Windows of Love

‘Yes, yes,’ my friend answered abstractedly. ‘Of course, of course;things were all so very big in those days, you know, my dear fellow.’

‘Excuse me,’ I replied with polite incredulity; ‘I really don’t know towhat particular period of time the phrase “in those days” may besupposed precisely to refer.’

My friend shuffled inside his coat a little uneasily. (I will admit thatI was taking a mean advantage of him. The professorial lecture inprivate life, especially when followed by a strict examination, is quiteundeniably a most intolerable nuisance.) ‘Well,’ he said, in a crustyvoice, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘I mean, you know, in geologicaltimes … well, there, my dear fellow, things used all to be so _very_big in those days, usedn’t they?’

I took compassion upon him and let him off easily. ‘You’ve had enough ofthe museum,’ I said with magnanimous self-denial. ‘The Atlantosaurus hasbroken the camel’s back. Let’s go and have a quiet cigarette in the parkoutside.’

But if you suppose, reader, that I am going to carry my forbearance sofar as to let you, too, off the remainder of that geologicaldisquisition, you are certainly very much mistaken. A discourse whichwould be quite unpardonable in social intercourse may be freely admittedin the privacy of print; because, you see, while you can’t easily tell aman that his conversation bores you (though some people just avoid doingso by an infinitesimal fraction), you can shut up a book whenever youlike, without the very faintest or remotest risk of hurting the author’sdelicate susceptibilities.

The subject of my discourse naturally divides itself, like theconventional sermon, into two heads–the precise date of ‘geologicaltimes,’ and the exact bigness of the animals that lived in them. And Imay as well begin by announcing my general conclusion at the veryoutset; first, that ‘those days’ never existed at all; and, secondly,that the animals which now inhabit this particular planet are, on thewhole, about as big, taken in the lump, as any previous contemporaryfauna that ever lived at any one time together upon its changefulsurface. I know that to announce this sad conclusion is to break downone more universal and cherished belief; everybody considers that’geological animals’ were ever so much bigger than their modernrepresentatives; but the interests of truth should always be paramount,and, if the trade of an iconoclast is a somewhat cruel one, it is atleast a necessary function in a world so ludicrously overstocked withpopular delusions as this erring planet.

What, then, is the ordinary idea of ‘geological time’ in the minds ofpeople like my good friend who refused to discuss with me the exactantiquity of the Atlantosaurian? They think of it all as immediate andcontemporaneous, a vast panorama of innumerable ages being all crammed

first experience of Christian fellowship. Immediately we are confrontedwith the nature of God’s creation and, therefore, with the revelation ofHimself and of how He works. We are confronted with the relationalnature of all life; for nothing exists in isolation. Everything andevery person finds full meaning only in relation to other things andpersons.

We are used to thinking of persons as living in relation to persons; weare less accustomed to thinking of things existing in relation to otherthings. But does not the tree exist in relation to the earth,atmosphere, and water? And does not the hammer exist as hammer inrelation to the hand that uses it and the object it pounds? The onlydifference is that persons are active participants in relationship andthings are passive. But things may be made active symbols or instrumentsin the meeting between man and man, as, for instance, in the case of thebread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.

God created man to live in relation with the world of things, withhimself, and with his fellow men, and to live in these relationships insuch a way that he will discover and grow in his relationship with God.The terms “man” and “relationship” are synonymous. An old Roman proverbputs it, “One man is no man at all.” Alone we would cease to exist. Weall have had the experience of being shut out from some importantrelationship and we know what a desperate feeling it produces. We losewhatever sense of well-being we may have had, and we begin to feelunwanted, depressed, and less alive. When we are warmly gathered againinto an important group, we begin to come alive. Our blood runs faster,and we know the joy of life again. It is almost as though we had beenresurrected. The sense of being a part, the experience of fellowship,makes the difference between life and death. I once visited in a homewhere a teen-age girl was having one of her frequent “tragic” loveexperiences. The boy she was currently dating had not called her up forthree days. She was full of gloom, moped around the house, and lost herusual interest in everything. One evening the phone rang and the callwas for her. First we heard her laugh, and then she burst into the roomfull of gaiety and enthusiasm. You would not have known her for the samegirl. Alone and rejected, as she thought, she was dead. Restored torelationship, she came alive again. We may smile patronizingly at theemotional excesses of this teen-age girl, but on the other hand weunderstand deeply the fundamental meaning of her experience.

