Marriage is a Kind of Death

I thought I would continue my posts on family/marriage. I found this article from Touchstone magazine today while perusing Park Cities Presbyterian's website. Peter Leithart from New St. Andrew's College in Moscow, ID wrote a wise and much needed article on marriage where he quotes Alexander Schmemann. The article's central theme is that marriage is a kind of death--but good death. Here's how Leithart closes out the article:

Nearly four decades ago, Alexander Schmemann argued that the problem with modern marriage "is not adultery or lack of ‘adjustment’ or ‘mental cruelty.’" Instead, he wrote, the problem is the "idolization of the family" that identifies "marriage with happiness" and refuses "to accept the cross in it." God’s presence as a "third party" in the marriage spells "the death of the marriage as something only ‘natural,’ and directs it to its true end of the kingdom of God.

In short, Schmemann continued, with characteristic elegance, the glory of marriage is "that of the martyr’s crown. For the way to the Kingdom is the matyria: bearing witness to Christ. And this means crucifixion and suffering. A marriage that does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not ‘die to itself’ that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage."

What's a sign that your culture is nearing its twilight years?

Anthony Esolen over at Mere Comments has begun a series of entries to that blog defending traditional marriage, but his reasons for his defense, as he clarifies it, do not come from his religious convictions:

Most people believe that the principal objections, or even the only objections, to the drive to legalize homosexual “marriage” spring from religious faith. But that is simply not true. Beginning with this post I'll offer ten objections that have nothing to do with any religion at all, except insofar as the great religions of the world happen to reflect the nature of mankind. These objections spring from three sources.

Those three sources are the common sense observation of man, a consideration of history, and logic. He posts his first two objections today, which are 1) The legalization of homosexual “marriages” would enshrine the sexual revolution in law; and 2) [The legalization of homosexual marriage] would, in particular, enshrine in law the principle that sexual intercourse is a matter of personal fulfillment, with which the society has nothing to do.

Esolen teaches English at Providence College and his literary and erudite observations are needed in this fight against the dissolution of marriage and our culture. As Esolen says:

Some people reckon up the losses from this [sexual] revolution in terms of percentages: of unwed mothers, of aborted pregnancies, of children growing up without a parent, usually the father. It will take artists of the most penetrating insight to reckon up the losses as they ought to be reckoned, in human misery.

Pics from Anniversary Trip to Six Flags

Wife and I thought a trip to Six Flags would be a fun way to spend our anniversary time together. It proved to be true. Notice from the photo above that, in marriage, we have so completely become one that I have begun to sprout her arms as headwings.

Not everyone who rode The Conquistador had as much fun as we did.

Anniversary

Two years ago today, my wife and I were married. It's good and still getting better. Here's the poem that I asked a good friend of mine to read at our wedding. It's by Richard Wilbur.

Wedding Toast

St. John tells how, at Cana's wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That this world's fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.

Now, if your loves will lend an ear to mine,
I toast you both, good son and dear new daughter.
May you not lack for water,
And may that water smack of Cana's wine.


Here's a bonus poem by Wilbur.

Having Misidentified A Wildflower

A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.

Dallas Diocese Joins Protest against New Episcopal Head

From Christian Post.com:

The Episcopal Diocese of Dallas on Wednesday joined a growing rejection of the church's newly elected bishop because she supports same-sex relationships.
Bishop James M. Stanton, the head of Dallas' diocese and its 40,000 members, wrote a letter asking Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for a "direct pastoral relationship" from overseas instead of being under the American church and its new leader.