I told you I was ill

This might seem right off topic for some ,  but some of us have been really njoying the twists and turns of a man who used the English language well  and as well , taught us another language. Spike Milligan;
The language was Lurgi ( we are sick,  and we admit we are sick  but maybe we are not sure quite how to describe it . 

The story is complete in this . On his tombstone . I told you I was ill! "What a great symbol of a man who was not completely run over by the madness of lumbering logomachy that is our unfortunate  legacy. He bought confession, a desire for the truth and humor together 

The language of laughter:  Funny sic , funny ridiculous and funny blerrh
The language of survival  ( His and Cleese's book) Twist,  test and never accept the limits placed on words by mere pedants   Hooray!

The Mystery and Inspiration of Marriage

As Tevye would rightly say,  Marriage is truly God's idea......"but why , in your name,  did you have to make it so hard "? If there is a problem with marriage , as he meant it to be,  blame him ( that's what Teyve did in Fiddler on the Roof!)

Many young women of today would like an answer too! Their boyfriends( and themselves) are afraid to take the step into marriage .( I don't blame them . they have plenty to be fearful about )  Again follow the story before the song " Do you love me ?" .We are talking about the most popular musical of all time !

Marriage is like swimming-  you have to take the plunge . Its a matter of faith for all of us . If your marriage is,  like Tevye's,  a threesome,  its not as hard as it looks.  Infact it's a journey where the partnership is strong enough to endure anything and everything. Start it with a believer and you never know where you will go !

If men had their brain where they think it is, they would never get married . The idea of marriage is not something you would , in a completely rational moment buy into.  (Bernard Shaw was good at  making that point about "putting yourself into prison" in Pygmalion  but like many,   mistakenly reacted with no real alternative;  pretending to solve "others problems" but not his own .He convinced himself and many others it wasn't part of the best thing, so such is stupidity of mere rationale .It doesn't work for some combinations we know , but if everyone using excuses to not being committed to in the first place by many , everybody misses out. Shaw was a chicken and used his intellect to hide it.
Still we all know : A life sentence is shorter . Thankfully,  life lived , is more than we can see ...rationally .
For the first time since mum,  Mr Man is being told painful things . Things he " has to do" ;  things "he doesn't do" and when?  - the most painful of all ..."now"  .
As if that isn't enough, then come the children with their demands.  Even the best behaved couples  feel like killing each other in the process of trying to cope with the pain . As well as the pleasure of children there is the pain and more pain ( the pain of their arrogance and laziness and indiscipline the grief and the suffering . Marriage as God made it involves suffering. Scary ! Watch the movie - its easier and if you aren't defined as married - enjoy the children that you can hand back BUT are still part of your family !!!!!
"God  ....you tricked us!"  Tevye might have said It 's only because you gave us hormones that we buy in .
So the  faithful amongst us should not be surprised that an age which favors rationality above all else should fall for mere logic(How does it get  so high a status and so low a reward to even sell itself ?  ).Why do homosexuals want to have the pain or is the agenda something else? Why is the pleasure bit to the fore and the pain bit avoided.
Modern Aussie men  use this simple logic so well that  over a third of woman end up in hospital bearing children on their own . I can't work out why women don't go on strike for each other over this abortion of an impasse?
One of the reasons  maybe that non believers  have little faith in marriage and can't see the way forward. Many now don't believe in marriage because" the popular faith of our time" is a simple and blind faith in technology - "what works is kept and what doesn't is thrown out"  . The main problem with the currently popular idea of try it and see is that , unlike Teyve and his family, such people  don't choose to make a new home but choose to be constantly on the road .
Maybe we already bring too much personal baggage to any discussion about marriage, especially the always controversial issue of civil marriage .  I personally believe marriage is so personal that governments should stay out of it as much as they possibly can ( Marx Shaw and I agree ) Which is why Green labor shouldn't be trying to change the definition of marriage in Australia 2012. What would Trotsky and other thinkers think of such presumption by governments about defining closely what is deemed,  by most of us , to be the ultimate in matter of choice ?
The amazing thing is that even though the Divinyls know that "there is a fine line between pleasure an pain ", most unbelievers don't seem to get what this means for their own happiness.
You see , God at least is consistent here . No change of message . He promises that beyond the door of faith lies doors and windows to great adventure and opportunity. But if you don't open the door you won't know .

The faithless rationalist is promoting an indefensible intellectual position . You can't see everything just because you have eyes . Jesus explains it well in Matthew 5-7  The faithless rationalist is promoting an indefensible an unworkable and thoroughly impractical  position for real life .- a way to find your way through pleasure and pain .
Pleasure or Pain? Perhaps you can't just choose one like the Romans or the Russians did when they saw only pleasure and a way out of  promises at the beginning of the Russian Revolution .
Its unclear to me how the green left still argue for many wives or many lovers when only the aristocracy have been wealthy enough to afford that position for any length of time. Clearly the Russian history of experimentation has proved the idea unsustainable for society.    The myth of pleasure arguably brought down the once great family of the  Roman Empire with its unresolved rationales and vengeful  rates of  regicide , infanticide ,patricide , suicide and mere  murder.
What an adventure marriage and exercising self control can be for those who practice it . I didn't marry till I was 42 , so I remain somewhat open to advice . I used the energy within before marriage and commitment to share and play with children in my still huge family .( who needs to be married when you can hand them back!)  Many millions of single men and women throughout history have shared the wonder of marriage BY their wonderful support of marriage by supporting parents ( structure of oikonomia must be clear for people to walk in and out the door and still know where home is ) You don't have to be married to support marriage , but you need to know what it is , to even open its door  and know when to kick the kids out. The mystery and inspsiration of a good marriage means its not clear what the best looks like . The best definition of marriage is one whose confines are clear so that naysayers who are trying to refine  what's god from a bad marriage do not make it unclear to children,  in particular what can go wrong with this fine line between pleasure and pain .

The call to faith is a wonderful won because even when you only exercise a tiny bit of faith, you can find the promise of God to be true for you ; you can open doors you can't see through from the outside . You can truly celebrate the strength of the cord that looks like a frighteningly fine line between pleasure and pain .; that fine line that from a distance frighten and prevents people from ever taking a journey God himself can bless better than your mind could ever conceive . Go watch the film again and practice playing the tune.