Valentine’s Day Revisited

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Thanks to WikiPedia for the following introduction:

February 14 is celebrated as St Valentine’s Day in various Christian denominations; it has, for example, the rank of ‘commemoration’ in the calendar of saints in the Anglican Communion. In addition, the feast day of Saint Valentine is also given in the calendar of saints of the Lutheran Church. However, in the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, the feast day of Saint Valentine on February 14 was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to particular (local or even national) calendars for the following reason: “Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14.”

Seems there may have been several St. Valentines, at least one of whom was of some low character. The Church, choosing safe over sorry, has given St. Valentine, all three of him, the boot. Not damaging in any way the onslaught of red-colored confections and fru-fru parked in the center aisles of better discount, drug and department stores near you.

Once again, we Christians have managed to turn what was once a religious feast day into a secular selling opportunity. In the process, we routinely substitute grasping for short-term pleasure for seeking lasting happiness. Marketing types endeavor to raise everyone’s expectations, and we approach February 14th with credit cards extended, to ward off any hint of mediocrity or penury in outward displays of monetized affection we tend not to duplicate for another 365 days. Your basic flash in the pan.

Whether it’s on the calendar or not, Valentine’s Day is, in my opinion, another opportunity to affirm for your spouse that you will love him or her forever, that you are glad you married him or her, and that you would happily marry him or her again on most days.

Heading toward our 38th anniversary, Nancy and I don’t go overboard in celebrating most holidays. We are staring retirement in the face, and big displays of what is fairly obvious anyway only serve to put the day when we no longer have to make the daily trudge that much farther away. Christmas and Easter are still big, but Labor Day–not so much.

On most holidays, a bunch of roses from Costco is received as nicely as an FTD delivery and at a third of the price. A plate of salmon on Friday night is virtually indistinguishable from one on Thursday night when we’re busy anyway. Any intra-marital competition is limited to who can find the funnier card. With joint bank accounts, ostentatious gift-giving is a little silly anyway. “Here’s your fabulous gift, darling, and here’s the bill!! Happy Valentine’s Day!”

My new favorite cliche is, “The best things in life aren’t things.” If you want to talk about gifts that keep on giving, talk about the spouse who keeps The Four Horsemen out of your marriage. The spouse who offers to get up early with the kids while you sleep in on a Saturday. The spouse who shows your son how to ride a two-wheeler and your daughter how to bait a hook. The spouse who does so many things around the house without being asked, or expecting to be thanked. The spouse who cleaved to you to create a family, with whom you can be Nanny and PopPop, watching your kids building families of their own, and who will join with you again to envision the families those grandchildren will have someday. All linked inexorably to two people–in our case, a couple of old hippies who met by accident and quickly sensed a connection that will ultimately have led to generations of descendants. Many of whom will have myopia and teenage acne.

In accordance with God’s will.

Though it saddens me to see how a number of my bad qualities have passed on to my children, and are likely to get passed along again, it is a gift to see them working to be effective parents and good wives, as all three of ours are girls. They all married well, and that, too, is a gift from God. These gifts–gifts of serenity, gifts of progeny, gifts of patience and affection and comfort–these are the gifts that experienced Valentine’s Day celebrants look for.

The fru-fru and chocolates can stay right where they are.

Love for the Long Haul, by Susan Vogt

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Bruce Allen

This is a find from Gary Galvin, who posted the link to this nice article on Twitter yesterday.

Susan Vogt is a freelance speaker and writer on marriage, parenting and spirituality (www.SusanVogt.net). She and her husband of 35+ years, Jim, live in Covington, Kentucky. They have four adult children. She is the author of Raising Kids Who Will Make a Difference and Just Family Nights. Susan advised the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Marriage and Family (2000-2002) and is content editor for their For Your Marriage Web site.

Enjoy these ten tips for a long, loving marriage. Here’s a taste:

“Successful marriage is not so much a matter of finding the right person but being the right person. There are probably quite a few potential partners with whom an individual could be happy. The challenge is knowing when to bend and change yourself versus when to stand up for yourself. It takes a pretty flexible pair of people to make this dance work. Love is essential but not sufficient.”

