Marriage involves us completely, body and mind, and therefore tests us, makes and unmakes us, as men and women. It requires an always shifting or changing responsiveness that keeps us human and alive. We are reminded day by day, that we 'realize' the joy it promises, through our readiness to enter into the responsibilities it brings. Through him or her the partner discovers the whole mankind.
Marriage is an incarnation of love. It is the expression and open acknowledgment of a living affection that binds two people together, or rather two souls together. Beyond that love knows no rules. We all love affection. But we also love peace, we love security - and love is always insecure.
No marriage lives up to its expectations - least of all when the partners claim it does. No marriage is a full utilization of all the possibilities it offers. Somewhere even the luckiest of us falls short. We relinquish the adventure for the sake of security. We get tired of the life-giving friction that restores warmth and sensitivity to any human relationship. In marriage we hold ourselves apart for the sake of peace. The more peace-loving a person is, the more he or she holds himself or herself apart. We cease to explore the other, either because we find the quest too strenuous, or because we think that we have discovered all there is to know. We become satisfied with one another - which is another form of being satisfied with oneself. We waste our vital energies elsewhere separately.
Forgiveness in marriage is a passionate turning and returning to the beginning of our love and hope. It is our acknowledgment of failure and our active longing to have it redeemed. It is the re-affirmation of our hope that life is yet before us with all its colours and vigour. We forgive when we are ready to have our hearts broken, not before that.
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Marriage is an incarnation of love. It is the expression and open acknowledgment of a living affection that binds two people together, or rather two souls together. Beyond that love knows no rules. We all love affection. But we also love peace, we love security - and love is always insecure.
No marriage lives up to its expectations - least of all when the partners claim it does. No marriage is a full utilization of all the possibilities it offers. Somewhere even the luckiest of us falls short. We relinquish the adventure for the sake of security. We get tired of the life-giving friction that restores warmth and sensitivity to any human relationship. In marriage we hold ourselves apart for the sake of peace. The more peace-loving a person is, the more he or she holds himself or herself apart. We cease to explore the other, either because we find the quest too strenuous, or because we think that we have discovered all there is to know. We become satisfied with one another - which is another form of being satisfied with oneself. We waste our vital energies elsewhere separately.
Forgiveness in marriage is a passionate turning and returning to the beginning of our love and hope. It is our acknowledgment of failure and our active longing to have it redeemed. It is the re-affirmation of our hope that life is yet before us with all its colours and vigour. We forgive when we are ready to have our hearts broken, not before that.
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