Marriage: contract or covenant?

Do you see marriage as a contract (1) or as a covenant (2)? I am not saying that one or the other type of marriage is necessarily better than the other. The problem would likely come if one partner sees it as business and the other sees it as covenant. Of course there are some “marriages” that are completely for business and I suppose my use of parentheses betrays my prejudice. “Now wait a minute” you say. “We're in love! We're not in some kind of business deal!” I think it is the fog of love that keeps us from recognizing and reconciling our different points of view.
Even with premarital counseling we may not recognize our differences in attitudes, or even understand our own. After thirty years of marriage this thought has just come to me. I would have said that marriage is spiritual, but what does that mean?
I might have said that marriage is an endeavor(3) like climbing a mountain. Once we have undertaken climbing Mt. Everest, we will go to extreme lengths to see that everyone makes it back down alive. I don't think there is much haggling over the fine print at twenty thousand feet. “I hired you to carry a seventy pound pack and now you have a broken leg – you're fired!”
In an endeavor we put ourselves all out. We risk injury and loss. We accept pain and bruising. (I am not advocating acceptance of physical abuse here) Think of an athlete who trains hard and works to avoid injury, but also works through injuries when they happen.
Joseph Campbell said, “Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.”(4) My interpretation is that the marriage is the greater idea to which both parties sacrifice themselves in covenant. Marriage is the endeavor. Marriage is the mountain we climb. And of course not all endeavors are successful. Not everyone makes it to the summit. Or perhaps those endeavors are successful even though the proposed goal was not achieved. Perhaps the endeavor is in the work, not the goal.
In an individual marriage we may not think about how the trappings reflect our beliefs. Was the marriage in a church because that's where marriages happen or because the church was an integral part of our concept of marriage? Perhaps the marriage was officiated by a minister though not in a church. Were these decisions purposefully made or made to appease someone? Was the marriage a quickie wedding in Las Vegas but in our heart was a commitment to a higher purpose. There are many reasons why our marriage ceremony may or may not have been in a particular setting. The question is were we, or are we, aware of the psychological context in which we and our partner entered the marriage.
I think these distinctions may not come to the forefront until serious difficulties enter the relationship. Recognizing the differences or similarities in our attitudes toward marriage can help us in coming to terms with the issues. It helps to know if we are on the same page or not. It may help to recognize whether reconciliation is possible or not.
So, this is an invitation to think about it. What page are you on? Are you sure? How about your partner, or partner to be? Has your perspective changed over the years?

(1) contract – Definition: An voluntary agreement between two or more parties to provide specified goods or services in exchange for some payment. (oldmbherald.com)
(2) covenant – Covenant begins with a promise – not to a set of conditions- but to a person. A covenant is a promise of love, loyalty and faithfulness. A covenant precedes, and is larger than, the covenanting parties. They do not negotiate the terms of the covenant. Rather , they acknowledge and commit themselves to terms that are already there in the nature of the covenant relationship. (oldmbherald.com)
(3) endeavor - Definition: An exertion of physical or intellectual strength toward the attainment of an object; a systematic or continuous attempt; an effort; a trial (ardictionary.com)
(4)http://thinkexist.com/quotation/marriage_is_not_a_simple_love_affair-it-s_an/254585.html)

I am a rock large and heavy solid in the stream bed
water pouring around me I see the turmoil I created?
And worry I can't see what is wrong yet I feel
responsible

This photograph calls to me. It seems representative of my life. I am a big heavy rock planted in the middle of the stream. The world surges around me and bubbles up in front of me. I am helpless to stop the chaos, and yet I am the cause of the chaos. Am I where I belong? Is it my job to stir things up? Or do I just enjoy it. If I enjoy it, and at many levels I must admit I do, then I must accept that I am the cause of the turmoil that I dislike also.
I keep thinking of the other stones in the stream that do not disrupt the flow. Those pictures of water slipping tranquilly over pebbles and sand. Why can't I be like those? Serene. Peaceful. Then my ire comes up and I view them with disdain. They have given up, warn down, bested by the water, smothered in sand. But then again, perhaps they are each doing their part. I know that they affect the flow also. Together their effect adds up, they support each other.
How do we know when to be the rock in the stream and when to snuggle down and take as well as lend support? How do we know if we are creating havoc, or protecting something from it?
I have begun to listen to “A Course in Miracles” again. The recent lessons have been on recognizing that what we see around us is our creation. We have created what we fear/wish to destroy. It is not really there. Yet I know that if I turn and see a child reaching into a fire, I need to intervene, it is not enough to say it is an illusion.

