Monday, January 8, 2007

Pride & Prejudice...and Passion

January 8, 2007 - Monday
Current mood: impressed

She walks out into a foggy meadow at daybreak after a sleepless, troublesome night. As she is left alone with her thoughts, she gazes into the distance to see a mysterious, shadowy figure slowly and confidently approaching. The music swells as he comes into view. He walks straight for her, carrying the sunrise on his shoulders, his soft brown hair bouncing with each step.She peers into the fog wondering if this is a dream.
He is wearing the type of shirt one might expect from Fabio or some other man on the cover of a romance novel. It is made from white cotton with a V-neck, showing just enough chest hair to keep you interested. As he finally reaches her, the sun begins to bounce off of her wavy brown locks and he says, "You must know. Surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous to trifle with me. I believe you spoke with my aunt last night and it has taught me to hope...as I had scarcely allowed myself before.
If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I would have to tell you, you have bewitched me, body and soul. And I love, I love...I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on."
She tenderly steps toward him and grasps his hand in both of hers."Well then," she softly kisses his hand. It is the kind of kiss in which the lips barely graze the skin, yet the deepest, truest love is conveyed through the brief contact they make with his knuckles."Your hands are cold," she says.
The music swells even more and the sound of birds chirping in the morning sky fills the air. As they continue to stare into one another's eyes, the blazing orange sun can now be seen between their two faces. Rather than sharing in a long, passionate kiss, they simply place their foreheads together, close their eyes and enjoy this moment, for it is all they need to know they will be together forever.

On any ordinary day, cheesey, obnoxiously romantic dialog and a horrendously cliche setting such as this would cause my body to go into involuntary and violent convulsions followed by a severe and painful round of dry heaves.

But last night Pride & Prejudice revealed something to me that I had never seen before...or maybe I had seen it, but chosen to ignore it. Either way, I feel as though I have been awakened to a new thought.

Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett did not have a storybook romance. They struggled. They hated one another. They were terribly embarrassed around each other. They misunderstood. They were stubborn.

Prior to this scene, every encounter between the two of them had been filled with an awkward interaction. They stumbled over their words. They yelled at one another. They were disgusted with each other, yet they were alike in every way.

If I hadn't known the story before watching this film, I never would have thought the two of them would end up together. They (okay, bear with me because this is going to sound overly simplified and probably rather corny) were too prideful and too prejudiced to be able to see the potential for what would come.

Even in their rocky beginning one thing can be said about the tumultuous relationship between these two: they were passionate.

Every encounter between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth throughout the story is filled with passion, whether it is passionate fury, passionate disgust, passionate humor, passionate embarrasment, and eventually, passionate affection...passion was not something either of them was lacking for in terms of personality. Even their awkward encounters were filled with a strange sort of fervor and longing.

Watching this movie, yet again, has opened my eyes. Love is meant to be passionate.

Passionately patient, passionately kind, passionately humble, passionately selfless, passionately pleasant, passionately forgiving, passionately truthful, passionately protecting, passionately trusting, passionately hopeful, and passionately persevering.Love is not something to be taken lightly.

Love is an expression, an emotion, an action God provided us to express, emote, and act out with fervor. There is no room in love for half-heartedness. The proverbial "old college try" simply won't do. Love is something that requires all of our energy, all of our attention, all of our dilligence. Why do we throw the word "love" around so carlessly? I love hot dogs? I love Starbucks? I am the guiltiest one of all. I have oft been caught telling friends that I am madly in love with whomever happens to be my flavor of the week on television or in music or...whatever.

No wonder we go about love with lax and whimsical attitudes...we have over-used it, over-hyped it, over glamourized it, even over-romanticized it.

True, honest, passionate love requires the lover to be completely willing to dive into the grit and grime of human relationships. It begs for compassion and mercy when betrayal wins the battle over virtue. Passionate love demands a passionate forgiveness when we can't see ourselves as our lover does, and we lack the confidence to fully engage ourselves in that love relationship. Passionate love asks us to passionately confront our lover with the problems that need to be addressed, for passionate love knows that the passive-aggressive way of dealing with things leads to nothing but bitterness and resentment.

Passionate love makes us commit to strongly and deeply loving that person, even when we don't feel like it. It causes us to want to work through the dirt and the filth and the pain we bring each other and resurface stronger and more in love than ever before.

Does this longing for passion in any way negate my previous anti-romance rants-disguised-as-blogs? Not at all. I still don't want to fall whimsically, hopelessly, desperately and helplessly in love. I still don't want a man to come in and fix all of my problems and make me a whole person. I still don't think it's unbiblilcal for me to be a single woman who is waiting for God to bring someone to me. But when love does happen, I want it to be a passionate, real, authentic, gritty love.

I've never been married before. I don't have a boyfriend. I don't even have a date...so I could be all wrong about this whole love thing. Please, correct me and instruct me in the ways of love if you want to...I've got a lot to learn.And, okay, if I'm going to be terribly honest, that final scene in Pride & Prejudice, as much as I love that film, does leave me feeling a bit nauseated...just a little.