Summer hours continue. Daily Episcopalian will publish every other day this week.

By Margaret Treadwell

Have you ever met people so brimming with happiness they could be described as joy-spreaders? Susan and Hermann Jenny personify the term, but they say it wasn’t always so. How did this couple find happiness individually and together?

Hermann grew up poor in Switzerland. Following a tragic accident, his father was too debilitated to care for his family. His mother opened their home to guests; 15-year-old Hermann apprenticed with a master chef and became an accomplished cook for her business. He decided he could earn more money on the staff of a hotel and moved to Canada and then Bermuda, where someone commended him to Cornell University’s Hotel School. He says of his good fortune, “You have to speak up for your rights, which develops self confidence.”

He met Susan at Cornell where she was studying French and pursuing a teacher’s certificate and later obtained a master’s degree in English for Speakers of Other Languages.

“I come from a rural culture and am a businessman,” Hermann said of their decision to marry. “Susan is from an artistic culture of music and French literature. Together we have it all. I believe in marriage we are called upon to witness the life of another person, not to judge them… and that agreement is a commitment I will never negate.”

During the early years, as Hermann rose steadily in the hospitality business, they moved around the world – from the South Bronx to Bangkok, Singapore and Paris. They learned three important lessons: Be open to all people and situations, take risks and sink roots wherever you live. For example, Susan and their three children became involved at the American Cathedral in Paris. One Shrove Tuesday, Hermann, a self-proclaimed atheist who attended church functions to support his family, cooked the best pancake supper in Christendom. Susan said, “We’ve always given each other space while supporting our differences.” Hermann added, “With that attitude Susan made my career possible.”

By the early 1990s, Hermann had been the head of three different hotel chains and was working for the Aga Khan when the stress associated with constant travel and climbing the corporate ladder became unbearable. He asked, “Why am I doing this?”

Susan, who had created a program for dyslexic children at the American School in London, was devastated when it became clear Hermann wanted to move her from her city home to run a country Bed and Breakfast. But, she said, “I’ve always trusted Hermann’s instincts and home is where he is. I was ready for surprises, so I decided to live the decision well by thinking of our change as creating a new life rather than losing an old one. My American pioneering spirit keeps me curious.”

They looked for several years along the French Riviera before they heard that a divorcing English couple was selling their working B&B in northern Provence. The moment they saw the 17th century stone farmhouse, Les Tuillieres, set on 40 wooded acres with fields and streams far from the tourist routes, they knew it was the perfect place.

“When you live on an isolated farm you need to create a life that draws on hidden things inside you or expands your interests,” Susan said. “I began gardening in earnest and spent more time with my piano and different kinds of singing groups.”As her knowledge of the area grew, Susan became not only a warm hostess, but also an occasional sous chef, vacation planner and tour guide par excellence for her guests, who she treats like cherished friends.

The couple are in agreement about the qualities that make their B&B successful: Pure luck to have found the right place at the right time; good health to actively carry the decision through; an ability to speak several languages; and attending to the needs of the surrounding community, particularly hiring local citizens as valued staff. As Hermann said, “For every ounce of ego, an ounce of rationality leaves the brain. Don’t let ‘important people’ go to your head!”

Both acknowledge it takes a strong couple to do this kind of work. After all, with the usual 12 guests per night there is hardly any quiet or intimate time. They cope by teaming up 16 hours a day five months a year in work they enjoy, then take seven months off to sit still and listen to music.

How much longer do they intend to continue this lifestyle? Susan said, “Every year we put the question on the table: Do we want to do this another year? So far the answer is a resounding, “Yes. We are happy!”

Margaret M. “Peggy” Treadwell, LICSW, is a family, individual and couples therapist and teacher in private practice.

Daily Episcopalian will publish every other day this week.

By Ann Fontaine

What purpose can “not forgiving” serve?

Forgiveness is a highly recommended spiritual practice. The benefits of forgiveness are supposedly less stress and better health. Forgiveness is recommended by the church as a way to wholeness.

I wonder, however, if this is always a good idea. In cases of sexual and physical abuse, I believe offering quick forgiveness can continue the wounding rather than offering healing. It encourages people to “be nice” rather than find the wholeness of accepting the depth of one’s rage. When might it be good not to forgive?

I was reading the Daily Office the other day and this line stood out for me:

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Hebrews 9:22

The passage made wonder about the process of forgiveness. This verse says to me that forgiveness does not always help the process of healing or result in restoration and reconciliation. It says something has to happen before sins are forgiven and relationship returned.

Two stories:

1. A man was sexually abused as a child by his priest, with the tacit consent of his mother. Once he was grown enough to resist and speak out they had him committed to an institution for incorrigible teens. He could never get the church to act against the abuser. He was shuffled off from one office to another. The canons of the church designed to prevent this were not in place. By the time they were – the bishop said the statute of limitations had run out. Forgiveness for him would have been the last straw – one that took away his dignity and the rage that kept him alive to battle a cold uncaring institution and help to change things bit by bit.

2. A priest was often observed crossing boundaries with women – touching them in ways that made them uncomfortable. Some said, “Oh he is just friendly and does not mean anything by it.” For many who were the victims of his touching, it evoked memories of rape and powerlessness. One day he was hit by a car and broke both arms. Some victims felt their wounds had been assuaged and they were able to forgive.

In each of these cases there was an offense or offenses. People dealt with the issues of forgiveness in the ways each felt was best for them.

The church’s demand to forgive can make victims feel guilty and blame themselves for what happened to them. Persons unable to offer forgiveness feel shut out and re-victimized.

I believe we should be offering wholeness that comes from acknowledging the wounding and sitting with that woundedness for as long as it takes for the victim to come to the right place. Instead of demanding instant forgiveness of a perpetrator by a victim, offer to listen and find ways to make amends for what has happened. Help the victim become a survivor by discovering what he or she desires for his or her own life.

Listening shows the person that he or she has a right to be heard. I believe no movement to wholeness can occur until the story is told from the point of view of the victim and the victim receives assurance that it was terrible and should not have happened no matter what else was going on. Acceptance of the event and the knowledge that no amount of revisiting it will change the terrible nature of what happened is the first step to choosing the future one desires. It may or may not involve forgiveness but gives power back to the one who has suffered.

A reflection on the reading from the book of Hebrews

withholding forgiveness from those who have offended may be a time of waiting to see the blood

What sort of blood is needed?

As our daughter, a wise woman, says:

The most important thing I've learned about forgiveness is that it can't be forced. It must flow naturally from where the victim is in their healing process and frequently marks the point at which one has decided not to let the event be a distorting effect on one's life. Justice is a part of forgiveness. If someone did something wrong that was under their control and they show no remorse, then it is very difficult to forgive. If remorse is shown (not just said)-- or one feels that 'fate' has provided justice (as in the broken armed abuser story)-- then it is easier to let go of the protective anger and move on. Anger can a protective shield-- perhaps it is like a cold-frame for seedlings -- protecting a vulnerable person until they are strong enough to live on their own, but confining if left in place too long.

Withholding forgiveness may be a way to retain one’s power in a situation of powerlessness. I believe it can be a first step to regaining a sense of self that has been destroyed by abuse and exploitation.

The Rev. Ann Fontaine, Diocese of Wyoming, keeps what the tide brings in. She is the author of Streams of Mercy: a meditative commentary on the Bible.

By Richard Helmer

In starting discernment to become a member of a spiritual community of The Episcopal Church, I have been invited in recent months to study the three classic evangelical counsels as they have been articulated as vows beginning with the mendicant orders in the twelfth century: poverty, chastity, and obedience.

As a parish priest, husband, father, and ever aspiring pianist, the one counsel that has captivated me most recently has been the vow of chastity. It has spoken most deeply to my perfectionistic desire to control outcomes in every relationship in my life -- far beyond its often narrow interpretation regarding fidelity in sexual conduct.

Chastity means setting aside dominance and control and seeking instead a new way to relate to the world and to God.

Having spent an increasing amount of time in conversation with married couples in recent years, the most commonly destructive dynamic in any relationship I have found has to do with a failure of chastity. But I don't mean sex outside the marriage. By chastity in marriage I mean the challenge of setting aside the stubborn drive to control or change person we most cherish. When couples learn this, the effect in their relationship and family is simply astonishing. Anxiety and anger levels drop almost immediately. There is a renewed simultaneous sense of freedom and connection. Spouses allow their partners to grow. Parents allow their children to seek accountable maturity. Needs are articulated. Resentments are set aside. Rather than using or abusing the relationship to change others, the relationships by themselves become transformative. Everyone is changed.