The patterns of relationship begin with our birth. We would not surviveif the whole community, centering in the basic function of the mother,did not assume responsibility for us. Our dependence upon her for foodand care is the occasion for the beginning of relationship. And both theinfant and the mother have their part to play. She moves as a persontoward her child with the gifts of her milk and of her love. The infant,on his side, in random and non-specific ways, calls out to her. He criesand makes his simple movements. She responds to his cries with her care.He responds to her care by sleeping and waking, by crying and cooing.

for them on to a single mental sheet, in which the dodo and the moahob-an’-nob amicably with the pterodactyl and the ammonite; in which thetertiary megatherium goes cheek by jowl with the secondary deinosaursand the primary trilobites; in which the huge herbivores of the ParisBasin are supposed to have browsed beneath the gigantic club-mosses ofthe Carboniferous period, and to have been successfully hunted by thegreat marine lizards and flying dragons of the Jurassic Epoch. Such apicture is really just as absurd, or, to speak more correctly, athousand times absurder, than if one were to speak of those grand oldtimes when Homer and Virgil smoked their pipes together in the MermaidTavern, while Shakespeare and Moliere, crowned with summer roses, sippedtheir Falernian at their ease beneath the whispering palmwoods of theNevsky Prospect, and discussed the details of the play they were toproduce to-morrow in the crowded Colosseum, on the occasion ofNapoleon’s reception at Memphis by his victorious brother emperors,Ramses and Sardanapalus. This is not, as the inexperienced reader may atfirst sight imagine, a literal transcript from one of the glowingdescriptions that crowd the beautiful pages of Ouida; it is a faintattempt to parallel in the brief moment of historical time the glaringanachronisms perpetually committed as regards the vast lapse ofgeological chronology even by well-informed and intelligent people.

We must remember, then, that in dealing with geological time we aredealing with a positively awe-inspiring and unimaginable series of aeons,each of which occupied its own enormous and incalculable epoch, and eachof which saw the dawn, the rise, the culmination, and the downfall ofinnumerable types of plant and animal. On the cosmic clock, by whosependulum alone we can faintly measure the dim ages behind us, the brieflapse of historical time, from the earliest of Egyptian dynasties tothe events narrated in this evening’s _Pall Mall_, is less than asecond, less than a unit, less than the smallest item by which we canpossibly guide our blind calculations. To a geologist the temples ofKarnak and the New Law Courts would be absolutely contemporaneous; hehas no means by which he could discriminate in date between a scarabaeusof Thothmes, a denarius of Antonine, and a bronze farthing of her MostGracious Majesty Queen Victoria. Competent authorities have shown goodgrounds for believing that the Glacial Epoch ended about 80,000 yearsago; and everything that has happened since the Glacial Epoch is, fromthe geological point of view, described as ‘recent.’ A shell embedded ina clay cliff sixty or seventy thousand years ago, while short andswarthy Mongoloids still dwelt undisturbed in Britain, ages before theirruption of the ‘Ancient Britons’ of our inadequate school-books, is,in the eyes of geologists generally, still regarded as purely modern.

But behind that indivisible moment of recent time, that eighty thousandyears which coincides in part with the fraction of a single swing of thecosmical pendulum, there lie hours, and days, and weeks, and months, andyears, and centuries, and ages of an infinite, an illimitable, aninconceivable past, whose vast divisions unfold themselves slowly, onebeyond the other, to our aching vision in the half-deciphered pages of

strange creature you are!? cries his wife; ?and what on earth broughtyou here, I wonder?? ?I came to look after you, /of course/,? rejoinsher husband. This is so pleasant a jest that the lady is mightilyamused, as are all the other ladies similarly situated who are withinhearing; and while they are enjoying it to the full, the gentleman nodsagain, turns upon his heel, and saunters away.

