The Art of Successful Spouse-Seeking

Among the greatest privileges given me from time to time is to be invited by one of my children to offer advice or guidance. (For any of you tempted to envy, I should hasten to add that this opportunity doesn't generally arise until the children have moved beyond adolescence.)

Well, I got the Mt. Everest of such requests the other day. I've been waiting my whole life for this one. My daughter asked me for my list of things to look for in a husband. She's aware that I've had more than the usual success, since I was very happily married to her father until his death several years ago and now have the excellent fortune to be approaching a first wedding anniversary with my very dear Henry. I guess she figures I must be doing something right.

As most self-respecting blogsters will report, about halfway through my e-mail to her, I thought to myself "This is so on the blog." So here you are, dear readers. It's what I looked for and found. Some of it will be particular to me and my style, but perhaps it will generate ideas for you and yours.

What I Looked For in a Potential Husband

I have "Admission Ticket" items. If I don't get satisfactory answers to my questions on these issues, there are no more dates.

• Solid Christian. It has a high level of importance in his life.
  
  
• Excellent character; reliable, honest, can make the tough decisions, yet thoughtful and gentle
  
  
• Employed at a level (or with a trajectory) that could provide for the family if the wife stayed home to rear a family.
  
  
• No debilitating psychological issues or such a trashed upbringing that it seems likely to hamper being able to be a full partner in an excellent marriage.
  

Then there's the second level -- what I need to find in order to have confidence that the kind of relationship I want can develop. The first 2 are the "Big Two", in my view.

• Does he have the capacity to love and be loved at a deep level? Will he value that opportunity? Does it seem that, if we married, he would place a high level of importance on building and sustaining the relationship?
  
  
• Does he have the capability of communicating about how we communicate? When we talk about things with a lot of "emotional content", is he able both to pay attention to how he feels as well as pursue understanding how I feel? What's his attitude when something is more important to me than it is to him?
  
  And, for the Graduate Level of meta-communication, after what might have been a tense conversation, is he inclined to talk about how the conversation went and consider how we might change how we discuss something similar in the future so it will work better?
  
  
• More about communication: I'd be cautious about a tendency to be defensive. Is it important to him to be right? Or, something that might indicate the opposite problem, does he generally yield in order to keep the peace? Does he consider genuinely important things (and only those things) worth making issues of?
  
  
• Am I comfortable being my authentic self around him?
  
  
• Do I respect him as a man the way he is now? Or are there important aspects of his character or personality that will cause me problems in the future if they don't change?
  
  
• Does he welcome the idea of having a family together? Do I? Will he be a good father? Will his children love and respect him?
  
  
• Will we able to become fully involved in a common community of faith? It's key to both be mature Christians, but it's also important to have a common culture in which our family Christian life can flourish.
  
  
• Does he think I'm wonderful? Is he proud that I'm with him and that he's won my affections? Does he embarrass me? If so, can the issues be addressed, or will they be long-standing?
  

• Do we laugh together? Does laughter and humor generally draw us together, or is it a veiled jab instead? Can we defuse tension with laughter? Does it help us avoid the issue, or does it instead lubricate our progress toward a solution?
  

• What do others think of us as a couple? Do our closest and respected friends have significant concerns? Is our care for one another visible to them? Do they think we're a good fit? Does anyone tell us that we're good for each other? Do they see evidence that we're becoming better individuals as we grow in our relationship together?
  

That's all I can think of for now. What else should be on this list? I'm dying to pass it along to my eligible bachelorette.

Beautiful from a distance

Commenter Kansas Bob made reference to St. John of the Cross (I love all the Carmelite saints!) and his Dark Night of the Soul.

Often, people misuse that term for the difficulty Christians face, the struggles they go through, to reach knowledge, or faith, or rest in Christ. Actually, it's what seems like spiritual coma or death through which the soul passes through on the "purgative way," while it is detached from all comfort and light in prayer, from satisfaction, spiritual pride and avarice, to find union with Jesus Christ on earth and in Heaven.

I flipped open my laptop to write an appeal about my own spiritual coldness and dryness and found Roz' post and KBob's link - thank you, brother and sister. But mine is not the purification of Juan de la Cruz' dark night. It's plain old ordinary fallenness: clinging on to habitual sinfulness, laziness in devotion. I can't weaken Christ's love for me, but I can sure get the heck out of the way of His Grace by turning away towards decidedly lesser goods, abandoning the greatest Good. I can also fool myself that because I'm pretty dependable about giving time and money and attention to the church, that I can pick up enough Face Time Points to cruise along until I get around to embracing humility and single-footing it on the Narrow Way.

St. John, like all saints, never goes out of date or relevance. He says something wonderful in the link in Chapter II (no way to point to it directly):

5. Some of these beginners, too, make little of their faults, and at other times become over-sad when they see themselves fall into them, thinking themselves to have been saints already; and thus they become angry and impatient with themselves, which is another imperfection. Often they beseech God, with great yearnings, that He will take from them their imperfections and faults, but they do this that they may find themselves at peace, and may not be troubled by them, rather than for God's sake; not realizing that, if He should take their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptuous still. They dislike praising others and love to be praised themselves; sometimes they seek out such praise. Herein they are like the foolish virgins, who, when their lamps could not be lit, sought oil from others. (emphasis mine)

Well, howdy Therese! I want God to take away my sinfulness so I can be pleased with myself and my holiness! Bow down before the Idol Comfort! I don't want to push sinfulness away from myself, solely with the help of His Grace, to follow more closely God's Will. St. Paul says it clearly, too, in 2Cor12:7 and following:

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me -- to keep me from exalting myself. Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me.