I've discovered the same truth in my walk with the congregation I serve. When I began viewing parish ministry through the lens of chastity, I soon felt far less anxious about outcomes of our various forms of service and worship. I was able to let our lay leadership step forward and engage more creatively in ministry at every level. I was less apt to get tangled up in the inevitable power games that all communities encounter. I was able to better articulate my own perspectives without expecting simple assent or agreement. I was able to hold my precious agendas more lightly. I was able to more clearly see and exercise pastoral authority when the community needed it. Frankly, I am less interested in numbers for the parochial report and parish programs for my resume than I ever have been. Chastity in this ministry is, for me at least, a spiritually life-saving discovery.

Chaste leadership serves and seeks to set example rather than manipulate or control. Chaste leadership is honest about the power it holds and seeks to exercise it with transparency, deliberation, clarity and the good of others first and foremost in mind. And chaste leadership learns to live with the reality that we are never in full control of outcomes, that consequences bad and good flow from every action, and that ends rarely if ever justify means.

Chastity deserves a thorough study by everyone presently involved in the tired crisis of the Anglican Communion. The desire to manipulate outcomes, to control others, to dominate an otherwise messy situation inherited from our colonial, modern past is all about unchaste approaches to relationship. And our late great crisis is rife with unchastity. We see it a lot in bishops and clergy attempting to manipulate the situation to their own ends. We see it in the floundering of the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury attempting to control through appeasement and veiled threats. We see it in the unwillingness to acknowledge our actions within our own Church have unforeseen consequences for everyone -- both good and bad. We see it in the grasping and grandstanding at many levels. We have already seen the failed outcomes of dishonest ecclesiastical legislating that is inherently unchaste for its attempt to placate rather than humbly hold the truth. And we know too well the abuse of reports and non-binding councils as instruments of shadow law, and the potential of distorting covenant into a tool of manipulation. Finally, we see clergy and laity alike standing behind all of these efforts aiming for a piece of the action -- following the siren call of our conflicting visions of what a church "should" be: one that is made in our image rather than God's. I'm as guilty of this form of unchastity as anyone.

But there is good news. Chastity has been in evidence in the increasing number of voices of those who recognize our disagreements as a Communion, but yet insist that costly communion in Christ is far more valuable than agreement.

Chastity has long been in evidence by those courageous, oft-threatened "firsts" of our faith who inhabit dangerous positions not for power or the quixotic pursuit of perfection, but simply by being who they are and following God's call as best they can. The consecrations in the Diocese of Los Angeles are some of the most recent examples of this form of chastity.

Chaste behavior has been in the quiet but transformative story-telling and building up
of authentic relationships across the divides of gender, class, race, culture, sexuality, and ideology all across the Communion recently. Chastity allows us to be ourselves by allowing others to be themselves. Chastity makes it known when we are encountering oppression and articulates our needs as they arise. Chastity seeks honest accountability. Chastity sets aside the weapons and metaphors of war for an honest, authentic justice. Chastity endeavors to shed the harbored resentments and unmet wants of our brief lives and move forward in renewed relationship.

Ultimately, chastity is about humility and seeing the reality that people around us are not means to an end, whether ours or anyone else's. For years, the Church stressed chastity in sexual terms for a number of reasons. Perhaps the greatest among them was that sex in patriarchal societies was often about dominance and objectification: a means to an heir or means to gratification, economic improvement, or status. We might claim we are beyond this today in some ways, but in contemporary Western culture we have perpetuated this lack of chastity in new ways: through commercialism, through sound-byte politics, through commodification of just about everyone and everything. The lesson is that the Church still has a great deal to learn and teach about chastity in our own day.

Chastity demands we return to what is real, setting aside the spectacles of objectification, and learn again to see ourselves, others, and the world through Christ's loving eyes. Chastity calls us to embrace our humility and acknowledge our lack of control -- to some degree over ourselves, and to an even greater degree over others. Chastity asks us to hope rather than to expect, to forgive rather than to condemn, to cultivate rather than destroy. Perhaps most importantly, chastity insists that God be God, not a projection of our own desires. Chastity towards the divine is captured in that critical turn of phrase in the Lord's prayer: "thy will be done..."

No one ever said chastity is easy. Yet our attempt to tame it by confining it to monasticism or sex ignores its enormous potential for transformation in our everyday lives as a Christian people. For at the end of the day, chastity calls us to live more into the love with which God loves us: a chaste love that frees and empowers us to be who we were made to be -- a people of and for our loving God.

The Rev. Richard E. Helmer is rector of Church of Our Saviour, Mill Valley, Calif. His sermons and reflections have been published widely online, and he blogs about spirituality, ministry, Anglicanism, church politics, music, and the misadventures of young parenthood at Caught by the Light.

By Leo Campos

What is the basis for any community to be considered a community at all? In my own family, for example, is it sufficient that we all inhabit the same house? As it is with different schedules (after school activities, church activities, personal pursuits, chores, and what not) the amount of time we spend together as a unit is very limited indeed. Even the ideal of sharing a meal is not always possible - sorry can't stay for dinner gotta go to church for the 630p Healing Service. Sorry can't stay - yoga class starting in 15 minutes. Sorry can't stay, drumming lessons begin at 7 p.m. And so on.

But still we would consider ourselves a family or no more so than the vast majority of families these days. We have to fight for every scrap of time available. Without a doubt a community, be it a family or a larger organization is more than a collective of individuals. A community is a flexible and dynamic set of relationships. These relationships themselves are driven by the attitudes and behavior of its members, but they are themselves fed by and altered by the other attitudes and behaviors.

So what constitutes a family or a community? First of all a community is artificial. There is no such thing as "community," it is a construct which delineates, more or less arbitrarily, a space for relationships. This much is obvious. Even the "nuclear family" so beloved a myth in America is artificial. Growing up in Brazil I tell you that my "nuclear family" was way larger than what Americans consider their nucleus. It is inconceivable for me that the nucleus of the family should stop at one generation. In our family we make concerted effort to make sure that grandparents are involved in the children's lives. We also want to include cousins, aunts and friends into the mix.

Second thing to keep in mind is that what motivates individuals is not what affects communities. The community as an artificial phenomenon has a life of its own. There will be as varied reasons for members of a community to be together as there are members.

But we must be careful not to take this idea too far and end up thinking a community is some sort of Frankenstein's Monster - an artificial being with a life of its own. We cannot either assume or give what are human characteristics to a non-human thing. For example, while it makes sense to say that a my cats have a family, it is dangerous to think that way because "family" is a human construct. Cats most certainly do not see their own associations with each other and with non-felines in that way. Anyone else here who has ever watched the Dog Whisperer show on TV knows what I am talking about. The same way a community (or a family) is not a creature: it is an abstract entity which "moves" and "behaves" responding to different forces than the creatures that make it.

Some questions which arise when I think of communities: what is it that holds a community together? How is interdependence achieved, fostered, cultivated?

Without good answers for these questions I am afraid we spend a lot of time worrying about things which are less important, things like numbers. How many conversations have I had or heard where the defining characteristic of a church was its size. Sure it is by far the easiest thing to measure: one head=one person. But study after study of mega-churches has shown that the quality, the depth, and the impact of the church on the individual is in no way related to the size of the church. I would probably venture to say that it is in small churches is where you find the true disciples - after all the 5 people that show up for a Wednesday night Healing Service really want to be there.

I have no particular secret advanced monastic technique to increase community. But I can tell you what we do to try and foster a communal environment. First, everyone rows. There cannot be (especially in small groups) any tourists. I remember some time ago a wise priest pointing to me a horrible truth about the church: there are no volunteers in church. It is true! Everyone who calls himself a Christian is a disciple - who is obligated by evangelical commands to roll up their sleeves and work. Volunteering is a secular thing, for those who are idle and searching for something meaningful to fill up the time between lunch with friends and bridge club later that night. So at our Community, from day one, we talk about everyone being responsible for the whole. Second, we throw away rules. I do not mean that anything goes, but rather we try to do away with regulated and regimented verse-and-response communications, and instead hope to foster a more tenuous, sometimes embarrassing, often funny, informal dialog. This allows everyone to talk in their own way, in their own voice. Finally, we are rabid defenders of each other's individual and unique call. By destroying all cookie-cutters, we hope to emphasize to everyone that they are held in unique respect by all of us.

By keeping these three aspects in creative tension we have been able, so far, to maintain both a healthy interest in the global community as well as excitement about each individual's call. Surely there must be a way to do so in the church as well?

Brother Leo Campos is the co-founder of the Community of Solitude, a non-canonical, ecumenical contemplative community. He worked as the "tech guy" for the Diocese of Virginia for 6 years before going to the dark side (for-profit world).