Be Prepared

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Matthew 25:13: Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

As married couples playing the back nine of life, it becomes easy to take each other for granted. She’s been here for thirty-some years, she’ll probably stay. We find ourselves living in what might be called a state of peaceful co-existence, sharing tasks, drama-free. Connected emotionally and physically in a global sense, but not always on a daily basis. This is risky business, when you live with someone you love, because, as St. Matthew warns us, you never know…

Think about how you and your spouse said goodbye to one another today, or yesterday. Would you want that exchange to be the last one the two of you ever had? One that you could sit and reflect upon for the next few decades. Those of you who may have lost someone close to you without getting a chance to say goodbye know what I mean. The rest of you need to pray you don’t find out, and take steps to avoid finding out sooner rather than later.

1 John 2:28: And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.

How you practice is how you play; this is what sports coaches have been telling kids for centuries. When it comes to marriage, to executing the finer points of marriage, we are called to engage in daily behaviors that will help us avoid years of regret, and which could possibly cost us a trip to salvation.

We must be prepared.

We must make an effort every day to tell our spouse he or she is loved and safe and appreciated. We must make it a daily habit to kiss our spouses at least twice. Like we mean it, none of these air kisses or little annoying pecks. Real kisses. As if you might never see one another again.

We must have a clean heart and a clear conscience, with the sacrament of reconciliation still within its use-by date. We need to take care of business when it comes to finances, in the event we are called unexpectedly. If your retirement plan falls apart if someone dies, it’s not a retirement plan. The idea is to let the surviving partner “stay in his or her world.” financially. If you don’t know how to do this, make an appointment with someone who does. Today.

We must be prepared.

1 Corinthians 15:52: In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

If you believe in the second coming, and if you didn’t you probably wouldn’t be reading this, you know it will arrive with no warning. There will be no do-overs. For me, one of the frightening aspects of all this is the fear of leaving things unsaid with Nancy and my family. I, we, must resolve to have those conversations, to write those letters, to leave nothing unsaid. Men, especially, need to pray about this, in that we generally don’t discuss our feelings as readily as do our wives.

The events of September 11, 2001 played a part in my conversion story. If you’re having trouble understanding this ‘ be prepared” stuff, just think about the sensations experienced by the husbands, wives, children and parents, and brothers and sisters of the men and women who lost their lives that day. Out of a clear, crystal blue sky. On a day like any other. With little or no warning. Think of the husbands and wives who failed to kiss each other goodbye that morning, or who went to bed mad the night before and he was gone before she awoke in the morning, and so on.

We must be prepared. To avoid a life of regret on earth, and an eternity of anguish.

John 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

We know that what awaits us will be, assuming things work out, infinitely better than the short, generally brutish life most people experience during our time on earth. With the gift of free will, we can choose to ensure that things do, in fact, work out. By consciously and conscientiously practicing our faith. By consciously trying to remain as affectionate as possible with our spouse, in celebration of the fine old wine you’ve become. By giving to the poor and sharing with those less fortunate than ourselves. By counting our blessings. And by leaving nothing unsaid with the people we love.

Because you never know.

The Economics of Marriage

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Posted by Christine Burrows 1/9/2013

My kids’ 10th grade economics teacher, Bonnie Kelley, taught that economics isn’t about money. Rather, it’s about choices.

She was referring to setting priorities based upon a person’s, or a business’, or a government’s earnings, and making spending choices that reflect those priorities. Based on the premise that you can’t have it all, economics is about picking between those things or opportunities you CAN have. Or, as academics say, the artful allocation of scarce resources.

This task of prioritizing how to earn and allocate income is a daunting task for large entities – witness the Federal Government. It’s daunting for individuals – witness our college daughter during her first semester in college. So, why should it to be any less difficult for two adults in a marriage?

When we were first married, Peter owned a car and a house and had almost finished paying off his student loans. I had a small student loan and no other debt. We both had full-time jobs in our fields. We were flush. It feels like we’ve never had as much money as we had back then.

So, what did we do? Buy a bigger house! Between the time we qualified for the house on our combined income and moved into it, we took some major hits – Peter took a 20% pay cut, and I quit my teaching job and didn’t find another real position for another year. Suddenly, we were in our big new house, living on about 50% of what we had qualified on.