We don't know what it was that tormented him - I see some commenters refer to sinfulness and others to poor eyesight ("see with what large letters I write to you!").

The lesson I've learned today, again, again, is that (1) Only His Grace is necessary for any good, for any turning towards the Lord, (2) I'm no better than anyone else, gol dang it, (3) I'm a sinner, (4) Tomorrow's another day, to rise again and carry my cross.

What do you do to kick yourself in the spiritual heinie when you've become lukewarm?

Knowing is overrated

In order to be valid, everything has to be thoroughly parsed by my brain first.

Isn't that the way we often approach things? It's an insult to have a statement brushed off as "mindless" or worse, "uncritical". We have a far greater horror of appearing gullible than we do of sinning. We examine and reexamine, we split hairs, we make sure everyone in earshot knows the details of our differences with our favorite political party, we have to avoid at all costs accepting anything without having "thought it through."

Then there's the good sense found in those who put intimacy with God ahead of intellectual over-analysis:

When I first stumbled upon the Benedictine abbey where I am now an oblate, I was surprised to find the monks so unconcerned with my weighty doubts and intellectual frustrations over Christianity. What interested them more was my desire to come to their worship, the liturgy of the hours. I was a bit disappointed -- I had thought that my doubts were spectacular obstacles to my faith and was confused but intrigued when an old monk blithely stated that doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign that faith is alive and ready to grow. I am grateful now for his wisdom and grateful to the community for teaching me about the power of liturgy. They seemed to believe that if I just kept coming back to worship, kept coming home, things would eventually fall into place. (Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk)

"Things would eventually fall into place." Is there anything more exasperating to those of us addicted to intellectual rigor than an attitude like that? But can any of us deny that, if we had been Peter, intellectual rigor would have kept our gluteus maximi firmly planted in the boat instead of walking toward Jesus on the water?

HT to the charmingly titled Velveteen Rabbi.

Sheet Cake Poisoning

That's what I'm suffering from. And Potato Salad Overdose.

Graduation, First Communion, Baby Shower, Birthday, Graduation, Graduation, Ordination Anniversary, Graduation. I have a diminishing fan of cards spread out on the table, and I pore over them - which ones to mail? Which need a check? Little kids like cash better than checks, so where're the new tens and twenties and fifties? Will she like this? Will it fit? Where's the wrapping paper?

I did not win a popularity contest, it's the utter depth and breadth of family and community around me. I talked to a friend who said, with a carefully modulated tinge of regret, that she hadn't been to a family event in over twenty years. She's got the family, she just doesn't go. She's not churched, so she lacks that bond, too.

I think she feels "free" and I certainly feel a little tiny bit trapped right now, endless paper plates and kissing aunts and trying to remember cousins' childrens' names and meeting the old next-door neighbor of my new pew neighbor and listening to inning-by-inning replays of Little League games from a little boy who is keeping me mesmerized not by his fielding prowess, but because he is holding a live ticked-off cicada with beady red eyes by the wings in each hand.

Isn't this what church is like? You are baptized into a family full of bores and grimy little endearing children and drunks and quiet humorists and geeks and saints. People whose lives are chaos and people whose lives of desperation never get them down. Models and Dire Warnings.

If you are inclined to dislike your church and long for a different one that seems full of people "more like you," ask yourself if your family lives up to your tastes (and you live up to theirs). If you think the decorations and music are awful, and the finance committee needs to get their high horses taken away from them, check yourself out for spiritual socks-and-sandal outfits and your ridiculous pride in your avocation, boring to everybody but you and your industry buddies.

If I love my family and friends, I'd better damn well love my church just as much, because we're all brothers and sisters in Christ.

Okay, I think I've made room for another taco and a beer. What a pretty cake!......

Withering the fig tree

woodcut by Johann Christoph Weigel

Today's Gospel reading is Mark 11:11-26. I was ready to hear what I thought of as the prime point of the passage: that "all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours "When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions."

But look at the fig tree story, which is NOT a parable, a little closer. Jesus was hungry and encountered a fig tree that only had leaves, since it was not yet time for figs. He cursed the tree, declaring that it would never bear fruit again! The next day, the tree is found withered to the root, and Jesus teaches the Twelve that whatever they ask for in faith will be done. Presumably, that means that He withered the tree by asking that it happen. Or does it mean that Jesus' desire for food, being a prayer for it to the Father, should have acted upon the tree, causing to produce fruit suddenly out of season? Or?

I used to think of that phrase "nothing but leaves" as a serious warning for those who flourish within the life of the Church, but bear none of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. They sink their roots into the life of the Church, but make no fruit, set no seed. But why the detail about Jesus cursing a tree that wasn't even supposed to have fruit yet? Seems unfair, as unfair as the last-minute guest at the king's banquet who was found to be without a wedding garment. (Setting aside the apologetics arguments about the garment being the garment of baptism - I agree that this is an appropriate description, but the invitation to the unbaptized still brings the same swift trip to the outer darkness.)

Jesus is never unfair, so I'm missing the point here.