By Margaret M. Treadwell

Mark Twain said: “I’ve had many troubles in my life and most of them never happened.”
Jesus said: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life. … Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” (Matthew 6: 25)

If this is true, then why did God create his creatures great and small to constantly anticipate danger in preparation for fight or flight? A childhood friend grew up in a family where her mother and grandmother lived by the mantra: “Look out ahead of yourself to name the possible catastrophes, worry, and prepare for the worst yet to come.” This focus on future doom never got to the real cause of their terrors, nor did it give them strategies to face life more calmly and faithfully. It was chronic anxiety, which differs from the acute anxiety we rely on to get us out of harm’s way. (“Oops, that truck running a red light would have crushed me if I hadn’t jumped back on the curb!”)

Over time, her family’s general anxiety spread like the flu to my young friend, who by osmotic absorption of fear seemed to attract bad luck – frequent accidents, illnesses and troubles in school. She became a timid adult and indeed her misfortunes followed her.

Her only son’s diagnosis of schizophrenia and the early death of her husband strengthened her resolve never to stray far from home in order to protect her son and herself. So she religiously tended her garden, invited a few people over from time to time, and gradually lost touch with her church community, insisting it couldn’t meet her needs. Since it takes a community to raise a child, her son suffered as much as she from her alienation. She saw doctors with expert opinions and took many medications, but she simply became more reclusive. One of her remaining friends remarked that she could have gone for a brisk walk in the time it took her to swallow the enormous number of pills she consumed each day.

In her mid 50s she was poisoned by arsenic from chemical toxins left in her garden’s soil by live WWI bombs buried for safety in her neighborhood. She had never truly lived. Avoiding danger was no safer in the long run than exposure to risk.

All of us bear the brunt of some familial anxiety, and searching for its real cause can be of great benefit. But the best way to reduce anxiety is often to increase one’s basic level of differentiation. How might my friend’s life have been different if she had worked more at being an individual and less at perfectly pleasing her family?

The following three questions have saved many a life from fear and anxiety paralysis:

• Where do I begin and end and where does another begin?

One of the most challenging and defining things you – or anyone – can do is to work on being clear about your beliefs and then having the courage to say “No.” No to family or friend when their expectations differ from your life goals. No to situations at work that don’t allow you to use your strengths. No to children when their demands are excessive or contrary to your principles.

• How can I stay connected with my family and others when their disapproval of my
opinions and choices makes it tempting to cut them out of my life?

Though they may not like your decisions, people appreciate clarity of belief and someone who is willing to take a stand when it is clearly, calmly articulated using “I statements.” Even so, it’s human nature to strive for “togetherness” and to resist another’s clarity. Learning to plan for that resistance and contain your reactivity to it is the true mark of progress. (Hint: more playfulness and less seriousness are essential to persistence when it seems easier to give in to another’s complaints.)

• Is all this worth it to grow up?

If your answer is “Yes,” you will have embarked on a lifetime process with a goal that mortals can never fully achieve, although Jesus provides us a model to reach for.
Differentiation is thoughtfully taking responsibility for your emotional being and destiny rather than blaming others and your lot in life. This means forgiving others for trying to fix us and forgiving ourselves for never measuring up. If we decide to welcome God’s presence on our journey and draw on our faith, we’ll have a better chance of moving toward the wholeness and maturity that is God’s wish for each of us.

Margaret M. (“Peggy”) Treadwell, LCSW -C, has been active in the fields of education and counseling for thirty-five years. Following a long association with Dr. Edwin H. Friedman, during which she served on his faculty, she co-edited and helped posthumously publish his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.

By Jean Fitzpatrick

The bride in a black cocktail dress with a black veil, carrying a flower bouquet adorned with miniature skulls. The groom in dark slacks, a pirate shirt and a top hat. Theme music from The Addams Family and The Munsters. Guests in costume. That's what Lisa Panensky and Jim Nieves had in mind when they booked their Halloween 2009 wedding at Westchester County's Old Dutch Church, built in 1697 and cited by Washington Irving in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." "Sleepy Hollow is the Halloween capital of the world," Nieves told the local Journal News explaining the couple's eagerness to be married there. "It's a landmark."

But the Rev. Jeff Gargano, pastor of the Old Dutch Church, nixed the plan. Gargano did offer to perform the ceremony outside in the church's historic "Burying Ground" (where, it is said, Irving's Headless Horseman tethers his horse nightly among the graves) but Nieves and Panensky declined. The wedding will reportedly take place -- Munsters music and all -- at their home in nearby Elmsford.

But the couple remained disappointed and puzzled by the minister's objections. (This is, after all, a church where Irving's ghoulish story is read aloud every year in the sanctuary.) "I don't know where he [Gargano] got this idea of burning crosses and killing babies," said the bride-to-be. I guess the pastor worried that darker forces might be involved in the Halloween wedding, he perhaps not subscribing fully to the engraving on the 1685 Old Dutch Church bell: "If God Be For Us Who Can Be Against Us?"

I'll admit that I'm partial to the long white wedding dress. But let me tell you what really upset me about this story, and it had nothing to do with the Addams Family. According to local news reports, the church had decided to waive its requirement that the couple participate in premarital counseling.

Now, that's scary.

You've heard the statistics. And with or without a pirate shirt and skulls, today's couples -- so often lacking role models for how to sustain a marriage through crises and everyday conflicts -- benefit enormously from the opportunity to reflect on their union and learn practical relationship skills. Sadly, many are so busy with work and wedding plans that they are hard pressed to find time to lay the groundwork for their relationship without encouragement. Even if they've had some previous therapy, as a couple prepares to walk down the aisle, it is essential that they talk together about the meaning of marriage, their own experiences of relationship, their struggles and hopes and dreams.

As for the Old Dutch Church couple, what a missed opportunity that was to make a real connection with them. I can't think of anything more telling than to ask an engaged couple about their masks and disguises. The costumes we choose, like Venetian carnival masks, conceal our identities...but they also reveal our deepest yearnings and fantasies. What do those skulls mean to Lisa, anyway? And why did Jim the groom decide to don a pirate hat? How do their two "characters" relate to each other? Sounds like the start of a rich and interesting conversation.

Through the years, those identities and yearnings often evolve. With each new life stage we deepen certain aspects of ourselves, discard others, discover new ones. I can't count how many times a husband or wife has sat in my office and told a partner, "I don't know you anymore," or "This is not the person I married." At times like these we feel as gloomy and bedraggled as trick-or-treaters on a rainy night. The beauty is that if you're willing to keep on stumbling along in the dark, sooner or later a door opens, you wind up at a house that's all lit up and warm, and a friendly face is inviting you in.

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.

By Jean Fitzpatrick

A man in his late thirties sits across from me in my office, tapping a nervous drumroll on the coffee table between us with his fingertips. "We used to think we were the world's greatest couple. Our friends would tell us they envied us. But now" -- he sighs and slaps the tabletop -- "this isn't what I signed on for."

June may or may not be the most popular wedding month (a recent web search suggests it's second now to August) but it's a good time for a heads-up to anyone engaged to be married: the beloved person you have promised to spend your life with -- the one who will stand so regally beside you at the altar among the orange-blossoms and peonies, who will hold you so close as you cross the floor to "The Power of Love" or "From This Moment On" -- will one day frustrate you more than you can imagine.

People come to my office every day with the same story: For years they were amazed at how blessed or how lucky they were to have found "The One," a spouse who shared their hopes and dreams and values, who loved scuba diving or the opera or church as much as they do, who finished their sentences. Gone are those fairy-tale days. Mealtimes are strained, date nights have disappeared, sex is a distant memory. "He's changed," they tell me. "This is not the person I fell in love with." "If I had to choose her all over again, I wouldn't." "The One" now seems selfish, dull, annoying or all of the above at the same time. Too wrapped up with the children, too busy going out with friends, too involved with work. Too needy.

When that day comes, you have hit The Wall. You may start coming home late, going to bed early, anything to avoid each other. Hurtful things you never believed you could utter will come out of your mouth. You may be tempted to get involved with someone else, or just to give up.

What if, instead, you were to trust that hitting The Wall means your relationship is on the brink of something wonderful? Change is inevitable. "Like any living organism, a relationship must grow or it dies," I tell people who fear that the best days of their marriage are behind them. Or I offer another metaphor: "You didn't marry a snapshot, you married a movie." When we fall in love, the usual walls that separate us from other people go down. We're all tangled up with one another, like the sheets and blankets around our legs the morning after, and nothing could feel more delicious or amazing It seems as though this blissful time could last forever.

But it's only a moment. In the course of a lifelong relationship, we need to come untangled, to define ourselves as separate individuals while remaining in loving connection. For most of us, that's quite a trick. My partner is not me. We are two different people. Sounds obvious in theory, doesn't it? There's nothing like banging your head against The Wall to learn it in practice. Letting those walls down once felt so good. But The Wall is too high to climb over, too thick to knock down, and so painful we suspect it's guarded with barbed wire. When we finally stop the head-banging we discover that The Wall has its pluses: it gives us privacy and freedom, as well as space to reflect on what's really important to us and on the kind of marriage we wish to create.