Turn Off the Damn Lights

Last night was a beautiful warm spring night. Not bad for the 8th of January. Close to 50F and still. Our apartment was very warm due to the fact that the downstairs tenant keeps hers like a sauna. We were relegated to opening windows to keep the temperature below 75F. At around 3am I escaped to the deck because my head had turned to concrete.
The deck looks out over an open field, the lake, and the hills beyond. The sky was mostly clear and the stars were out. The view was ruined by the abundance of lights left burning, and I must admit one of them was ours.

I can see probably 20 miles of the hillside across the lake and 10 or so of shoreline. The section directly across from me was marred by bright lights on porches and over front doors and a section of street light size lamps along the lake. The lights along the lake were the new brighter pink lamps that I have always found annoying.
The next section of hillside also had it's smattering of lights. Each was less bright. I think the difference was the use of regular light bulbs vs. floodlights. A little further up it was almost black, and then further up, where I believe there is another town, the lights were bright again.
I wished the lights could be turned off so that I could see the sky better, and so that it would be generally more peaceful. Every time I see one of those satellite photos that show the lights burning on earth it angers me to no end. What the hell are we so afraid of? Isn't the waste of money and fuel and the impending effects of global warming more frightening?
When I was a kid we lived at the end of a dead end road. There was a street light at the end in town, but no others. At the time the only houses were the ones that had been there forever. They were either set back from the road, or behind tall trees, often evergreens. Our house stood back on a long drive way.
At night if there was no moon and the clouds covered the stars, it became dark very fast. We thought nothing of it. We could sense the opening between the trees, and if we got too close to the edge of the road by foot or bicycle ,we would feel the gravel and move back onto the roadway.
When I was in junior high they began to build a development at the end of the road. Fifteen houses built on a swamp that buried two cement trucks and more than one foundation. One day on the school bus the local rowdies were bragging about traveling through construction sights like this breaking windows and stealing things. I questioned that nothing like this was happening on my street. They looked at me incredulously and said “Are you kidding? It's dark down there!”. Darkness was our protection. Light and shadow make for hiding places.
I have often wondered about the policy of leaving so many lights on in storefronts overnight that one can't tell if the business is opened or closed. If I was driving by at 3am and saw someone inside, I would assume it was someone cleaning or stocking shelves.
So turn off the damn lights. Save energy, money and resources, and see the sky for a change.

More on HEARING the story

Last time I talked about hearing the story of baby Jesus escape to Egypt in a new way. This week I have been watching archived video casts from Bill Moyers' series on Faith and Reason. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/index.html

I was listening to the the interview with Ann Provost, a Belgian writer who was speaking of hearing the story of Noah from the perspective of those left behind. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_provoost.html

Her interest was particularly with the innocent such as children and animals. She spoke of a children's book by Peter Spier. In Mr Spier's "Noah's Ark", she described a series of illustrations of the animals left behind on the beach. At first you see that their feet are wet. The next frame shows all water except for the tip of the elephant's trunk and the giraffe's nostrils. And the next frame is just water. I have not seen the book yet and I am wondering about the effect these illustrations have on children. Perhaps the tone of the book, like other Bible stories for children (and adults) leads to a blind acceptance of this horrible fate.
She asks why didn't the adults or at least some of these "righteous" people give up their spot on the ark for a child? And some might say, why not leave the animals off and take many children?
Let me say here that I neither take the story of Noah's Ark literally, nor do I dismiss it. I don't know whether it is simply a story told by men trying to make sense of a past event, or a moral fable that gives us a way to think of disasters in general. I believe the Bible gives us opportunities to think about and relate to God and our world, but it is not a blueprint with exact measurements and descriptions of how things did or will happen.
Let's suppose that the effects of global warming, if allowed to continue, will lead to a disaster of Biblical proportions. Some people will listen to the warnings and prepare. Some will ignore them. Some will hope for a miracle.
Who would you save? And what would be the practicalities of your preparations. You would have to limit who and what you take by issues of space, needs and skills. If you filled your ark with children, who would care for them? If only animals, who would care for them? The ark is a mixture of saving family, saving those who can care for the ark and the animals, and those who can tend to the animals and plants after the water recedes and replenish the earth.
It is also possible that the story is about Noah's ark, and that other arks or method's of surviving also existed.
Because the story is presented as an event that God creates out of the blue, we also want God to wave a magic wand and save the innocent. Like global warming, or Hurricane Katrina, these disasters do not come out of the blue. We do have warnings. And the innocent suffer because we don't heed the warnings.