A “Third Thing”

This concept has been bouncing around in my head for a number of years, with no memory where it came from.  I believe it was from some writer with a philosophical frame of reference.  However, over the last year, it has emerged as a guiding metaphor, initially in conversations with clients about the mystical nature of marriage.  It goes like this:

Marriage

A common ritual pattern is that two persons  (traditionally male and female) enter a sacred space, where a third person (an ‘officiant’) brings them together, and guides them in exchanging vows (i.e. sacred promises) to each other.  Whereupon the officiant speaks words like “I now pronounce you … and …”  In the old ways, these are known as “Words of Making” – a new thing is created – a “third thing” is spoken into existence, and then blessed, called a “Marriage.”  

Then follows two sub-rituals, 1) the blessing and ‘giving’ of a ring or rings “as a symbol of my vow…” and 2) the kiss.  This is, of course, not their first kiss, but their “first married kiss” — for ever now also a “symbol” of their marriage – carrying the energy of what was just created.  

There’s also a traditional third sub-ritual – 3) first married sex.  Many of us may recall a situation where the bride and groom are staying too long at the reception – there’s a subtle “Get out of here, go!”  By old tradition, the marriage ceremony isn’t complete till the “first married sex.”  There’s an old old sub-ritual where the mother of the Bride proudly displays “the bloody sheet” to those gathered, marking the completion of the Marriage Ceremony.  Everybody can now go home.

Again, in the ‘old ways’ the purpose of marriage is the ‘making’ of children.  It promises the future of the tribe.  In my old Iowa upbringing, it also meant “future workers for the farm” – working the land for the (future) feeding of the community.  

These days it doesn’t have to mean just making babies, someone mentioned it can mean “making furniture” – or other “gifts” for the larger community.

In the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer ritual, the service rises to heights in the Marriage Prayer, which begins with prayers for the couple, and through nine stanzas, broadens out to finally conclude with a great vision of “the bonds of our common humanity” uniting for a “perfect unity, now and forever…”  Then it concludes with the Blessing (holy sealing) of the Marriage.

In my active clergy days, I’ve always taken the time in preparing and counseling couples, to share the ritual pattern of this “third thing” – where one plus one equals three – then equals one.

A Simple Pattern

Let me expand on this. My simple pattern is One plus One = Three.  And then the Three can become a higher One.  The first One is a One of Desire.  The second One is a One of Creativity.

Some years ago I was studying the Creation Narratives of various cultures, and I found this pattern very common.  Where do we all come from?  Something was, but was inert – nothing emerged from it.  God (or a divine being) saw chaos or void. So God decided to do something, and so God spoke into it.  And the Created Universe emerged!

And so even today, that’s the pattern of lovers.  There is seeing (recognition), which leads to desire, which leads to language (words spoken), which leads to Creation.  One more step is it leads to worship – the name of God is spoken (in bedrooms!) – and a third thing emerges.

Couple Counseling

So much of my couple counseling is to encourage a conversation that reaches across and includes the other person, but then allows ‘third thing’ to emerge. One word that perhaps contains it is “Love” – or at least a mature loving, that can ‘hold each other’ higher.  Often it just ‘creeps up’ in the relationship.  And the ‘work’ of a marriage is to lovingly feed it. 

At first, “love” is desire (for more).  Then it learns to reach across.  Then it wants to do/create/make together – a “third thing is born”.  Then it wants to worship – the wholeness of a new oneness/unity/ – and then “all is One.”  The first One and the second One become an ecstasy, that is often the experience of sexual union.  This, in turn, can teach us, when our time runs out, to let it all go, and become One with the  Universe.

My own professional skill (if it were) is the “Talking” part.  To teach people to work within the creative mysteries of communication.

Eliza Doolittle (My Fair Lady),  “Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words, don’t talk of love, Show me!”  (One of my preacher father’s sermon openers.)

How to get it

Often when I’m explaining this, I’ll be asked, “How do I get it?”  What do I do?  

