Ah, you see, we work from a false hypothesis. We are so concerned with the many things on the _outside_ that we lose sight of _inside truths_.
_Take your husband"s nearness for granted_. Be not troubled over the many things of appearance. _Have faith in him_. If there is any "drawing nearer" to be done see that _you_ draw near to him _in faith and love_.
Instead of mentally or verbally sitting down on his motives, words or acts, _try to feel as he does, that you may understand him_.
AS WE GEOW IN UNDERSTANDING OF ANOTHER WE GROW IN LOVE AND REALIZATION OF OUR NEARNESS TO THAT ONE. _In proportion as we dislike or are repelled by any person_ OR HIS ACTIONS, _in that proportion we fail to understand him_.
As one human being is revealed to another the sense of nearness grows.
Now do you imagine that distrust and censure will help a soul reveal itself? Of course not. But if you can be comfortable and indulgent to a man, and especially if you can cultivate a real admiring confidence in him, he will unfold his very heart of hearts to you. It is _you_ who must come near in faith and love, if you would find your husband near to you.
To sum up:
1. You and your husband ARE close together--so close you are _One_.
_2_. If you would _feel_ the truth of this you must come to your husband in faith-full love, and you _must not allow yourself_ to condemn or judge, verbally or mentally, his revelations of himself. You must vibrate _with_ him where you can, and _keep still in faith_ where you can"t understand him and meet him.
3. You must persist in thus doing, until faith and love and understanding become the habit of your life.
4. The same rules apply if you would feel your nearness to any other person, _or to all persons_.
Every man is in embryo a good and thoughtful and loving husband. A wise wife will give him the loving, full-of-faith, appreciative atmosphere which encourages development.
"We are all just as good as we know how to be, and as bad as we dare be." _And we are all growing better_. Why not chant the beauties of the good instead of imagining it our "duty" to eternally bark against the bad?
It is said there cannot be a model husband without a model wife, and _vice versa_. True. Then if yours is not a model husband _don"t a.s.sume that you are a model wife fitted to judge and admonish him_.
Be still and get acquainted with him.
Make it your _first_ object in life to cultivate a serene and faith-full heart and aura.
As a means toward this end cultivate a _full_ appreciation of whatever and whoever comes near you. Cultivate the spirit of praise; and _trust_ where you cannot see.
Second, take _good_ care of your body and personal appearance. Allow plenty of time for bathing, caring for your hair, nails, teeth, and clothing. Wear plain clothes if need be, but DON"T wear soiled or ragged ones. And don"t ever put a pin where a hook or b.u.t.ton ought to be. No man can continue to love a woman who is slatternly.
Third, allow at least an hour _every_ day for reading and meditating on new thought lines, _and for going into the silence. Let nothing rob you of this hour, for of it will come wisdom, love and power to meet the work and trials of all other hours. Remember the parable of the ten virgins and take this hour for filling your lamp, that you be ready for the Unexpected. Only in such hours can you lay up love, wisdom and power which will enable you to make the best of the other hours. Let not outward things rob you of your source of power_.
Fourth, unless you wish to fall behind the world"s procession see that you spend some time every day in reading the best magazines and newspapers, taking pains to skip most of the criminal news. Read optimistically and cultivate a quick eye for all the good things. Take the _best_ magazines even if you have to leave feathers off your hat and desserts off your table. If you can find an _interesting_ literary club it might be well to join it and do your part of the work. But see that you do not _rob_ the Peter of your energies to pay the Paul of club ambitions.
And fifthly comes your housework. This is the juggernaut department which grinds many a woman to skin and bones--and her husband discards the remains! When it comes to housekeeping a woman has need of all the love, wisdom and power she can muster in her hours of silence. Even a five room flat or cottage is more than one woman can keep _spotless_ and allow time for anything else. Many things _must_ be left undone. The wise woman simplifies to the last degree compatible with comfort.
Useless bric-a-brac is dispensed with. "Not how much but _how good_," is her rule when buying. A few good things _kept in place_, are better than a clutter of flimsy things which pander only to an uncultured esthetic taste--and make work. _Order_ is the wise woman"s first law in housekeeping; cleanliness her second, which is like unto the first in importance. She lets extra rooms, furniture and fallals go _until she can pay well to have them cared for_. The same rule obtains in her kitchen and her personal dress.