There are times, however, when his company is not so agreeable, thoughequally unexpected; such as when the lady has invited one or twoparticular friends to tea and scandal, and he happens to come home inthe very midst of their diversion. It is a hundred chances to one thathe remains in the house half an hour, but the lady is rather disturbedby the intrusion, notwithstanding, and reasons within herself,??I amsure I never interfere with him, and why should he interfere with me?It can scarcely be accidental; it never happens that I have a particularreason for not wishing him to come home, but he always comes. It?s veryprovoking and tiresome; and I am sure when he leaves me so much alonefor his own pleasure, the least he could do would be to do as much formine.? Observing what passes in her mind, the gentleman, who has comehome for his own accommodation, makes a merit of it with himself;arrives at the conclusion that it is the very last place in which he canhope to be comfortable; and determines, as he takes up his hat and cane,never to be so virtuous again.

Thus a great many cool couples go on until they are cold couples, andthe grave has closed over their folly and indifference. Loss of name,station, character, life itself, has ensued from causes as slight asthese, before now; and when gossips tell such tales, and aggravate theirdeformities, they elevate their hands and eyebrows, and call each otherto witness what a cool couple Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so always were, evenin the best of times.

THE PLAUSIBLE COUPLE

The plausible couple have many titles. They are ?a delightful couple,?an ?affectionate couple,? ?a most agreeable couple, ?a good-heartedcouple,? and ?the best-natured couple in existence.? The truth is, thatthe plausible couple are people of the world; and either the way ofpleasing the world has grown much easier than it was in the days of theold man and his ass, or the old man was but a bad hand at it, and knewvery little of the trade.

?But is it really possible to please the world!? says some doubtingreader. It is indeed. Nay, it is not only very possible, but veryeasy. The ways are crooked, and sometimes foul and low. What then? Aman need but crawl upon his hands and knees, know when to close his eyes

And thus begins the dialogical nature of relationship.

_Relationship Is Dialogue_

Relationship is dialogue. Dialogue occurs when one person addressesanother person and the other person responds. It is a two-way process inwhich two or more people discuss meanings that concern them. To whateverdegree one part of the dialogue is lost, to that degree the relationshipceases to exist. A marriage, for instance, ceases to exist, except inform, only when either one of the partners ceases to communicate withthe other, and the quality of address and response is lost. Likewise,true religion disappears when it represents only what God says andeliminates the meaning of man’s response. Religious dogma is sometimesused to shackle human creativity, and the form of belief is allowed tostifle the vitality of faith. Similarly, religion disappears when theaddress to God and the response of God are eliminated. The Pharisee inJesus’ parable had lost the dialogical quality of his prayer because he”stood and prayed thus with himself….”[6] He was not speaking to Godand he expected no response, with the result that his religion lost itsdialogical quality since he was separated from God by hisself-righteousness. This dialogical quality is indispensable to creativeliving. It is out of the dialogical encounter that the individualemerges.

Only by the process of dialogical teaching can children really learn.The relationship between parent and child is not one-sided. The childmay protest against the authority of the parent. This is the child’spart of the dialogue. The parent may recognize his child’s need to findhimself as an autonomous person by making allowance for his protest andexercise of freedom. The next stage in the dialogue between them is thereassurance which the child experiences and reflects in his behavior inresponse to his parent’s affirmation of him as a person. He may showthis by a more realistic acceptance of the parent’s authority. This inturn may reassure the parent, so that he feels more relaxed in theexercise of his authority. Gradually the parent and the child begin toexperience a more mature relationship with each other.

_We Are Responsible for Each Other_

Because of the dialogical nature of relationship, we have responsibilityfor one another. Each of us has a responsibility to call forth the otheras a person, and each needs to be called forth since none of us willdevelop automatically. We call forth one another in the same way thatthe conductor of an orchestra calls forth the powers of his musiciansand the potentialities of their instruments. And they respond by callingforth the interpretive genius of their conductor. Each draws out thepowers of the other.

the geological record. Before the Glacial Epoch there comes thePliocene, immeasurably longer than the whole expanse of recent time; andbefore that again the still longer Miocene, and then the Eocene,immeasurably longer than all the others put together. These three makeup in their sum the Tertiary period, which entire period can hardly haveoccupied more time in its passage than a single division of theSecondary, such as the Cretaceous, or the Oolite, or the Triassic; andthe Secondary period, once more, though itself of positively appallingduration, seems but a patch (to use the expressive modernism) upon theunthinkable and unrealisable vastness of the endless successive Primaryaeons. So that in the end we can only say, like Michael Scott’s mystichead, ‘Time was, Time is, Time will be.’ The time we know affords us nomeasure at all for even the nearest and briefest epochs of the time weknow not; and the time we know not seems to demand still vaster and moreinexpressible figures as we pry back curiously, with wondering eyes,into its dimmest and earliest recesses.

