Marriage Moats-Material World
Published: Fri, 02/25/11
| Marriage Moats | Caring for Marriage |
 There is a book called Material World that
fascinates me. The author, Peter Menzel, convinced families from 30
countries to put all their worldly belongings in their front yard so he
could take a photograph of them. Outrageous, but he did it. I love to
imagine the choppy conversations, using translators, where he described
his plan in such a way that they were willing to cooperate. One family
lived in a war zone and the photo includes armed guards. Another lived
in an apartment building and their furniture was suspended by a crane.
The family in Iceland had to scurry to do the job in the scant four
hours of daylight December offers there.
What appears is a rich depiction of the variety
in what we call families. There are people who drink from tin cans, and
ride broken bicycles. There are others who have more cars than people to
drive them, and couches as long as my house. The Japanese family of
four had 28 pairs of shoes, the Chinese one needed to guard the fish in
their pond night and day. The family from Uzbekistan had tall stacks of
colorful quilts, while the people from Bhutan owned more objects for
prayer than all their other possessions combined. The Argentine father's
primary concern was for safety, the Haitian one for climbing out of
poverty. A Mexican mother's prized possession was the family Bible, a
Vietnamese one, her children's health. What happens for me when I browse through the
pages, is a reshuffling of what I think a family must have. Clearly,
there are families with fewer belongings than me, who still find reasons
to laugh and celebrate. It places my opulence in sharp relief. Reading
this book has recalibrated my bearings. Families can survive, and even
prosper under widely disparate terms. Menzel does not suggest that some
families are better and others are worse. He simply invites us to see
the Big Picture.
I wonder what a book about thirty marriages from
around the world would look like. Some might describe themselves as good
working partners, harvesting the rice side by side. But talking about
feelings? What for? Other couples might be so focused on caring for
their children and chickens and aging parents there isn't any attention left to offer
their relationship. They may not pause long enough to be distressed
about it. Probably the family in Uzbekistan does not feel the need for a
garbage disposal to deal with food scraps any more than they do a
counselor to dispose of anxiety. They have goats, not therapists.
Certainly the couples in Mongolia and Guatemala have a list of
priorities that squeezes out personal preferences. Staying warm, feeding
the animals, and birth without death take precedence over relational
fulfillment.
Photo by Jenny Stein
www.caringformarriage.org
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