Those lessons are the hardest part. Happily -- although wistful single people often believe the stars will need to align before they find "The One" -- fixing a marriage isn't very mysterious or magical. It requires that we learn a few important skills -- or take skills we already have plenty of practice with, at work and with friends, and start to use them with the person who knows our tender spots better than anyone. Listening is one of these skills. Even though it scares us half to death, we need to start paying close attention when our partner talks, without interrupting. (How else will we find out what's happening on the other side of The Wall?) Perspective-taking and negotiating are other essential skills. We need to start looking at our relationship from a broader perspective, moving past our own frustrations and thinking in terms of how to nurture the marriage with time and tenderness and artful negotiation. In using these skills, we create a richer marriage. No longer all tangled up with each other; we're two strong, interdependent people consciously creating a relationship that, in turn, nurtures the two of us.

Now, that's what I call happy ever after.

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.

By Margaret Treadwell

Our family has a history of making lemonade out of lemons during hard financial times. Thinking about our ancestors who found unexpected blessings during the adversity of job loss is one way we deal with the current economic crisis; after all, it is the way we THINK about a situation that makes a difference in the outcome.

My husband’s grandfather lost his job as a bridge engineer during the Great Depression and had to draw on all of his creative skills to support his wife and three daughters. He became an entrepreneur using his talents to build and sell window fans from which he created a good enough business to see the family through. Imagination and perseverance are his legacies to us.

My father used to say about the Depression, “We were all in it together; not two nickels to rub together.” He and Mother had to postpone their wedding for several years, and Dad moved far from their families to a town where he could join a surviving law practice. Mom tells the story of their honeymoon when they were able to take a night away at an hour’s drive to another town in a borrowed car with a broken door handle which required tying the passenger door shut. She says, “We didn’t think much about it because nobody had anything for years; I believe that made our friendships stronger.” My parents worked together to build Dad’s practice and gave us the twin gifts of endurance and faith triumphing over fear.

During my husband’s job loss in the 1983 recession, we learned useful lessons that we put into our “ NOWork Workshop” for families who wanted to survive and even thrive during those scary years. We based our coaching on a team approach to job loss that stressed the importance of maintaining one’s individuality without becoming a victim or allowing the crisis to consume the family. Now twenty-six years later, we remember how applying our research to ourselves helped us grow up, especially with the following three healing experiences important to our family’s well being:

1) Family financial inventory: Assess and budget spouse’s income, unemployment benefits (Yes! Sign up for them ASAP) and any other family resources. Questions: How can you enjoy a simpler life? Cut all non-essentials from the budget? Involve children who are old enough in these discussions and encourage them to take some responsibility in positive ways and certainly with home chores necessary for family functioning. Talking calmly and openly about financial issues can be a freeing, new experience.

2) Grieve: Job loss is like a death, especially when it represents the family’s community and social life as well as income. Couples move through the stages of grief at different times and in different ways – a healthy response when acknowledged and one that frees families to focus on practical day-to-day functioning.

3) Time Discipline:
• The job seeker is not out of work; it takes hours everyday to market oneself – networking, assessing strengths and weaknesses, rewriting resumes, follow-up. If an unemployment support group would be a benefit, start one, check local churches or on line. Volunteer in your career field or simply help others.
•. Set aside a specific daily limited time with your spouse to discuss the loss and how you are coping and moving forward. Could this be your prayer and faith time as well? Occasionally share this time with children who are old enough to understand. Very young children sense when something is wrong, and they “get it” when a parent explains that he/she will have more time to spend with them while searching for meaningful new work. Extend this to relaxing family time when a) spouses are alone or b) the children are involved. Laugh. Exercise. Appreciate leisure time, especially in the Washington area where there are so many free cultural and recreational opportunities. Unemployed parents say that more nurturing time with children turned out to be their greatest blessing.
• Take time to be with friends. A few want to know the details of your search and how they can help. For others, a brief, carefully chosen sentence that doesn’t focus on the past (ex. “I lost my job.”), but rather helps define what you are moving toward (“I’m looking at several opportunities to tell you about later.”) suffices to open other topics of conversation.

Turning the crisis of job loss into opportunity involves slowing life’s fast pace to stay awake for serendipity. Otherwise, you might miss the dormant skills that need space to bloom, the basic values that give sustenance, and the truth that your job is not you. Our God is a God of surprises.

Margaret M. (“Peggy”) Treadwell, LCSW -C, has been active in the fields of education and counseling for thirty-five years. Following a long association with Dr. Edwin H. Friedman, during which she served on his faculty, she co-edited and helped posthumously publish his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.

By Sam Candler

Christians in the developed world usually forget that so many of the parables of Jesus deal with money. The usual suspects for our parish theological discussions are topics like church structure, or sex, or the general matters of biblical authority. We tend to consider what Jesus said about money only during stewardship or fund-raising times.

However, during these last two months of global financial anxiety, suddenly the way Jesus talks about money has some striking application. “You cannot serve God and Mammon” has become self-evident. The parable of the “unjust steward” who “made friends for himself with unrighteous mammon” also makes a lot of sense when assets in our own time have been de-valued (Luke 16:1-13).

It is the parable of the talents that I am fascinated with today. Again, during usual economic times, Christians tend to interpret that parable figuratively, so that “talents” are our God-given gifts and abilities. The lesson is that we are to use those for greater glory and the kingdom of heaven.

But what if the parable of the talents is really about literal finance and economics, after all? I think it is. We all remember the story. A wealthy master went on a long journey and left one asset manager with five talents, another asset manager with two talents, and a third asset manager with one talent. When he returned, the manager with five talents had traded and made five more. The manager with two talents had traded and made two more. The timid and fearful third manager, with one talent, said, “I knew you to be a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow; so I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.” (Matthew 25:14-30).

Today, maybe the first thing to admit is that if this scenario had been played out in the last six months of the United States, the manager who hid his talent in the ground would probably be the only one ahead right now!

But the power of this Jesus story is that the managers traded; they engaged others. They risked relationship and trust. According to my meager financial expertise, one of the primary problems in our time is that banks and businesses are too scared to offer loans, not confident enough to trade. With no credit and no trust, economic transaction is paralyzed.

This parable of Jesus is about overcoming fear and taking the risk to grow and to invest. Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven, but he is also talking about building up the economy in general! In fact, the word for “economy” in the Greek Bible means the management of a household; it means “stewardship!” Our economy should be the way we manage our cultural and political and financial household.

The key word in Jesus’ parable is “trade.” The asset managers had the courage to go out and trade with what had been entrusted to them. They took risks. They engaged in relationships. Good business, and good economy, is always about good relationships, not about money, or the “mammon god.” Good economy is always about trusting relationships. In Jesus’ parable, the asset manager who loses out is the one who was afraid, so afraid that he was unable to take the risk of economic relationship.

In the uncertain situation of our present time, Jesus’ parable reminds us to engage in relationships – not just our domestic or familial or friendly relationships—but our business and financial relationships, too. Maybe especially our financial relationships! This is not the time to hide our talent in the ground. This is the time to use whatever we have, no matter how great or small, to build up trusting and trading relationships. Jesus said this would be like the kingdom of heaven.

The Very Rev. Sam Candler is dean of St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta. He helped start that city’s interfaith group, and leads regular community bible studies. He is also inspired by playing jazz piano, hunting, astronomy, and poetry. His sermons and reflections on “Good Faith and Common Good” can be found on the Cathedral web site.

By Luiz Coelho

A few months ago, after Evensong, I decided to do one of my “favorite” Sunday night activities – grocery shopping. There I was in one of Midtown Atlanta’s supermarkets strolling my buggy, drinking my latte and trying to get everything I needed as fast as I could. Until, at a certain moment, my eyes were attracted to a cute little girl, with a big smile and curly hair, who was fascinated with a basket full of multicolored tie-dye balls in front of her.

As I contemplated in awe the beauty of innocence, a horrifying thought suddenly came to my mind: “where are this girl's parents?” I was not the only one to wonder where they were; within seconds the little child also realized that she was alone in the midst of strangers. Immediately her smile was erased from her face, and my heart started aching as I heard her begin to yell desperately, “Mommy, Mommy!”

Thankfully, within seconds a young woman came from behind a pile of products and hugged the frightened girl. Everything was alright; Mommy was there. My heart settled in peace as that same wide smile that had first caught my attention came back to the child's face as she was embraced by the one who has loved her for her whole life. Since that Sunday night, I have not been able to erase that scene from my mind; and, the reason, I believe, is because through it God has been speaking to me.