These efforts to realise the unrealisable make one’s head swim; let ushark back once more from cosmical time to the puny bigness of ourearthly animals, living or extinct.

If we look at the whole of our existing fauna, marine and terrestrial,we shall soon see that we could bring together at the present moment avery goodly collection of extant monsters, most parlous monsters, too,each about as fairly big in its own kind as almost anything that hasever preceded it. Every age has its own _specialite_ in the way ofbigness; in one epoch it is the lizards that take suddenly to developingovergrown creatures, the monarchs of creation in their little day; inanother, it is the fishes that blossom out unexpectedly into Titanicproportions; in a third, it is the sloths or the proboscideans that waxfat and kick with gigantic members; in a fourth, it may be the birds orthe men that are destined to evolve with future ages into veritable rocsor purely realistic Gargantuas or Brobdingnagians. The present period ismost undoubtedly the period of the cetaceans; and the future geologistwho goes hunting for dry bones among the ooze of the Atlantic, now knownto us only by the scanty dredgings of our ‘Alerts’ and ‘Challengers,’but then upheaved into snow-clad Alps or vine-covered Apennines, willdoubtless stand aghast at the huge skeletons of our whales and ourrazorbacks, and will mutter to himself in awe-struck astonishment, inthe exact words of my friend at South Kensington, ‘Things used all to beso very big in those days, usedn’t they?’

Now, the fact as to the comparative size of our own cetaceans and of’geological’ animals is just this. The Atlantosaurus of the WesternAmerican Jurassic beds, a great erect lizard, is the very largestcreature ever known to have inhabited this sublunary sphere. His entirelength is supposed to have reached about a hundred feet (for no completeskeleton has ever been discovered), while in stature he appears to havestood some thirty feet high, or over. In any case, he was undoubtedly avery big animal indeed, for his thigh-bone alone measures eight feet, or

The potentialities for development are inherent in us, but we need thewarmth and stimulation of other persons. This is certainly true in thecase of the newly born. The role of parents and teachers is to callforth and welcome the personal responses and initiatives of theirchildren. This is also true of those who, because of the pressures oflife, start to unfold as persons but then withdraw in order to protectthemselves from further hurt. Here again, parents and teachers, pastorsand counselors, and indeed all men, from time to time, are obliged tocall forth some soul who is either in hiding or in retreat.

This role is easy to see in our relation with children, becausechildren’s responses are sometimes so uncomplicated that the process weare talking about is clearly revealed. Susie, feeling that an injusticehad been done her, retreated to her room and withdrew into herself.After seeing that she would need help in order to come to herself again,her mother finally asked her if she would like to help her bake a cake.Soon Susie and her mother were chatting happily together in the kitchendoing something that Susie loved to do whenever her mother had time tohelp her. During the course of their conversation, the mother had anopportunity to help Susie understand the situation that had upset her.As a result, Susie emerged out of the situation more mature andresourceful.

I once knew a bus driver who discovered that he, too, could call forthpeople by the way in which he greeted them and did business with them.On his morning runs he observed that many people were grumpy and sullen,and treated him and their fellow passengers discourteously. At first hisinclination was to respond in the same way. Then he discovered that bytaking the initiative and greeting his passengers with a smile andcordial word, and by making change cheerfully and being patient withtheir grumpiness, the spirit of his passengers underwent atransformation. Over the years a number of people told him how gratefulthey were for his good cheer. They said that his influence had oftenbeen decisive in their lives. It had affected their relations with otherpeople. Thus, his attitude toward people and his method of relatinghimself to them as a driver of a bus became his ministry; and since hewas a member of the church, the church’s ministry reached out and workedthrough that bus driver into the lives of many who may never have comeanywhere near the church. Through such relationships. God is present andactive in the world.