The wise woman thinks of comfort and allows time for the _joys_ of life, wherefore _all_ her life is a pleasure.
The foolish woman is ground under the wheels of routine. To her, housework is a stern "duty" which comes _first_, and to which body, mind, personal appearance, happiness, the joy of living, all must be sacrificed.
Lastly, firstly, and all the time, the wise woman is guided in what to do and in what to leave undone, by the Spirit of Love; whilst the foolish woman is guided by the Spirit of Appearances.
Note the order in which I have written these needs of life; an exact reversal of the usual order. Housework _last_, and the Spirit of Comfort first. The tendency of every woman is to lose _herself_ in troubling over the many things of her household. If she would be happy, useful, young and growing she MUST turn her life the other side up.
The best way to begin, the only successful way so far as I know, is by MAKING time for the hour of reading and meditation and silence. She must _take_ the time, by sheer force of will--take it until it grows into a habit which _takes her_. Out of this hour will come first peace and self-control; and gradually she will find unfolding out of this peace and control, the wisdom to know what to do, and how; and what _not_ to do. From this unfolding comes the ONLY power which can make new thought practical to the individual case.
Are you satisfied with yourself and your condition? Then pursue your old ways.
Are you dissatisfied with yourself and surroundings? _In order to change them_ YOU _must change_--_that which was first with you must become last_ AND THE LAST MUST BE FIRST.
Be still and know the I AM G.o.d of you; and, lo, all _things_ shall be added. But the _things_ must be last, not first.
Seek ye _first_ the kingdom of Good in yourself, _and to be right with it_; and all things shall be added. All things shall be added to YOU, not to _other things_.
Be still until you find yourself--your wise, loving, joy-giving Self which dwells in the silence and is able to do whatsoever you desire.
CHAPTER VI.
MARRIAGE CONTRACTS.
"That article of yours, "So Near and Yet So Far," has worried me to an extent I am ashamed of. To my "judgment" that article is disingenuous.
It is not so much that you jumped on that poor soul with hob-nailed shoes, but that you formulated the "jump" quite as the husband might have done. That is, if _she_ would repent and change her course, she would soon find that _he_ was all right, and--inferentially--all the trouble was of her making. Not one word on the other side! You even quote your own experience _against_ her. My dear, _did_ you really find that your "trouble" was of your own making, and _did_ you really change ANYTHING except your own amount of distress during the process of disintegration? Marriage is the only contract which society does not promptly admit to be broken when either party refuses to fulfill his obligations--as agreed to. And in view of the custom of ages, and the instinct in woman formed by such custom (when instinct makes the establishing of Individuality the _very_ hardest thing in life for a generous woman), I think that your implication against the woman, trying with all the light she"s _got_ to keep her side of that very one-sided contract is simply--cruel! I wish I could get at that girl and tell her that her _only_ chance for happiness is through the paradox "Whoso _will_ not lose his life _cannot_ find it." Whoso will not "let go" of the love which his five per cent judgment claims as his only _righteous_ chance, cannot inherit that which the ninety-five per cent would attract if the five per cent were "offered up" to the spirit. This is the first time I have ever disagreed with your point of view." Jane.
That article, "So Near and Yet So Far," has brought forth volumes of comment, most of it highly favorable, and nearly all of it from women themselves. But among the writers were three critics, and among the critics one of the brightest women I know, whose letter appears above.
And she says that article is to her disingenuous. Of course it is, for she has not yet arrived at the point of _giving up her own way_. She is still a Pharisee of the Pharisees--on the surface. She is proud; she _knows_ she has done her best to bring things right--according to her judgment of right; and she _does hate_ to acknowledge her foolishness!
She will "hold fast her own integrity" as long as there is a shred of it left! Don"t I know? Didn"t I do exactly the same thing? Of course. But the pressure of the great spirit of love, wisdom, justice, was too much for me; I _had_ to give up my judgment; I _had_ to acknowledge that there _must_ be the same spirit expressing in my husband"s judgment; I _had_ to let go, be still and get at _his_ point of view. Jane, too, will have to do it. And the fact that that article "worried her to an extent she is ashamed of," is the proof. When Truth presses her point we worry until we can hold out no longer; then we give in.