That scene speaks a prophetic message to me and to all of us ‘adults’ that even when we pretend to believe we are strong and self-sufficient, we know deep down that we are as lonely, frighened, and vulnerable as that little lost girl. There are moments when we walk away from God and think we can live our lives apart from God; yet, even in those moments when we think we are capable of controling our own lives, our hearts are crying and we too are yelling, “Mommy, Mommy, where are you?”

It happened to me; I can still remember it vividly. I was serving in the Brazilain Army and was on a flight from Manaus, in the Amazon, to Brasília, in order to take part in a “War Games” symposium. I boarded the plane, confident in the power of humankind, knowing that it would arrive to its destination safely, since it was a safe aircraft and the weather was wonderful. That's not what happened, though. As the plane flew through the Amazon forest, it found itself being sucked by an unpredictable low-pressure zone, and went deeply into freefall. Passengers screamed; dishes, bags and even a baby were flying around us. A woman on my right side held my arm so tightly that it hurt. I knew that there was no way of surviving. Even if we landed in the forest, it would still be in the middle of nowhere and our chances of surviving in the wild were nearly impossible. At that moment, I knew that nothing that human beings had ever developed or created would be able to save me. All of the things in which I had placed my trust were powerless to help me. I was defenseless and scared.

And then I decided to pray. It was nothing more than a simple sentence: “God, into your hands I commend my life.” It was my first prayer in years, as I had given up on “church” and walked away from God. But, I can say those words were probably the deepest and truest ones my mouth had ever said. Only God knows why, but the plane shook hard, and found its track back on course. Everybody was safe again. Even the baby who was flying over our heads was rescued and restored to his mother. My life (and probably the other passengers' lives too) would never be the same, though.
I think most of us have been through similar situations. An accident, a disease, the death of a loved one – each of these moments, and other tragic moments like them, remind us that we are nothing but children running around carelessly, until we find ourselves apparently lost, and begin to scream for our parents. The pain of human impotence and the realization that we human beings are powerless towards such situations bring us the scariest, deepest fears. Even our Lord Jesus in the fulness of his human nature, felt the fear and pain of his abandonment and loneliness on the cross and he too screamed to God in agony.

The good news, however, is that it does not end there. We are not left in our despair, and neither was Our Lord Jesus. As we go through Eastertide, let us not forget that the greatest rescue took place in Jesus Christ's Resurrection. God did not forsake the forsaken One on the cross; God heard the cries of agony, and raised Jesus Christ on the third day. Christ is risen indeed, and the power of sin and death is no longer upon us. We, who were lost, are now found; as the mother was at there in the supermarket to rescue her child, so God is always present to rescue us to new life.

After that moment in the airplane, I knew there was someone who really cared about me. Soon, I began to view all of those Christian beliefs and Biblical stories that I had been taught in my youth and had cast aside as a set of irrational children's tales in a new light. I began to relaize that they meant something; and I rediscovered truths that I will never forget.
Throughout my life, I have seen the Risen Christ with his message of hope even in the midst of despair. He has been there through the prayers of friends, through the tears in the eyes of my family, through the intercession of his Blessed Mother, though hymns, icons and scripture verses... and in my heart, always giving me a reason to live and have hope that in the end, all will be well. I can not say my life is perfect, but I know, now, that I have a “mother in Heaven” who will always come to me with a healing embrace when I cry out in moments of despair.

Our highest Father, God Almighty, who is ‘Being’, has always known us and loved us: because of this knowledge, through his marvellous and deep charity and with the unanimous consent of the Blessed Trinity, He wanted the Second Person to become our Mother, our Brother, our Saviour.

And all this we shall see it in God eternally.

Blessed Julian of Norwich

Luiz Coelho, a seminarian from the Diocese of Rio de Janero, spends part of the year in the BFA program at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His Web site includes his art and his blog, Wandering Christian, on which he examines "Christianity in the third millennium, from a progressive, Latin American and Anglican point of view."

By Donald Schell

Like many Anglicans I’ve got the Windsor Report’s phrase, ‘Bonds of Affection’ rolling round in my head like a melody from the radio that won’t be dismissed. I think about affection and whether it makes relationship or just happens sometimes in it. What sense do we make of people who say affection is fleeting? Does good affection bind? That gets more wondering about choices and how we make them, and how bonds and choices live together. And that brings an old personal story to mind.

For eighteen months after she got her R.N. my wife Ellen worked nights caring for sleeping and sleepless patients at teaching hospital near our home. When she was on, I’d walk her over to the hospital, leaving our children sleeping for ten minutes. There had been some late night muggings in our neighborhood and I didn’t want her walking over alone. Ten minutes to eleven I’d steal a good-night kiss from my lovely nurse in uniform and walk home to sleep alone while she worked the shift that hospitals don’t call ‘graveyard.’ Next morning at 7:15 while I was making the kids’ breakfast, we’d listen for her key in the door and her weary "Good morning." Then it was breakfast together and, if it was a weekday, I’d deliver the children to school and child care while Ellen slept.

Regular weekdays I plunged into the priestly and missionary tasks I’d taken founding a new congregation from the ground up, leaving the house to Ellen as a temple of silence. With earplugs and a sleeping mask, she could sleep, more or less, and be ready to greet us in the late afternoon for tea and dinner together before my evening church meetings. Whenever Ellen had a week night off work, I’d take off the following day (with the children off at school) and we’d do something outdoors in the daylight (rain or shine) and enjoy lunch together.

On the weekends that Ellen worked, my task was to keep an intense three-year old son and our more contemplative seven-year old daughter happily occupied away from home so she could sleep. Wherever I took the children on Saturday, our company was divorced dads, men and their children haunting the hands-on Exploratorium, the zoo, the beach, the park. Ellen would make herself stay up for church if she’d worked Saturday night, so on Sundays, our outings were in the afternoon.

Night shift made Ellen’s weekends off important events to us. The Saturday I’m remembering we’d planned a hike and picnic to Tennessee Beach, in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area just north of San Francisco. It’s a beautiful place and the long gentle hike to Tennessee Beach was a favorite for us and the children.

I can’t remember how the morning went wrong except that something Ellen said as we were packing the picnic angered me. I made a tentative statement of what bugged me and why and quickly decided she wasn’t listening. So I decided to sit on my anger and say nothing about it. Of course, I was absolutely certain I was right, that Ellen was wrong, and furthermore that by not listening to me she essentially conceding that I was Right about The Very Important Point I Was Making. Happily casting myself as a righteous victim, I concluded that her evident wrong-headedness gave me no choice but to claim the intellectual and moral high ground and hold it in silence. I didn’t say, "Fine, have it your way," but I thought it.

However, not wanting to be a jerk, I decided to pity her for a long week of working nights, by doing my duty as a dad and father in every particular, being exquisitely nice and helpful as I did it. I agreed with absolutely everything she said, and I smiled a lot and kept busy. I felt Ellen picking up on my rage as we were walking from the ridge down to the beach where the Gold Rush era S.S. Tennessee was wrecked in 1853. My first indication was a look from her – angry, hurt, reproachful, and questioning all at once. The children seemed to be enjoying dad’s catering to them and had a great time. Since I wasn’t making conversation but only responding to Ellen’s or the children’s questions, I had some quiet time during the picnic to think about the early steamship whose wreck had given the beach its name.

Coming up from Panama finding the Golden Gate enshrouded in heavy fog, the Captain was counting on dead reckoning to establish his position. He knew there was land just to the north of him and thought he was entering into the Golden Gate to make anchor in San Francisco Bay, but the sound of waves breaking directly ahead told him his navigation calculations had been disastrously wrong. Through the mists a high cliff appeared, now directly astern. Turning the ship hard away from the cliff and driving the big steam-driven sidewheels full speed he struggled against waves and current and until he saw the other cliff that defined the little cove directly ahead. No way forward and no way back, each succeeding wave drove the ship closer to the beach until finally the sand caught it broadside. More than five hundred passengers and all the U.S. mail were successfully brought ashore. The Tennessee’s owners came out to find their ship beached, but still sound. Soon they had tugs and cables and workmen on the shore trying to re-float the ship, but a couple of days after the Tennessee was beached, a big storm blew in from the Pacific and fierce waves pounded it to pieces.

Three hours or so into my folly of forced niceness, fake smiles and cold helpfulness, I thought I was as trapped as the S.S. Tennessee had been, a nearly new ship, best technology of its era, now little left but rusty boilers buried beneath this beach. As the kids explored the quiet beach and played at the sea’s edge, Ellen asked what was going on. "Nothing," I insisted with all the warmth of an airline steward. Did I actually think I could fool her? Probably not. "Everything" was what I really meant, and she heard me.