The relationship between man and man, therefore, not only is importantto men, but also is a part of God’s plan for the reconciliation of theworld unto Himself. It is given to us for our own sakes and also for theaccomplishment of God’s purposes. Unfortunately, however, our relatingto one another often is hurtful because of our anxiety and insecurity.We may attack others in order to make ourselves feel secure. Instead ofcalling them forth, we cause them to withdraw. Even when we undertake tolove others, we may do it in ways that hurt them, because we love themfor selfish reasons. Human relationships, in themselves, are ambiguous,

two feet taller than that glory of contemporary civilisation, a BritishGrenadier. This, of course, implies a very decent total of height andsize; but our own sperm whale frequently attains a good length ofseventy feet, while the rorquals often run up to eighty, ninety, andeven a hundred feet. We are thus fairly entitled to say that we have atleast one species of animal now living which, occasionally at any rate,equals in size the very biggest and most colossal form knowninferentially to geological science. Indeed when we consider theextraordinary compactness and rotundity of the modern cetaceans, ascompared with the tall limbs and straggling skeleton of the hugeJurassic deinosaurs, I am inclined to believe that the tonnage of adecent modern rorqual must positively exceed that of the giganticAtlantosaurus, the great lizard of the west, _in propria persona_. Idoubt, in short, whether even the solid thigh-bone of the deinosaurcould ever have supported the prodigious weight of a full-grown familyrazor-back whale. The mental picture of these unwieldy monsters hoppingcasually about, like Alice’s Gryphon in Tenniel’s famous sketch, orlike that still more parlous brute, the chortling Jabberwock, must beleft to the vivid imagination of the courteous reader, who may fill inthe details for himself as well as he is able.

If we turn from the particular comparison of selected specimens (alwaysan unfair method of judging) to the general aspect of our contemporaryfauna, I venture confidently to claim for our own existing human periodas fine a collection of big animals as any other ever exhibited on thisplanet by any one single rival epoch. Of course, if you are going tolump all the extinct monsters and horrors into one imaginary unifiedfauna, regardless of anachronisms, I have nothing more to say to you; Iwill candidly admit that there were more great men in all previousgenerations put together, from Homer to Dickens, from Agamemnon toWellington, than there are now existing in this last quarter of ourreally very respectable nineteenth century. But if you compare honestlyage with age, one at a time, I fearlessly maintain that, so far fromthere being any falling off in the average bigness of things generallyin these latter days, there are more big things now living than thereever were in any one single epoch, even of much longer duration than the’recent’ period.

I suppose we may fairly say, from the evidence before us, that therehave been two Augustan Ages of big animals in the history of ourearth–the Jurassic period, which was the zenith of the reptilian type,and the Pliocene, which was the zenith of the colossal terrestrialtertiary mammals. I say on purpose, ‘from the evidence before us,’because, as I shall go on to explain hereafter, I do not myself believethat any one age has much surpassed another in the general size of itsfauna, since the Permian Epoch at least; and where we do not getgeological evidence of the existence of big animals in any particulardeposit, we may take it for granted, I think, that that deposit was laiddown under conditions unfavourable to the preservation of the remains oflarge species. For example, the sediment now being accumulated at the

and we need deliverance from the ambiguity of them, for theserelationships can either destroy people or call them forth.

_Human Love Is Ambiguous_

Furthermore, because human love can be ambiguous, we do not know whetherit is safe to give and accept love. It is a risk both to love and toaccept love, and all of us, to some degree, are afraid to take the risk.Some people, to be sure, have more courage for it than others. They lovemore courageously, and are more courageous in their acceptance ofothers’ love. These people seem to have a power of being that otherslack.

