It's the Relationship

In the 1992 presidential campaign: Clinton vs. H.W. Bush, Clinton strategist James Carville successfully coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid.” While I sincerely dislike Carville, it was a brilliant choice of words that most likely helped unseat Bush despite a 90 percent approval rating at the time due to an end of the Cold War and wise handling of the Persian Gulf War. Most of us don’t remember, but the country had recently undergone a recession. Clinton’s campaign drew a relationship between economy + Clinton = better and economy + Bush = bad. Note as you watch 2008 politics that this is not a new tactic. I don’t know if that is why so many people loved Bill or not. For me at 22, it was the saxophone and Arkansas accent. I was living in a sketchy but interesting neighborhood in Washington, DC at that time. Soon after the election, hoards of tragically hip “Clintonites” literally descended on our peaceful city and within months had ruined the atmosphere of all my favorite night life hang outs. That’s really another story though.
For the past few weeks, I have found myself whispering under breath, “it’s the relationship, stupid.” The turn of words in this phrase is sticky after all. I can’t help but think that this slogan might now be posted in the lunch room at Obama headquarters. I can’t say. My time following the political news consists of George Stephanopoulos’ two minute “Bottom Line” on GMA each morning. I didn’t even get those two minutes each day over the last week as I spent what seemed like 24/7 driving around Colorado. We did spend the first few days in sunny, surreal Southern California. If you have been there, the word surreal must surely have come to mind. The people, the flowers, the weather, and the beaches – they are all so beautiful in an airbrushed, surreal sort of way. “Dude” is the other word that you can’t avoid. Then, suddenly, I was jolted by the brown, snow capped, powerful, craggy, wind swept unique nature of Colorado. I had already forgotten that late April is winter’s last hurrah. In one day, I drove from Dolores to Grand Junction to Craig – about eight hours driving time. High desert to serious desert to desolate, I hate people sort of beauty respectively. There’s a 20 mile winding, wind ravaged, people-less stretch of road called the “death highway” between Meeker and Craig. It looks like an ungulate battle zone. About every 100 feet there’s a bloated, mangled deer or elk carcass lying barely off the pavement. Crows hop up from dining when you pass by. They are too stuffed to fly. On Friday, Maggie and I traveled for 16 hours to get home around 3:00 AM. I stared out my kitchen window through swollen eyes around 10:00 AM that morning. I exhaled, finally. The green was so soothing. The two enormous pin oaks in my yard had leafed out over the last nine days creating a fairyland, Teribithia effect. The greens were broken only by a white flowering dogwood with a male cardinal on a low branch. There was no wind here in North Carolina, so I could hear a chorus of birds singing away.
Again, I whispered “it’s the relationship.” As humans, whether we want to admit it or not, we are driven and bound by relationships to the environment both built and natural, to each other and to our maker, if we want. Who we are determines what environment we relate to or escape to and for some of us we relate to different environments based on what sort of turn we are in the midst of. For a couple of days after the trip, I was overcome by a sadness. Then I began to see and touch base with the people in my life. Maggie and I resumed our schedule which involves walks around the pond and vineyard, play together instead of white knuckle races to the airport or caffeine and toothpicks to hold our eyes open for 8 hours in the car.
This morning around 5:30 AM I watched the shadow of sadness disappear behind an open door. “What is it,” I thought. “Oh, it’s the relationship,” I remembered one more time. Don’t forget, we never really grow or enjoy life or capture a sense of the divine without good relationships. Sure, we have all stood alone and gotten goose bumps from a sunset or sunrise or whatever, but I bet even the staunchest of introverts can’t sustain that good vibe without some dose of positive human contact. I think clinical depression is the result of sadness left unremedied by human relationship. I can’t help but believe that the apostle John was sort of saying, “It’s the relationship, stupid” in an old world sort of way when he wrote, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us…..(1 John 4:12).” The relationship is where we most often sense that power, that love. Isn’t that what is means to say “God is love?” He is love meaning that when we love each other there he is as well.