Love and memory

The Anchoress comments on and links to an absorbing post by neo-neocon which looks at the story of Clive Wearing, who lost his long-term memory to a bout with encephalitis. His wife left him for a time, then returned:

I realised that we are not just brain and processes. Clive had lost all that and yet he was still Clive. Even when we didn’t see one another, when we were six months apart and only spoke on the telephone, nothing had changed. Even when he was at his worst, most acute state, he still had that huge overwhelming love … for me. That was what survived when everything else was taken away.

The Anchoress says,

Read the whole thing and marvel in the miracle of love. And think about how for the world, “marriage” has become less a sacrament and more of a social contract. And yet “the two shall become one flesh…”

Sometimes people ask me why the Catholic church allows annullment - it all seems like a “pay as you exit” scheme to them. But there is a supernatural element, completely spiritual, that should exist within marriage, and if it is not being admitted into the marriage (or not being entered into by the couple) well, perhaps then the marriage itself never did “exist,” except on paper.

Somethings truly are in the stars.

Indeed.