Macaroni and cheese and Gin Rummy were staples for our Friday nights. They were good times… not really. It was downright tough. But in retrospect, it was an important time in our marriage. We had to figure out our priorities: making the mortgage payment, maintaining cars, meeting basic physical needs were the basics. The extras, like going out? Decorating the home? Saving for a rainy day? These required choices, and took some serious conversations. At times, I thought a new pair of shoes was the best use of our money. (Or, maybe, I just wanted some new shoes, and, like a child, was unwilling to accept the pain of not getting what I wanted!)

Basic application: If we are not rich, and most folks aren’t, we must accept that there will be things we just can’t have!

Higher level application: If a married couple accepts that they can’t have it all, they agree to share in both the pleasures and the disappointments that come from not being able to have everything they want. Even steven.

Herein lies the key to the economics of marriage – you just can’t have it all (or at least most of us can’t). So, when you’re trimming back from ALL, what gets trimmed? Doing the trimming together is tough, but ultimately more genuine when you reach those decisions together, if not completely. Learning how to defer gratification in your youth will shower rewards upon you later in your lives.

This is hard stuff – no getting around it. But, isn’t it the right thing? As compared to, say, running up a bunch of credit cards and crying when the mail comes each day? When making sacrifices together, they are a little easier. Reaching these agreements peacefully is an art form that develops over years.

Let me say this: I don’t really like macaroni and cheese. I laugh when I think about the rummy games from those early days in our marriage. But I can’t remember a single pair of shoes I bought back then.

Make Your Marriage a (good) Habit

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Bruce Allen

Posted by Christine Burrows

Peter and I have been married for 22 years. Our mothers introduced us when I was 15 and he was 16. We were each others’ first loves.

When he left for college, we wrote letters to one another every day. We got to see one another about once a month, and were always elated to be in one another’s company, putting our best forward for our short times together. Through our visits and our letters, we supported one another through the transitions from home to college, from teen to adult. Although we didn’t make a straight shot from high school to marriage (with more than a few break-ups in between), we finally decided to marry in June of 1990 while attending one of 16 friends’ weddings that year. Four months later, on October 26, 1990, we got married.

The first year of marriage was hard. We had some financial stresses right away, and, quite honestly, I was feeling anxious about the “foreverness” of marriage. I wanted to fall in love again. I would say we were pretty near to calling it quits between our first and second anniversaries. Nothing else explains why we didn’t, other than that God had plans for us, and He shed his loving grace upon us. We recommitted to one another and got pregnant with our first child right around our second anniversary. From that moment on, we have been intensely aware of God’s grace in our marriage. We have been lucky – 4 well-adjusted kids, relatively few financial strains, good health, and almost 100% shared values. Some might consider ours an easy marriage – now.

And then there’s my sister. I won’t air her laundry, but her marriage isn’t as easy as mine. She and her husband seem to wrestle with more conflicts than Peter and I do. But we are both challenged to build strong marriages. She and her husband have to recover from conflicts and move forward. Peter and I have to find ways to not become bored or fail to challenge ourselves to be better individuals and partners. In the end, we all have to create the good habit of being married.

Think about some good habits: giving to charity, exercising, eating healthfully, praying, being on time, etc. While these are all terrific, they can sometimes fall by the wayside because we get lazy. Being a good spouse is a habit we must train ourselves in, and this takes discipline, among other things. We can’t let ourselves become flooded by the tide of stuff that comes up, or because we are simply tired. Intimate emotional connections need tending.

Some of the things you and your spouse did when you were courting might come in handy now – writing letters and poems to one another, going on dates, affirming one another, actively trying to bring joy to the other, doing kind deeds, supporting one another through transitions, etc. Doing these things, establishing and practicing positive habits within marriage, can become the routine if we stay on top of them.

Winning

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Bruce Allen

Today I find myself thinking about the differences between boys and girls, men and women, husbands and wives. This, as a way of understanding how men’s orientation toward the concept of marriage is shaped by genetics and socialization, and why this basic—ingrained?—orientation may need to evolve if the marriage is to be built on a solid foundation.

I heard a story on NPR recently that examined the differences in infant boys and infant girls. In the experiment, a Plexiglas barrier was placed between the baby and its mother, so that the baby could see mom, but could not reach or touch her. As expected, the girls, more mature at this age, figured out quickly that they were upset, and began to cry. The boys, after a while, discovered they were frustrated, and began seeking ways around and over the barrier, becoming angry when they were unable to do so.

