epistolary art?), then return home and read the Bible.
Admittedly a problematic book, but one interleaved with fiercely honest
passions. Read through the strong, swift words to the hot tears and sweat, the
fragrant oils and wines, the abiding loves and constant quests. Compare the
bloodless pastel sentiments of modern communication.
Have we lost all passion? Are interpersonal relationships so
fraught with peril that we must buy a paid scribes version of the
blandest possible blandishments in order to preserve the peace?
A child is born, an earthshakingly momentous event that not only
harks back to Christ but confirms the life force and continues its journey. We
ignore this events quiet majesty and send cute cardboard storks with
fatuous verses about new little arrivals or make wink-and-nod jokes about
sleepless nights. Three hundred felt-flocked baby bunnies and pink-cheeked
bundled babies later, we might realize all we ever had to do was quote Isaiah
60:3: Kings [come] to the brightness of thy rising.
Later, at the childs confirmation, having failed to learn
our lesson, we will dig out holy medals and laminated cards and buy those
elaborately scripted messages about joining Gods family. Such platitudes
give a newly confirmed Christian no clue what shes in for; they gloss the
entry, and she slips through a little too easily. A few years later, when the
going gets rough, struggle will seem unnatural because nothing has prepared her
for its inevitability. Why not seize this opportunity to acknowledge the
challenge?
I think of the poet Anne Sexton who wrote about the awful
rowing toward God and pronounced faith a great weight hung on a
thin wire. Admit it and you can close, not with abstractions about
eternal salvation, but with Sextons hard-won, delightful promise:
And God will come into your hands as easily as ten cents used to bring
forth a Coke.
As for those of us who occasionally need to apologize, enough of
the wussy mea culpas about how miserable we feel (all emphasis remaining,
conveniently enough, on us). Rend your heart and not your garments,
Joel advises crisply (2:13). He could reverse the process to salute
achievement: Gladden the heart, ignore the superficial trappings. But oh, how
we cling to those trappings.
Congratulations cards evoke every cultural bias in America.
Way to Go! they shout. You MADE It! Youve
Reached the Top! Youve Got the Right Stuff Always, the
same assumptions are made: The recipient has bested fierce competition in an
egalitarian framework and his outward, goal-driven activity has won him a
recognizable success that now differentiates him from everyone else. How
different the aura if we simply said Namaste! a Nepali
expression of honoring that means, I bow to the God within you.
At a time of -- I almost said bereavement and soon Ill be
saying someone passed away -- at a time of death, shouldnt
Christians be celebrating? Yet who among us has the courage to burn the
violet-covered card rhapsodizing about heartfelt love and spiritual comfort in
times of sorrow and send a card that says simply, We end in joy. (A
line from Theodore Roethkes poem The Moment.) Perversely,
were afraid well offend the bereft beloved, who so loved the dear
departed that they cant stand to think of her in joy.
Ah, and then there are the sunsets. All those recycled nature
cards with Joyce Kilmeresque odes to trees and pine cones, trite reductions of
cosmic glory to our own petty analogies, when instead we could quote Habakkuk
2:20 and take a lesson from it: Let all the Earth keep silence before
Him.
And on the dreaded Valentines Day, instead of saccharine
protestations of sentiment to our sweetie, wouldnt it weigh more if we
explained how we know our loves depth? My heart teacheth me, night
after night. Long after the chocolates have melted into her thighs, long
after the flowers have departed.
Hallmark works, you see, because it doesnt address the
honest everyday truths, the night-after-night realizations. If we were capable
of doing that, we wouldnt need Hallmark.
Enough of the condescension, though: Im as guilty as the
worst of the sentimentalists. I look for the anti-cards, the Valentine that
talked about Harriet and Roger lighting a fire and eating ice-cream sandwiches
every year and showed only a box of matches. Wit and abstract concepts are my
favorite disguises and they costume intense feelings as thoroughly as kitsch
and schmaltz do.
Admitting intense feelings is terrifying, even when theyre
as wonderful as love or awe. Theyre too stark, too close to our core. And
they render us too vulnerable, in need of God and each other in a way we
havent experienced since -- well, Biblical days. Then, people knew,
inescapably, that they needed God to lead them, needed bushes to burn and
tablets to crash down from the heavens.
We have computers.
I do, at least, refuse to send a cyber greeting card. Ive
stopped hiding on The Far Side; Ive stopped falling back on undeniably
arty, urban street scenes by French photographers in the 40s. Ive
even stopped buying the high-concept graphic collages that break apart a poetic
message like a ransom note.
The acid test, however, will come on our 10th wedding anniversary.
If, by then, I dare to abandon whats expected, I shall read my
husbands mind and echo it back to him, borrowing from the irascibly
Christian John Donne to say, For Gods sake hold your tongue and let
me love.
Jeannette Batz is a senior editor at The Riverfront Times,
an alternative newspaper in St. Louis.
National Catholic Reporter, March 13,
1998
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