Brian’s Reflection: Friday, December 2, 2011

Love is so much better when you're not married.

Maria Callas, opera diva; she was born on this date, 1923



Well, Maria said some very provocative ….. and very funny! ….. things. I was tempted to choose one of those. But, I opted for this more serious quote. To make a comment or two.

I think that much of contemporary Christianity has tended to make marriage sound like a bore. “Marriage counseling” tends to sound like a course in petty rule keeping ….. and it tends in many Christian settings to perpetuate patriarchy and its negativity (are there any positive aspects to patriarchy in our time and cultural context???). And it still, I think, tends to perpetuate an abysmal and crushingly dull and limited understanding of human sexuality.

So here’s my point: it’s about time that Christianity got its act together about this “love and marriage” thing ….. including the dear Episcopalians ….. who in general project (except for the tight-assed ones) an enlightened view of all this. It’s about time that we got together and devised a “marriage counseling curriculum” that really was able to affirm and to celebrate human sexuality, human imagination and creativity, human innate intelligence, and the integrity of human feeling and freedom.

I know personally that Love is better when you are “married” - when there is a connection of the heart and body AND, critically, an understanding intellectually and spiritually of the true nature of Love which Christianity (as well as other faiths) at its best manifests by its Life and by the teachings of its Founder.

Maria Callas is, I think, an example of a human being who lacked good spiritual teachers.

Occupy your Pew, as it were. Challenge your spiritual community and its leaders to become really good guides to both Love in general, and to “Love and Marriage” in particular.

Brian+