Dialogues with Jen. Donald R. Fletcher

      Dialogues with Jen

      On Issues of Daily Living

      Copyright © 2018 Donald R. Fletcher. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-5107-6

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5108-3

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5109-0

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. September 24, 2018

      To swimmers in life’s river,

      unwilling just to be swept along

      by the current.

      Acknowledgments

      As often happens with writers, one book begets another. My Dialogues with Jay: On Life and Afterlife, based freely on the pattern of Plato’s Dialogues, saw five friends, representing three generations, come together to talk about a major theme. Here they are again, except that Jay, their leader, is replaced by Jennifer—Jen, and that they grapple now with some urgent situations of daily living.

      I have drawn on experiences of family and friends, never with personal reference nor details, and on news of the world we all share. My aim is to be relevant, without being personally specific.

      In the preparation of this book, as with several previous manuscripts, I have depended on my daughter Sylvia Fletcher, through many hours and days, for suggestions, corrections, and patient help. And, in addition, I have, again, availed myself of the counsel of my literary advisor Roger Williams, of Washington, DC.

      Donald R. Fletcher

      Lions Gate

      Voorhees, New Jersey

      April 15, 2018

      Dialogue I

      I wasn’t sure I wanted to go in.

      Light poured down the front steps and across the driveway. The windows were full of light, of voices and moving shapes. A couple of the windows, set open, let it spill into the dark, an unusually warm and velvet dark for early October. The whole scene at Luc’s house—my long-time friend, Lucas—was bright and welcoming, but I wasn’t sure.

      “Go on in.” That was Jay’s voice in my head.

      Right! He’d have been glad to be here. I went quickly up the steps.

      Inside, there was the noise and bustle of more people than I had expected. Luc’s daughter, Beth, was there, of course, and her friend Ian, whom I knew, along with quite a number of their friends. I was looking around for people I knew from my age group when Luc came up, bringing one of the guests.

      “Don,” he said, “I want you to meet Jen—Jennifer—a younger friend of Jay.”

      She laughed at the designation. “Not so much younger,” she said, “but proud to be associated with his name in any way I can.”

      She was rather tall, for a woman of her generation, and I was struck by her penetrating gray eyes. When she spoke, her voice was strong, though carefully modulated.

      I was happy to chat with Jen—Jennifer. Her name, as she told me, was a Cornish form of the Welsh appellation that became Guinevere. That lent it an aura, and it also was good to know that Jen’s friendship with Jay went back quite a few years. It had been only weeks, that evening, since Jay had died, and his strong, serene spirit seemed to be there. I remarked on that, and Jen smiled.

      It was about then that Luc rang on his glass with a spoon until all conversation ebbed.

      “Beth has a word for us,” he said.

      Beth stepped forward, with Ian beside her. Her face glowed, and she spoke clearly: “Ian and I want to share with you that we are going to be married. We are working on wedding plans, and you will all receive invitations. But for now, we just want to share our happy news.”

      There was an immediate din of exclamations, embraces, and all of that. It was later, as people were beginning to leave, that Jen drew me aside.

      “I know something about the conversations Jay had with you and Luc, Beth, and Ian. They meant a lot to him. Maybe you’d like to get together again. I’m offering my place—not that I would try to continue where he left off, but to take up other ideas that touch us all. I’d propose a focus on some acute issues of daily living, while keeping, always, a spiritual dimension.”

      Jen’s frank invitation appealed to me.

      “Yes,” I said. “I’d like that, and I think the others would, too.”

      “Good.” Jen plainly had thought this through. She added, “And for a topic, building on this evening, we might like to reflect on Romantic Love.”

      That was all at that time, and it was enough. I learned from Luc that Jen lived alone, as a retired middle-school English teacher. Her husband had died rather young, and there were no children. It was three weeks later, on a Sunday afternoon in late October, that the other four of us gathered on the porch of Jen’s home. It was distinctly old-style suburban, with a wide porch that ran across the front of the house and down one side. We were glad to go inside as a chill breeze was coming up, and I was pleased to see a couple of small logs—real, home-style firewood—burning in the fieldstone fireplace at one side. There were comfortable chairs, not pre-arranged but easily drawn together.

      After a bit of small talk we seemed, all of us, quite content to let some moments of reflective silence float in the late-afternoon sunlight filtering from outside. Then Jen began:

      “I’m the new one in this group, and probably we’re all thinking of our dear and admired friend Jay; but you’ve done me the favor of coming to my home, so I’ll venture to propose a theme. Actually, I’ll reiterate the one Beth and Ian gave us at that delightful gathering when you announced your engagement: what is romantic love, this kind of force between a woman and a man? Let’s think about that.”

      She stopped, seeming ready to let anyone else come in. When none of us did, she went on.

      “From a purely physical point of view, one can say that it’s a matter of hormones. This is something that happens between a male and a female of our species, a function of the evolution of the reproductive glands that we carry. Luc, as a scientist, probably you can speak best to that.”

      Luc shrugged, saying, “I’ll defer to you. You brought it up, so I’m sure you have further thoughts along that line.”

      “All right,” Jen said. “As a lay person, I’ll just start by observing that at the center of survival of any form of life is its reproduction. For a wide range of species, from simple to complex, this means some kind of union, of coming together of female and male, that generally has evolved in a rhythm of ovulation and fertilization. And that’s where hormones come in. Such a rhythm, as we move up the scale of complexity, is prompted and controlled by hormones, the chemical substances that reproductive glands secrete.

      “I have no expertise to carry that analysis further, and likely don’t need to. What I find relevant, as we’re talking about romantic love, is that the union of female and male, necessary for procreation, opens up a whole panorama of fascinating behaviors.”

      “It really