The giving and receiving of love implies responsibility for one another,and we may withhold our love and reject the love of others as a way ofevading the responsibility of love. We are willing to love up to thepoint where it begins to be inconvenient to love any more. We like theimage of ourselves as loved and loving people, but we would like thebenefit without the responsibilities of the role. When the response toour love presents us with demands, we may begin to hold people off. Wemay say: “Yes, to be sure, I love you, but keep your distance. I amwilling to give of myself, but not too much. I need to keep something ofme for myself.” By this attitude we are admitting that when we loveanother we have to give ourselves to him, entrust ourselves to him.Commitment to another person is a courageous act, and it is no wonderthat we sometimes recoil from it.

What has been said about giving love is equally true of accepting love,for the acceptance of love also calls for trust and commitment. If Ireally respond to your love, I will open myself to the possibility ofbeing hurt because your love cannot be completely trusted. Furthermore,if you should really love me, I am not worthy of your love and I do notwelcome the judgment of me that is implicit in your love. I shall,therefore, make a cautious response to you and give myself to youguardedly. Then the person who is giving love is made lonely because hisgift is not accepted. He, too, begins to withdraw and to dole out hislove, which in turn increases the anxiety of the one to whom it is beinggiven. This is an aspect of human fellowship which we need to recognizebefore we talk much about Christian fellowship. Human fellowship is bothheroic and tragic; it is both renewing and destructive; it is bothhealing and hurtful, but it is indispensable to life. This is our humanpredicament.

Something is needed to cut into the ambiguity of human love. And this iswhat Christ does. He draws the confused currents of human love into theunifying stream of divine love, thus making possible a new relationship.As the apostle Paul makes clear, we become new creatures in Christ, andas such, a part of a new creation.[7]

bottom of the Caspian cannot possibly contain the bones of any creaturemuch larger than the Caspian seal, because there are no big speciesthere swimming; and yet that fact does not negative the existence inother places of whales, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes, and hippopotami.Nevertheless, we can only go upon the facts before us; and if we compareour existing fauna with the fauna of Jurassic and Pliocene times, weshall at any rate be putting it to the test of the severest competitionthat lies within our power under the actual circumstances.

In the Jurassic age there were undoubtedly a great many very bigreptiles. ‘A monstrous eft was of old the lord and master of earth: Forhim did his high sun flame and his river billowing ran: And he felthimself in his pride to be nature’s crowning race.’ There was theichthyosaurus, a fish-like marine lizard, familiar to us all from athousand reconstructions, with his long thin body, his strong flippers,his stumpy neck, and his huge pair of staring goggle eyes. Theichthyosaurus was certainly a most unpleasant creature to meet alone ina narrow strait on a dark night; but if it comes to actual measurement,the very biggest ichthyosaurian skeleton ever unearthed does not exceedtwenty-five feet from snout to tail. Now, this is an extremely decentsize for a reptile, as reptiles go; for the crocodile and alligator, thetwo biggest existing lizards, seldom attain an extreme length of sixteenfeet. But there are other reptiles now living that easily beat theichthyosaurus, such, for example, as the larger pythons or rock-snakes,which not infrequently reach to thirty feet, and measure round thewaist as much as a London alderman of the noblest proportions. Ofcourse, other Jurassic saurians easily beat this simple record. OurBritish Megalosaurus only extended twenty-five feet in length, andcarried weight not exceeding three tons; but, his rival Ceteosaurusstood ten feet high, and measured fifty feet from the tip of his snoutto the end of his tail; while the dimensions of Titanosaurus may bebriefly described as sixty feet by thirty, and those of Atlantosaurus asone hundred by thirty-two. Viewed as reptiles, we have certainly nothingat all to come up to these; but our cetaceans, as a group, show anassemblage of species which could very favourably compete with the wholelot of Jurassic saurians at any cattle show. Indeed, if it came totonnage, I believe a good blubbery right-whale could easily give pointsto any deinosaur that ever moved upon oolitic continents.

The great mammals of the Pliocene age, again, such as the deinotheriumand the mastodon, were also, in their way, very big things in livestock;but they scarcely exceeded the modern elephant, and by no means camenear the modern whales. A few colossal ruminants of the same periodcould have held their own well against our existing giraffes, elks, andbuffaloes; but, taking the group as a group, I don’t think there is anyreason to believe that it beat in general aspect the living fauna ofthis present age.

For few people ever really remember how very many big animals we stillpossess. We have the Indian and the African elephant, the hippopotamus,