My definitive answer is, “You don’t get it by doing anything.”  It’s not something you can get by doing or ‘willing.’  It’s not an engineering accomplishment.  

Maybe I can best say it, that You can only achieve it by allowing it to happen. Maybe by not getting in its way.  Consider the phrase, “falling in love.”  [I’ve already used the concept of ‘love’ here.]  You get there by ‘collapsing’ into it – by letting go.

A road is carved through the wilderness,  and then you allow that road to take you somewhere.

Therapists will often work with their clients by helping them achieve a stronger Sense of Self.  Ideally this is accomplished early in life.  But a wise therapist knows this is only the first layer of a Life Journey.  The second layer of (a mature) sense of self is to offer it out in relationship.   

Relationship

Here “letting go” doesn’t have to be limited to just another person, or a group, or an idea.   But here is where the magic can happen.  A “third thing” emerges, almost on its own.  We don’t ask for it, and it’s almost as if at first we don’t even know it.  

And there are always some people among us that represent a “grace” – a non-selfish caring that often emerges from some special people in our midst. Like when grandmothers were venerated.  Elder wisdom.  That’s the “third thing” that I’m talking about.  People who carry and enable a  quiet hope for the rest of us.

A Danger

This phenomenon also has a dark side.  What’s the difference between the gifts of this “third thing” and a cult or an addiction?  I have two answers, and they are related.  

The first is that when a person in the earlier stages of development hasn’t formed a sufficient sense of Self, the Self can be hijacked or used by other forces, that (to use an overly simple phrase) are brought into the service of a ‘dark god’.  And the second answer is that the hallmark of dark gods is their hunger to divide and conquer.  Many religions and self-centered entities end up dividing the world into good and evil for the purpose of self-justification.  I’m good/saved as long as I can see/declare you as bad/damned.  (Like the two elderly plain-dressed ladies knocking on my door with a Bible or a tract in hand.)

Remember that a true “third thing” has the hallmark of “Unity” – bringing people and all things together. Democracy is people working together for the betterment of all.  People are paying attention to behaviors that poison the environment.  Remember when MAGA was supposed to bring people together?

  It’s long been easier to hate than to love.  I’m told that to smile takes more muscles than a frown.  Being raised as a pacifist, has made me uncomfortable these days with anybody in uniform wearing a sidearm.  I’ll more easily support firemen and first responders.  (You don’t hear of ‘rogue’ firemen.)

I’ve recently become more acquainted with the addiction community commonly called “Recovery” – a quiet “third thing” of sufficient power to wrestle down brutal addictions.  No guns, just love, support, and respect.

Government

I’ll close with a comment about government, since these days, especially, that’s an appropriate province for these considerations.  

Our primary national and state legislative pattern is that two (or more) bodies engage in spirited conversation (“across the aisle”), resulting in a higher order that is a code of wiser laws for the sake of “the People,” the larger population.  That higher order is a “third thing.”  Where that ‘spirited conversation’ is missing or aborted, the outcome is a brokenness that destroys unity, dis-order. That’s why our primary “unifying principle” is the United States Constitution – that higher order (third thing) to which each person in government swears commitment.  The primary disorders among us are the abuse of power, economic greed, and human degradation. (Each easily a personal addiction.) 

Wherever we make people (human beings) of lesser value than ourselves, we are poisoning the promise upon which our country was founded.  If we don’t like them, we ‘deport’ them. (Remember when we used to welcome them?)  I recall an old Pogo cartoon, with the words, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”  

I have hopes that we (or at least our children) will survive the current degradation of the social order and again trust that governmental genius that has been our venerated promise to the world.  It’s going to take a lot of work, but we’re still basically good people, hard-working, and generally optimistic.  

And I trust such an emergence of a “third thing” as the grace of that mythical phoenix that arises silently from these ashes.  May it be so, even in our time.

Pay Attention

Bill McDonald 

June 9, 2025