Backs up what I used to observe when our kids would encounter adversity on the sports field: Girls get sad, boys get mad. This is not me being a chauvinist; it’s an academic study that happens to support my own bias, and which I therefore endorse.

Here’s what boys are NOT taught by their peers growing up:

Colossians 3:12 ¹²Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

For most boys, our orientation toward the world typically becomes one of competition—for the parents’ attention versus siblings, in sports, in school, for the ability to impress the girls. Not surprisingly, this, along with our genetic predisposition to action, causes many of us to approach the institution of marriage with the idea of winning. Seeking out the ideal girl or woman, crushing the competition for her affections, convincing her of the indescribable joy in store for her as your mate for life, and getting interest-free financing on the ring.

Anyone see anything in here about kindness, humility, meekness or patience?

Once we’ve landed her, and have had a few years to get adjusted to the reality of living together, this male orientation easily produces a mindset in which the relationship is seen as a zero sum game wherein fun is set against responsibility. And, typically, he sets about winning, having as much fun as he can get away with, and doing as little as possible to keep the family unit intact without incurring the absolute wrath of his spouse. Winning.

His spouse, by the way, came up learning how to nurture and communicate with those around her, probably has a predisposition to understanding our natures, for better or worse, and generally is not surprised to get the short end of the transactional straw. In Iris Krasnow’s book The Secret Lives of Wives, a number of wives share stories of how they found happiness with the smaller share. I joke with Nancy about arm-wrestling her for the last piece of her peach pie. For many couples, their marriage IS the pie. They do “arm-wrestle.” And the men “win.”

Matthew 20:26 It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant.

One of the lessons I’ve learned along the way of my own relatively short spiritual journey is that my language of love, acts of service, is in fact one of the behaviors Jesus insists we adopt as members of the Body of Christ and, on a smaller scale, as husbands. (Talk about a lucky break.) It took me years to appreciate this, during which I feel I slacked on Nancy, notably while our children were growing up. I was out of town too much of the time, trying to pack a week’s worth of living into a two day weekend. I was very transactional. I was trying to win.

In the early 2000’s, Nancy’s career path and mine crossed. Hers was on the way up, after 13 years at home with the kids. Mine was trending downward. Eventually, I adopted the attitude that I would focus on taking care of a few more tasks of running the house than before, which included grocery shopping and most of the cooking. This was what I could contribute to the marriage while I was having career issues. This was also about the time I began my conversion, after 50 years of having been intentionally un-churched, which may or may not be a coincidence.

Mark 10:43-45 ⁴³Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. ⁴⁵For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The over-arching lesson of all of this for me: if we as men adopt a posture of service to God, our spouses, and our children, early in our marriages, it will produce more aggregate happiness, and God will smile on us for having seen the wisdom of His Son’s many lessons, quoted here in Mark’s gospel. In my case, the language of love was there, but I was unwilling of or unable to acknowledge the Holy Spirit, urging me to be a better husband. I think it must be a rare marriage, indeed, in which the husband is committed as Jesus prescribed, and the wife (and relationship) is not happy, content, and aligned with the Word of God. Gentlemen, it is so NOT about winning.

It Takes Three to Marry – A Sermon from Fr. Barron

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Gary Galvin

The readings from this past Sunday , October 7, 2012 reflected on love, sexuality and marriage. These readings are essential teachings on sex and marriage for our Catholic faith. Our parish priest, Fr. Adam, gave a wonderful homily about how we live in a culture with TV shows like “Modern Family” and “The New Normal” and it is up to the parents and their community to teach our children what a family and marriage is meant to be.

Oftentimes I listen to Fr. Barron’s sermons too on his website, WordOnFire.org on Monday while in the car or at home. His sermon for this past Sunday is titled “Sexuality, Love and Marriage” and I wanted to share it with you. It’s a 15 minute sermon and if you have a smartphone you can listen to it while on the go.

Listen to the Sermon’s MP3

Some major points that Fr. Barron includes in this sermon are:

Catholic are not against sex. It’s just the opposite.
There is nothing dirty about sex.
The physical pleasure of sex is our way into the scripture.
Love is what God is.
Everything in creation comes from love.
There are three to get married and if the third is eliminated then the marriage will dissolve.
Children are the fruit of all this.

I hope you enjoy listening to Fr. Barron’s sermon and when you are done with that you might find yourself getting deep into the valuable information he has on his website.

~God Bless~

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