One of the other two critics writes that over that article she "shed the first tears in over seven years." Then she asks me if I don"t think I was a "little hard on the Taurus woman," and goes on to reveal plainly that her tears were those of _self-pity._ Don"t I know? Haven"t I shed quarts of such tears? Of course. But not more than an ounce or two were shed after I gave up my own way. But this second critic is arriving just as I did, and as Jane will--arriving all unconsciously to herself. Her letter sounds like a chapter from my own thinking of a dozen years ago.
She gives a bird"s eye view of her husband--no, of her husband"s _faults_; she tells how she reads new thought literature on the sly--just as I did; and she winds up with this _piece_ of good advice:
"I will say to such, live your own life as G.o.d intended you to, regardless of the fact of your husband. Be brave, hope, will and pray.
Dress, look sweet. If your husband tells you he doesn"t care how you look but to not come near him with your foolishness, as mine does, why, let him live his life in his own way, make home attractive for your own sake, read good books; and in time books will be your chum."
The third critic, too, is full of self-pity, though she does not mention her tears; and her letter is a long portrait of her husband"s faults.
She wants a little encouragement to leave him, but she is afraid he will go to the dogs if she does. So, like a generous woman, she sticks to him and makes the best (?) of a bad bargain.
Jane says my article was "cruel." Dearie, it was--as the surgeon"s knife is cruel. But it is the truth, and it hurts but to make way for healing.
The woman who blames has in her eye something worse than a cataract.
The woman who sheds tears over her "fate" is moved by the "meanest of emotions." She attracts "cruelty," not only from that article, _but from her husband._
It takes _two_ to quarrel, _and either one can stop it_. It takes _two_ to maintain "strained relations," and _either one can ease the strain_.
The principles I tried to elucidate in that article are as applicable to a man as to a woman. But it was a woman, a Taurus woman, who asked me; therefore I talked straight to her. And _I_ am a Taurus woman who has been through the same mill; and I wrote not from a hardened heart but from one made tender by experience and the Spirit of Truth. My point of view "might have been the husband"s" _if_ the husband had been an unusually just one. And I must say the husband"s point of view is more apt to be _just_, than the wife"s; for the reason that a woman is more apt to be blinded by _emotional self-interest._ In proportion as man or woman is ruled by emotion his judgment is distorted. _As a rule man"s judgment_ is straighter than a woman"s. But judgment is a shallow thing, based upon _already revealed facts._ Woman"s intuition goes to the heart of things and flashes facts into revelation. Women as a rule _see farther_, but are apt to misjudge what is _close at hand._ Only as man wakes in woman and woman in man do right judgment and love commune. Why not judge with the husband, as I _feel_ with the wife? Is any man _totally_ depraved?
Jane feels abused because she thinks _I_ think that in family strains the woman is more at fault. _In a sense_ I do. _Women cannot only make and unmake empires but they DO make or fail to make harmony_ _at home_.
Why, men with all their power are mere rag babies in the hands of women of _tact_. Women are the _real_ power in the world--the power behind the throne. If only they would develop that particular kind of power instead of coming around in front of the throne to lay down the law!--instead of measuring their _man_-strength against man. Real _woman_-strength will move the most stubborn of men. If I "blame" the woman _(I blame neither, any more than I blame a child for childishness)_ it is because _I know she is the ruling power_. Her responsibility is determined by her real power.
And above all a Taurus woman may rule her home--_and does_. Either she rules by force--for she has more than her share of the man in her--and makes war and trouble for herself and others; or she learns her lesson and rules by _loving tact_; in which case her husband rises up and calls her _blessed_. The _woman who knows and rules herself_ is the woman of Proverbs x.x.xI, 10th to 31st verses. Her husband is honored among men _because he is honored at home_; and because he is honored he _lives up to it_. Why, girls, you hold your husband"s destiny in the hollow of your hand, in a far greater sense than any man holds a woman"s.
But as I said before, _it takes two to make an unhappy home and either one can bring harmony out of discord._ Any ordinary woman can do it _if she will_. And any extraordinary man can do it quite as well as an ordinary woman.