Those of you who are married or otherwise in a committed relationship are most probably married to someone with similar beliefs. Demography data confirms that most stable marriages require significant overlap in creed and deed. But there are exceptions out there, and my current (and LAST) marriage is one of them.
My wife is a Christian. Anybody who kows me at all here knows that's not a word that i would apply to myself, and that in fact i think the majority of those who DO apply it to themselves are not worthy of my respect. But i'm EQUALLy aware that that's NOT the case for EVERY Christian. To put it another way and give props where due, i believe that a SINCERE Christ-like Christian, such as my wife, is a remakable gift to the world. But as Ghandi is quoted to have noted, far too few people who apply that label to themselves are anything but Christ-like.
Melissa gets most of her spiriual needs met by her job as the manager of volunteers for our local homeless shelter. She gets to actively pursue her comitment to honoring the message to care for those less fortunate, and she gets to spend time with people who share that perspective of what their faith is supposed to engender. She's not Catholic, though the charity for which she works is sponsored by theSt Vincent Society, but she works with people of ALL faihs, and with people of NO faith and has learned to look past the labels and pay attention to what's in people's HEART instead of what comes out of their mouths. I think that has been a good spiritual lesson for her, as she was raised in a more fundamentalist type flavor of Christianity
However, while she doesn't want to convert to catholicism and attend the masses to which she is regularly invited, it is important to her to attend services and 'fellowship' with people who are more closely aligned with her specific beliefs. I suspect that this is especially so since her partner doesn't share any part of it. I respect and support that need, but i am also conscious of the fact that some churches are more worthy of her attendance than others.
Melissa told me that one of her "childhood fantasies" about her married life was to attend church services with her husband. I have a better use for my Sunday's and frankly i don't care to listen to people re-enforce the "imperfect sinner" meme which *i* find insulting, but i know that it pleases her to attend WITH her husband, so i will do so voluntarily at times, definitely on the major Christian holidays, and any OTHER time she explicitly asks. However, i've made it clear that i have limits on what i will tolerate in that regard, and that i refuse to attend any church that sinks below a level that i can personally tolerate.
When she is selecting a new church, i make a point to attend with her for my own reasons for a few weeks. I tell her that i don't presume that i can tell her what church to attend, but that if she wants me to sit in the pew with her, i have 2 criteria for the general tone of the sermons i will suffer through. #1. The pastor cannot explicitly belittle science and knowledge, and #2 the sermons need to focus on who to love instead of on who to hate. I'm also not too hip if they go ON and ON about how useless people are without god, but i realize that's a central message to the kinds of churches she prefers, so i'll tolerate a certain amount of it if both the two primary criteria are met. In that case, i'll listen quietly to the prattling about imperfect sinners, blood sacrifices, etc. and sit with her to fulfill her fantasy, and also take her to Sunday brunch after services, which *i* know was also part of that little-girl-fantasy.
My wife is my partner, and i love her just as she is. I do NOT enjoy listening to the simplistic songs, the tedious sermons about bood being a cleaning agent, blah blah blah, or the too-often fake expressions of love that i see in any church. But i do enjoy seeing the smile on my dear wife's face when she sees yet another expression of the deep love i have for her, and i am happy to have a way to give her a concrete expression that i am willing to meet her needs, as long as doing so isn't a complete negation of my own.
Thanks for reading.