We packed our picnic and hiked back to the car. I was impeccably helpful, showily available to the children, excruciatingly respectful and solicitous of my wife. And I knew as I did all this that I was trapped in my own folly and doing us serious damage. All the work of parenting had Ellen stranded too - baffled and frustrated with her incommunicative husband.

Finally, after a dinner at which I tried to channel Ward Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver, and then cheerily took dish duty while Ellen put the children to bed, she came back to the kitchen, stood looking at me for a fierce, loving moment and said, "We don’t do it this way. Tell me what’s wrong."

Words of a response lined up in my head, ‘Well, this is how we do it now!’ but I hated those words and knew I’d regret them for ever, so I left them unspoken. She had me. I was immediately embarrassed to recognize that I’d long since lost track of the fine points from our morning’s conflict, but knowing I was as trapped as the captain of the doomed steamship, I welcomed her direct appeal to unbreakable bonds of affection. I’d never heard us say it before, but she was stating an immediately evident fact – we had tried to shape the course of our life together from a steady intention to grow in love and truth. She was offering us what the S.S. Tennessee could not find, a way forward.

I told her what remained from our conversation that morning, how I’d felt unheard and not taken seriously. She replied describing the scene I’d actually witnessed that morning – her very steady focus on all it took to get the picnic made and us out the door and in the car.

What generated the strain of that day was real bonds of affection we’d forged in the eight years before. I felt the painful bind with which wisdom and the force of my loving her cramped my self-righteousness. Like St. Paul in Acts (26:14) I was straining against the constraints of love. Real bonds of affection are like the muscles and sinews of our bodies, and like those living bonds, practicing relationship makes the bonds more flexible and effective through the strain of use.

Taking ‘bonds of affection’ seriously gives the lie to the old, neat distinction between agape and eros—Christian love and erotic love. Ellen was calling on our established practice of disciplined affection. Letting her touch me with that reminder validated our history together, good memories, and hopes we’d shaped over some years. Her demand rested in the delight in each other’s presence and voice and yes, in the flesh she knew I treasured. She was asking me to use the blessed, powerful bond we’d forged together to break the bind I’d created that morning. We needed to talk. She appealed to what we knew but had never declared before. This new phrase, "How we do it," refused to accept that there were any disagreements we couldn’t talk about.

I am grateful for every liberal and every conservative in our Anglican Communion who is saying now, "That’s not how we do it." With cliffs behind ahead of our ship, there’s no way forward in the righteous certainty than "I’m right" or "She’s wrong." Genuine bonds of affection demand what forged them, the commitment to keep talking, graceful conversation, through whatever conflict we face.

The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, is Creative Director of All Saints Company, working for community development in congregational life focusing on sharing leadership, welcoming creativity, building community through music, and making liturgical architecture a win/win for building and congregation. He wrote My Father, My Daughter: Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago.

By Margaret M. Treadwell

When my husband failed to meet my expectations many Valentine’s Days ago, he cynically dubbed Feb. 14 “The Hallmark Holiday.” In the aftermath of a fabulous fight that left no doubt where each of us stood on the importance of the day, we created a ritual that takes the pressure off.

Each Feb. 14, we go to the local card shop, position ourselves at opposite ends of the Valentine’s rack, and proceed to read love messages as we move toward the middle. When we meet, we hand each other the card of our choice, read it, laugh, hug, kiss and put the cards back in their places. This year, the sentiment that captured our best laugh read, “Grab me, hold me, carry me and caress me. Just pretend I’m a football.”

We then return home, cook our favorite dinner and remember our own love story: We met through our passion for travel in our first jobs out of college while we were both working for Pan American Airways. We each have different perspectives about the spark that first attracted us, but we end up in the same playful place in the telling.

We adore love stories, our own or others, so this year we reminisced about how our children first met their spouses. When our son house-sat for neighbors, our daughter-in-law-to-be, the family’s au pair from Denmark, returned unexpectedly from a weekend away to her home-for-a-year. Imagine their surprise when they met as they both got up to answer an early morning knock at the front door!

Our daughter and son-in-law met on the fourth grade playground at Somerset Elementary School in Chevy Chase and soon discovered that they were born in the same New York City hospital with the same doctor delivering. That year he gave her the biggest Valentine’s heart box of candy he could find.

We talked about how many friends met because they were living their passions, either through jobs or hobbies they pursued – swing dancing, amateur acting, playing tennis, taking a class, joining a church singles group, singing in a choir or playing in a band. Friendships based on common interests led to good marriages where couples still keep that first spark of attraction alive.

Recently, I have had the privilege of working with couples in pre-marital counseling who met through Match.com or other online dating services, rather than through more traditional means. Some of my parents’ generation are astonished that people would dare risk meeting this way, but their stories demystify the process.

For a fee of about $100 for six months (with a six-month re-up at no charge if you haven’t met anyone), the Match subscriber submits a written profile, specifying personal characteristics and traits they cherish in themselves as well as what they seek in a committed relationship. One woman said that writing her profile with a friend helped her distill the qualities others admire about her and gave her the courage to speak up about her heart’s desire and the things she passionately enjoys. She believes being open and honest attracts similar responses from others.

The safety factor causes some hesitation, but many people said that their first meetings were in a public place for coffee or lunch. During this initial exploration phase, some rely on the company to monitor the meeting process, while others prefer to set up their own correspondence with like-minded others.

One gentleman summed up the positive aspects of Internet connections thus: “I was looking for a lasting relationship but tired of random encounters. On Match.com I discovered an intelligently written profile by a woman who was tired of her career focus and wanted to meet someone who was fun. All of her suitors were men interested in her money, but that was my least concern. We didn’t fall in love on the Internet, but we had a great level of communication on the Internet for two months before we ever met. People rush into relationships quite rapidly, but Match.com helped us slowly develop a rapport that led to friendship, and our marriage of five years is better for it.”

The best advice from pros is to stay open, because sometimes the very person you think won’t match actually does. One woman said, “Through Match.com I met and married the man who not every other woman in Washington was looking for.”

For those who don’t meet their match? Said one, “During the year of defining myself – my wants, desires and vision for my life – I grew in self-confidence and integrity. The process prepared me for more authentic relationships in the future.”

Margaret M. (“Peggy”) Treadwell, LCSW -C, has been active in the fields of education and counseling for thirty-five years. Following a long association with Dr. Edwin H. Friedman, she co-edited and helped posthumously publish his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. She teaches a course on congregational leadership at Virginia Theological Seminary.

By Donald Schell

A note from a younger priest stirred up a lot of memories for me:

A couple I met on Thursday are getting married two weeks from today. He's been married before and needs some kind of sense of closure from his previous marriage. I think he wants some kind of ceremony that will help him leave it behind. The new wife doesn't want the old wife to be involved...

Do you have any suggestions about what to do here?

What had I actually learned from my own divorce and remarriage almost a third of a century ago? Memories flooded in, a strange mix of crippling grief, guilt and exhilarating hope.

Thirty-three years ago, I was a divorced priest with a five year old daughter. I was engaged to be married but felt shaky accepting the happiness of new love. Though I trusted my fiancée and everything I saw and felt about how we were with each other, the promises I’d made in my first marriage haunted me. I had failed a good human being to whom I had promised lifelong committed love. Could I make the same promise again in good faith? When an evangelical friend demanded I tell him who was at fault, I knew in that moment that neither blame nor self-accusation would serve the truth. But when I told him I couldn’t reply, it cost me the friendship.

Questions of fault or blame, and just plain ‘what happened?’ filled pages of my journal and months of conversation with my spiritual director/confessor. Gradually my director, my bishop and the priest who pastored my fiancée and me, helped me find a balanced story of the first marriage’s failure, a story of two people trying hard in some ways, failing one another in other ways, sometimes even trying hard to hold together in ways that actually hurt and divided.

Seeing mutual failure in the divorce sowed the seeds of forgiveness and gave me hope that my ex-wife and I could learn to make the new relationship we’d need to raise our daughter in two households after the divorce. As our daughter grew up, our working together, much to our surprise I think, renewed friendship and deep respect.

But look, there I am trying to leap out of the uncertainty. My colleague’s question wasn’t about later. What transpires in that confused, uncertain time before making new vows? When I examined those memories directly—without filtering them through the lens of the good things that happened later on—I finally saw how much of my dilemma lay in my fiancée’s deep trust for me. Partly Ellen’s trust healed, but it also stung. A shadow in me brooded over her readiness to stand with me and make promises asking family and friends to bless the joy we felt God inviting us into. Reluctant as I was to admit it, my gut said it would easier somehow if Ellen had also been divorced. Illusions of balance or fairness (justice) and some share of guilt got me thinking that if we had divorces behind us, my conscience would rest and let me make new promises. Was I really wishing the loss and suffering of divorce on Ellen?

