“So, when did the arrow strike?” It’s a question I sometimes ask couples about their encounter with Cupid. My probe draws immediate smiles framed within a variety of facial contortions. Most everyone remembers their “Cupid Moment,” when the mystical arrow draws two people together against their will.
Like with Tony and Maria in “West Side Story,” the arrow may have struck at a party, when one face suddenly arrests another face across the dance floor.
Or, it may have struck while skiing when you happen upon a fallen, disheveled “princess.” Her snow-dusted eyelashes and blonde locks framing her wet face leads to a fireside table.
Or, it may have struck within a chance-glance encounter through opposite sides of a revolving door —one going in seeing the other going out. The arrow’s power has done its work.
But, unfortunately, a shadow loiters about. For as potent as the arrow is, it has no power over fate. And while the stars align for Cupid’s targets, a couple’s destiny is a couple’s destiny.
Bliss lasts only as long as fate allows.
You may recall Gen. Marc Antony of Rome and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. They fall in love at first sight but suffer separations followed by tragedy. On a distant battlefield, Antony hears a false report of Cleopatra’s death and, in grief, falls on his sword. As legend tells it, when Cleopatra hears of Antony’s suicide, she took an Egyptian cobra to her breast.
Antony and Cleopatra’s love cut short by fate perhaps offered the stimulus for Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” When Romeo hears Juliet is dead, he drinks poison. But Juliet is not dead. When she wakes from an induced stupor to find her beloved dead Romeo, she thrusts a knife into her heart.
Unfortunately, tragedies like these happen a lot.
On Oct. 10, 2017, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported the story of a Montana woman who died in an avalanche. Though her boyfriend survived the slide, he couldn’t survive the heartache and took his life.
Not long ago, BlackDoctor.org reported the story of two teenage suicides. When he learned his 18-year-old girlfriend took her life in her college dorm room, her boyfriend, in uncontrolled grief, ended his life two days later.
And then there’s the USA Today story of an 11-year-old boy who read a prank text saying his 13-year-old girlfriend had taken her life. Shortly after, the stricken boy hanged himself.
The stories of Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, and of those above reflect the nature of destiny — of love cut short by fate.
Many of us have suffered similar things, except we choose to live with them. It’s the story of the soldier drafted to war who does not return. It’s the story of a lover lost to disease, or to a car accident, or to ambition or to another. Wherever we find love, we often find tragedy.
But Cupid doesn’t quit. He carries unlimited arrows and searches far and wide for targets of his fancy. He takes no thought of what might be. It’s the story of Valentine’s Day, of candles and lace, chocolates and roses, and of “be my valentine” invitations.
But it’s also the story of God, the source of love, whose nature is love.
Long ago and in a land far away, God betrothed Himself to the first two humans. Like Margery Williams’ “Velveteen Rabbit,” He loved them to pieces.
But, like love yesterday and today, it had no power against the dark force of fate. For, not long after God said, “I do” to his loving companions, for some reason they filed for divorce. He wept in grief; His angels, too. But He never forgot them, and He framed their pictures for His nightstand.
One day, He wrote them a letter. He told them He still loved them. He said He found a way to reverse fate’s sting and to reconcile their separation. He invited them to a party, complete with all their family, friends, singers, musicians, dinner, linen napkins and chocolate strawberries dropped into the finest deepest-colored homemade cabernet. He sent them an engraved invitation by His personal Messenger that read, “Be My Valentine.”
