Buchman thought that discipline in marriage was no less necessary than discipline out of it. Nor did he think that married people should necessarily be any less mobile than when they were single. This sometimes led to long partings between husbands and wives, and even between parents and children. On occasion the partings were either wrong or too long. At the same time, if Buchman heard of illness, death in the family or some other domestic crisis, he would send word and finance to get a child, parent or partner on to the first plane home.

One of Buchman's closest colleagues relates how Buchman helped him to grow closer to his wife. 'I've been thinking of you,' Buchman told him one day. 'Aren't you still ruled by your mother's ideas?'

'Frank, she died ten years ago,' replied the man.

'I know that,' Buchman said. 'But her ideas of duty, a cramping something still holds you. It doesn't help your wife.'

The man goes on, 'We talked for an hour and next morning I told my wife about it. She broke into a paroxysm of tears. I couldn't comfort her. "I've known and felt it for years," she said finally. "It's blighted our marriage. Always comparing me with your mother, I always felt I was playing second place to her." It marked a new day for us.'

Buchman could be particularly vigorous towards strong women if he felt that they were trying to dominate other people or his work. He was apt, if one of his married male colleagues seemed subdued, to blame his wife, sometimes unjustly. In some cases these wives felt unable to approach him - and as he got older and more confined, this difficulty increased, leaving some uncertain where they stood and what to do.

Questions of relationships, inside and outside marriage, often came up at Buchman's training sessions with his teams, whether in the early days in Oxford, during the wartime stay in Tahoe, or later at Caux or Mackinac or elsewhere. Of one such occasion in Kashmir in 1953, Victor Sparre, the Norwegian artist, writes, 'For a whole week Buchman gave himself the task of opening our eyes to human nature. The essence of this teaching was that beneath our passions lies the will to control the world and dominate our fellow men. Even in our love life this will lies hidden. Through grace the act of love can be a creative act. But when self-gratification pushes aside the creative element, that love is only used for self-satisfaction and violence against others. The dictator states can be seen as the mass organisation of these perverted passions in individuals.'8

During these days in Kashmir Buchman spoke of the prerequisites of finding an openness to the spirit of God and of the joy of having it. 'He had noticed that some of us grew a little slack and flirtatious in those hard-working months in a hot, romantic country,' says Virginia Crary9 from California. 'He was sharp about it, knowing how such things could absorb one and make one insensitive to others - but he was understanding.' 'You girls on the whole are pretty fine,' he said to his young friends one morning. 'I would trust you anywhere. But when the boys are about...' 'You need something', he added, 'if you are going to change society.' Then he went on. 'You know, we have a wonderful Saviour. He has that amazing quality - he understands. He gets rid of every spot, no matter what it is.'

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Photo: Victor Sparre, Norwegian painter.
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