Conscience can be a trickster. Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn to show a good-hearted boy’s struggle with his damaged conscience. Huck feels guilty helping Jim escape slavery. Like Huck Finn, the best I could do was tell my troubled conscience to be still. But when that accusing voice was quiet, I heard another – what if Ellen’s hopes and trust in me were naïve? Her hope looked so much purer than mine. Could such seemingly pure hope live with my dark memories of failure and loss? How many months after our vows would she be waking in the night as I was now, wondering who this man really was?

Especially at the beginning divorce hangs its quarantine sign on memories as if they could infect those who heard them. Some memories feel burdensome, embarrassing or shameful. Others treacherously turn accusing and vindictive. The good memories may not be quarantined, but they’re orphaned. The couple who birthed all those good memories died.

Time does change and heal some of that. Present trust can make even old memories trustworthy. Over some years Ellen came to know the boy I had been growing up, the kid I was in college, and the young man I was in my first marriage. Now when that younger me shows up in our children, we can love, trust and forgive him. Other relationships grow and heal too. My daughter is the big sister in two families. Her four parents have come to respect each other. Ellen and my children are friends with their sister’s other sister.

But my mind is rushing ahead again. When the confusion was still fresh in Ellen’s and my first year together, she and my dad were talking, and he stopped, something crossed his face, and he said, 'We're really glad Donald found you, but his mother and I only wish he'd met you first.' Though she felt the welcome he intended, his words left her speechless. Regret simply made no sense. Ellen knew I was a different man for my failed first marriage. And none of us – not Ellen the new stepmother, nor either parent, nor the grandfather who was speaking regretted our daughter, his grand-daughter What was he saying? What could he really mean?

He was wishing for what couldn’t be – no divorce, no pain, no confusion. But wishing a more perfect and orderly life for me – not divorced – missed new life and blessing that was already showing up like fresh growth after a forest fire. Dad’s affectionate welcome to family risked rewriting the past, erasing real people, my ex-, our daughter (his grand-daughter!), and me.

Yes new life did happen, but how did we carry ambiguity and memory of failed promise into a whole-hearted, unambiguous commitment to new promise?

A month or so before the wedding, David Boulton, the priest who married Ellen and me, said he wanted to talk with me alone. I was afraid he’d seen how little I trusted myself. Would he try to talk me out of the wedding? No, David simply but forcefully told me I had to GIVE UP my pretense that I knew more any about marriage than Ellen. 'Your failed first marriage doesn't make you an expert,' he told me. ‘Offer your best to Ellen and learn from her while she learns from you.’ David’s words complemented what my spiritual director was doing.

David, Fr. Paul, and a handful of trusted listeners cleansed my memory and heart, letting me forgive myself and my ex-, reflect on a past that was ending, and let it go. Letting go, I entered a living future, a real marriage with Ellen.

Thirty-three years later I look back with gratitude at how the church – a bishop, two priests, and some very good friends – offered penance, counsel, challenge, and encouraging words that made me trust myself (and God’s grace) enough to make the promises I so wanted to make and live with a partner I love.

So now, pastorally what do I offer someone still raw from divorce and mistrusting himself/herself, but wanting to make new promises? I use the Prayer Book Rite of Reconciliation (penance or confession) or some informal approximation of it. Penance offers the release and simplicity of acknowledging promises made and not lived out. Penance and reflective counseling invite letting go of both blame and accusation. New life begins as the divorced partner makes confession and we talk, sometimes deflecting blame, sometimes probing for honest statement of failure. We can pray together for the person, and also for the ex-partner.

This pastoral work and ritual of penance make most sense to me by working with the divorced partner alone. or each alone If both partners are recently divorced. So many of the stories we tell ourselves as we come to marriage vows are burdensome illusions. Penance is a place to lay the burden down.

Broken promises demand the strange work of learning to find one’s self trustworthy all over again. I’ve often told people in their relationships (and their workplace) that ‘shattered trust’ can be rebuilt. Trust isn’t a commodity or a fixed state, it’s the unfolding experience of finding yourself or another person trustworthy. That’s as true trusting ourselves as it is trusting another.

The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, is Creative Director of All Saints Company working for community development in congregational life. He wrote My Father, My Daughter: Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago.

By Jean Fitzpatrick

Rutting season has arrived in the Hudson Valley, and police are warning drivers to keep an eye out for deer who are crazier than usual. Frantic to breed, they chase one another through woods and across meadows, darting out from stands of golden birches, sprinting across winding roads. If you spot a doe, you'd better brake for a stag in hot pursuit. It's a glorious time. We're living in a wonderland straight out of Bambi, love busting out all over the forest, the whole leafy world gone goofy.

Remember those days? Remember when you first fell in love and felt an irresistible pull toward your partner, who was surely the most wonderful and amazing creature God ever created? And yet almost as irresistibly, somewhere along the way you came to recognize his or her flaws -- the annoying tendency to leave underwear on the floor, to arrive late, to hog the remote. At that point, it can feel as though an early winter has descended on the relationship.

Not so fast. That's where Thanksgiving comes in. Thanking our partner is one of the most powerful ways to restore joy and closeness in a marriage. I know, Thanksgiving is supposed to be about thanking God: isn't that the easy part sometimes? Thanking God seems to enlarge us, to remind us we're blessed. Thanking our spouse, on the other hand, is another story. Lacking a special occasion -- a clean garage, a perfect roast turkey, a gift -- we often assume our appreciation is unnecessary, or obvious. Or, worse, we keep score: Why should I think my partner? Look at all the thankless tasks I do! Nobody thanks me. Besides, look at all the annoying things my partner does, not to mention the chores he or she doesn't accomplish. And so on. It's exhausting. What happened to the breathless joy of the chase?

Well, it's over. Marriage, like any spiritual path, demands a willingness to open our hearts and the discipline to move beyond instant gratification. The good news is that, like any spiritual path, it rewards us with deep sustenance. Understood from this perspective, thanking our partner becomes a daily practice, a response to ordinary things -- for putting in a day's work, for picking up the kids, for giving a back rub, for buying the groceries, for taking out the garbage, for doing the laundry. We can't express our thanks enough. Over time, we discover we're growing closer. Our partner feels special, important to us. We're filling up a reservoir of good will for the times when we do want to raise concerns. Say thank you several times a day, and there's no telling what might happen. The two of you might even feel young and goofy again.

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, sees couples and individuals in her private practice. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles on the spirituality of relationships, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.

By Margaret M. Treadwell

When Daniel from Dover, Del. wanted a romantic way to propose to his love, Lily, he remembered his favorite childhood summer building sandcastles. He googled “Sandcastle Lady” and found his teacher, Lynn McKeown, who was still at work in Lewes. Together they created a plan: He and Lily would take a sunset walk from the Lewes Public Beach to nearby Market Beach, where Lynn promised to have built a castle to fulfill his dreams.

Lynn spent two days crafting the enormous sandcastle, complete with distinct, clear lettering across the base – “Lily will you marry me? Love, Dan.” Spectators who had watched the creation gathered at sunset to enjoy the drama from a distance while an exhausted Lynn went home for dinner. Later that evening, Daniel got down on one knee, Lily gave him a big kiss, his parents emerged from the dunes with their cameras, and the witnesses gathered around with much rejoicing.

Lynn, a born artist, started building sandcastles when her children were young and the family was searching for something they all could do together that didn’t cost any money. Soon other kids along Lewes Beach began to join them. Lynn says, “I’m not all that altruistic, but became a teacher out of self defense because I wanted to make them creators rather than destroyers. Soon I was collecting and giving away sand toys so others could play and spread the joy. Like dropping pebbles in the water to see the ripples expand out, you never know how far they’ll go!”

These days, Lynn spends the entire month of August in the sand at Lewes, building, teaching, meeting and talking with people who stop by in large numbers to sign her logbook. They return summer after summer, and she is thrilled when people visit from miles away – most recently a family of four from Minnesota she met six years ago who thought she wouldn’t remember them. An older woman asked if she had an age limit when she invited “children of all ages.” When Lynn advised her that “they have to be old enough to be away from their parents and able to listen,” she replied, “I’m talking about myself, and I’m 85!”

“How did you learn?” is often the first question asked as onlookers marvel at the intricate details on walls, roofs and steps and the animals that guard the mote. Lynn says, “I look and listen to what the sand wants to do. This just happens to be my gift, but everyone has them. Don’t hide your gift under a basket. Give it away!” At night she ropes off the day’s creation with signs that read, “Sandcastles, Sculptures in Progress. Teaching Techniques and Sharing Tools. July 31-Sept. 2. Sandcastle Lady.”

Lynn often is asked to join competitions in Rehoboth. “Why would I want to do that?” she wonders. “I need serenity with the sound of birds and the sea to get into the zone. Here I can go slowly, practice, develop patience and be positive. Besides, I love to talk. If I could play in the sand all the time I probably wouldn’t have high blood pressure.”

Raised an Episcopalian, Lynn believes faith is all about the way you live your life as a witness to God’s love, and that it’s good for children to experience that from an adult other than their parents.

While she and the children work, she calmly explains, “Never dig a hole for your castle. First put water on flat sand to make a solid base. Then scoop your sand. Pack it hard to make the foundation strong, like the man who built his house on a rock.”

When a little boy complains, “Freddy’s copying me!” Lynn is quick to respond. “I’ll teach you all to be master castle builders with no envy,” she says. “I just ask that you share the techniques with your families and other people you love.”

When I remarked that we all need joy and christened her a “joy spreader,” she began singing a rendition of the St. Francis Prayer: “Make me a channel of your peace. Where there is despair in life let me bring hope. Where there is darkness only light and where there is doubt true faith in you. Oh Master, grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love with all my soul.”

Then with a twinkle she added, “Grant that I shall not so much teach as be taught!”

Margaret M. (“Peggy”) Treadwell, LCSW -C has been active in the fields of education and counseling for thirty-five years. Following a long association with Dr. Edwin H. Friedman during which she served on his faculty, she co-edited and helped posthumously publish his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. She teaches a course on congregational leadership at Virginia Theological Seminary, creates and leads conferences across the country for bishops, clergy and church lay leaders, helping them to apply family systems concepts to their leadership in diocesan and parish ministry.

By Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick

Sometimes couples come into my office playing a blame game. “He leaves his underwear on the floor.” “She’s too wrapped up with the kids.” “He never wants sex.” Often they even blame themselves: “I can’t express my feelings and that’s why she cheated.” “I’m too needy.” Their focus is on individual shortcomings, on personal sin, although they rarely use that phrase. I try to offer a broader perspective.

Couple problems are just that, I tell them: couple problems. “In here, the relationship” -- I slice the air between them with one hand, as though delineating an invisible presence sitting there on the loveseat -- "is the patient.” After that we often end up talking about how busy they are. Two partners are working three jobs, one just to pay for health insurance. A mother has quit her job because child care is too costly or her job too inflexible, and her husband spends long hours away at the office to make up for the lost income. Survivors of multiple layoffs, working late nights in companies where employee morale has plummeted, come home stressed out and short-tempered. Under so much pressure, it’s easy for couples to back-burner their relationship. Without realizing it, partners lose touch with each other, neglecting the time for fun and intimacy and even the spicy disagreements that keep a marriage lively and strong. Continuing the metaphor, I tell them, "The patient is starving to death.”

Therapy isn’t usually about moments of dramatic recognition, but people’s eyes widen when they hear those words, and then they nod and we are ready to get to work.

Recently, on a trip to Ireland, I found a sculpture that instantly reminded me of the starving patient: Rowan Gillespie’s “Famine,” in Dublin. A dramatic installation on Custom House Quay beside the Liffey, this group of bronze figures – life-sized but stooped and achingly thin – appear to be taking halting steps toward emigration ships. Hollow-eyed, some carrying bundles, one a weary child, the figures stand together; yet in their misery each one looks withdrawn, utterly alone.

I have a picture of the bronze statues in my office now, and it’s not only their desperate starvation that draws me to them. It’s the story they tell. Most of us learned in school that a potato blight caused the Irish famine. But the Irish will inform you that even during the worst years of the Great Hunger, wealthy Anglo-Irish landowners were exporting oats, barley, butter and livestock overseas. Various charitable organizations, most notably the Society of Friends, spoke out against the government’s laissez faire policies, setting up soup kitchens, offering American grains, teaching the farmers to replant their fields, and supporting fishermen, and yet in only six years a million people died while another million left the country. The Great Hunger is one of history’s chilling examples of structural sin, the injustice built into a society’s underpinnings that, though often invisible to its victims, inflicts suffering on a mass scale.

That’s why the picture of the famine memorial seems so appropriate in my office. Here in an affluent area of a wealthy nation I sit and listen to people whose struggles to cover the cost of health insurance, child care, and retirement too often deplete the time and energy they need to relate to those they love. This is life, they tell themselves, and try to make the best of it.

They are trapped in an ethic of individualism that leaves them alone and exhausted. Working so hard at getting through the day, they scarcely have time to consider the possibility that many of their most intimate problems are directly linked to public policy. In a country where health care is not a guaranteed human right, where parental leave and vacation time are shorter than in other industrial societies, where child care is inadequate and expensive, and where the gap between rich and poor is bigger than it’s been since the Gilded Age, ordinary people are suffering at their kitchen tables and in their beds.

Many of us in front-line ministries can do our best, like the Quakers in the Irish famine, to offer comfort and nurture, one person at a time. But it’s time to talk more about structural sin. Until our national policies prioritize the support of families and individuals, our relationships will too often be starving to death.

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, sees couples and individuals in her private practice. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles on the spirituality of relationships, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.

By Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick

Okay, I admit it. I’m addicted to Altarcations, Gawker’s tongue-in-cheek ratings for the marriage and commitment announcements in The New York Times Sunday Styles section. Gawker’s elaborate tally system (the brainchild of one “Intern Alexis”) tallies up status markers -- Ivy degrees, Mayflower pedigrees, high-powered careers -- to decide on the week’s winning couple: Add 2 points if a partner works as a management consultant, 3 if both work at jobs involving the word "banker" or "investment." Magna cum laude? Add 2 points. Bride or groom from New Jersey? Minus 1. Married by a cantor or an Episcopal priest, plus 1. No other clergy merit extra credit. (Who knew?) I got to thinking that summer wedding season is the perfect time to devise our own competition. But how would it work?

Well, nobody’s mentioned anything about interns here at the Episcopal Café, so I invented my own points system. After years as a relationship therapist and a partner in my own marriage, I knew couples wouldn’t win based on what they’ve accomplished prior to their wedding day. Instead, like a shoe or thimble hopping around a board acquiring houses or hotels during a game of Monopoly, the idea would be to earn points over a lifetime in a relationship.

I figured we’d call this game – what else? -- Monogamy. You and your partner wouldn’t compete against each other; you’re on the same team. And unlike the Altarcations couples, in Monogamy you’re only playing against yourselves.

To decide on the rules, I took out my prayer book and turned to the Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage. Lifting quotes from the beautiful prayer on page 429 is tacky, I know, but it’s for a good cause. Newlyweds – and the rest of us – can take a long, hard look at the prayer, racking up points with Monogamy’s rating system, and your partnership will emerge a winner.

The prayer says: Give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy.

Your move: Accept that bad things happen. You’ll both face challenges – jobs lost, kids in trouble, illness, boredom. 10 points every time you help your partner get through a rough time without blaming, rushing to impose solutions, or giving up.

The prayer says: Grant that their wills may be so knit together in your will, and their spirits in your Spirit, that they may grow in love and peace with you and one another all the days of their life.

Your move: Know that a relationship, like everything in creation, either grows or dies. Just as a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil affects the weather in Texas, one partner making a tiny change can have a huge impact on the whole relationship. 10 points every time you listen to the still, small voice inside you, the deeper wisdom that can guide you forward as individuals and partners.

The prayer says: Give them such fulfillment of their mutual affection that they may reach out in love and concern for others.

Your move: Remember “It takes a village…”? You two are the village. Your partnership exists not just to accumulate retirement assets and drive kids to soccer games, but to work together to make the world around you a better place. 10 points every time the two of you give your time, talent or money to someone who needs your help.

The prayer says: Give them grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours.

Your move: Recognize that nobody’s perfect, including you. Conflict between partners is a given. You resolve some of it and just manage the rest. The ability to admit you’re wrong is one of the most powerful glues in a marriage. 20 points every time you tell your partner you know you’ve blown it and you’re ready to work together to find a better way.

The prayer says: Make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.

Your move: Realize that you, like every couple who walk down the aisle, are a living expression of hope for the future. Yet chances are that, sooner or later, the day will come when you look at your partner and wonder why in the world the two of you ever got together. That’s the day when the real work of marriage begins. 50 points when you’re willing to discover how you can heal from pain, overcome disappointment, and forge a bond that’s stronger than ever.

That’s it. Five rules. Truth is, tough as it is to earn points in Gawker’s mock-elitist Altarcations competition, it’s even harder to win at Monogamy. The good news is…you get better at it with practice, and you have your whole lives together to play.

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, sees couples and individuals in her private practice. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles on the spirituality of relationships, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.