Love Mysticism (continued)

How can Spiritual Direction hold safe space for covenantal partnerships to acknowledge and initiate a path toward mutuality with each other and G-d together through love mysticism? By offering a non-dualistic perspective, along with a spiritually and sexually integrated appreciation for the work of the Holy Spirit through covenantal partnerships, spiritual companions may help couples understand that “romantic attachments (within their covenant relationship) are frequently the opaque manifestations of divine-human intimacy wanting to happen.”(1) As Janet Ruffing suggests, spiritual companionship, even for couples, needs to be a non-judgmental relationship where “sexual expression, sexual orientation, or romantic attachments”(2) may be explored by covenant partners without embarrassment or shame in the presence of G-d as the possible “progressive, deepening encounter into the mystery of God as the divine beloved, until lover and beloved are experienced as one body and soul.”(3)

Magnetic desire within the covenant relationship for each other and G-d indicates a potential path of love mysticism, often expressed in embodied “aspects of the unity of love of God and love of (partner), showing that our loving ultimately leads to God.”(4) Through a spiritual direction relationship, couples may begin to recognize how the “very Mystery itself solicits us, moves toward us in love and in mercy.”(5) Understood individually as made in the image of G-d, covenant couples may further comprehend that their covenantal relationship is also made in the image of the Triune G-d, as a sacramental expression of G-d’s communal identity. Through spiritual companionship, couples can remember how “the mystical tradition encourages believers to enter fully into intimacy with the Divine Beloved. We are to become love, too. God awakens us to this divine-human love affair and initiatives in us the search for the Divine Beloved.”(6)

As covenantal partners, cleaved together as one beloved with the Holy One, “God continues to solicit and elicit our love.”(7) Spiritual Direction with couples offers covenant partners an invitation into deeper intimacy and mutuality with G-d and each other, encouraging couples to respond to G-d, and each other, by soliciting and eliciting desire within the covenant relationship. Participation together in this progressive back and forth of desiring beckons covenantal beloved partners into spiritual and sexual union with the Divine Lover as a covenantal three-some. 

- excerpted and adapted from Love Mysticism in Couples Spiritual Direction by Mary-Carolyn M. Allport, May 2, 2022.

Bibliographical Resources & References
1. Ruffing, Janet K., RSM, Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 99.

2. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 99. 
3. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 99.
4. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 105.
5. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 106.
6. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 106.

7. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 106.

Love Mysticism in Couples Spiritual Direction

As previously stated, Spiritual Direction with couples is not the same as group spiritual guidance and needs to be understood as something more than just individual spiritual companionship with two people present. How can Spiritual Direction honor the sanctity of covenant relationships, like marriage, with a brave, sacred space in which covenant partners may explore and come to understand their marriage as something more than just two separate individuals held together contractually? As an embodied reality of two sexual and spiritual persons cleaved together fully as one through G-d’s miraculous love, covenant partnerships are set apart as a path for mutuality and integrated union with the Divine Lover. Such unions can be sacramental expressions of G-d’s covenantal promises to us, and in turn, a sacramental expression of covenant belovedness to the wider community.

The covenant relationship, or marriage, can experience its own spiritual journey toward union with the Divine, as one with multiple members. Understood as a covenantal three-some between the two human beloved members and G-d the Lover, covenantal partnerships may experience their own unique progression through what Janet Ruffing refers to as “love mysticism.”(1) As fully integrated embodied spirits, covenant partners have the potential to be re-membered(2) together to G-d, each other, and their covenantal promises through their very embodiment. Instead of limiting mystical union solely within a fixed, platonic duality of sanitized spiritual union through some out of body experience, love mysticism recognizes Divine-human encounters that are characterized “by feelings of desire, arousal, passion, and union.”(3) Ruffing concludes that Christian tradition has been ambivalent to our embodiment experiences and “suspicious of sexual love,”(4) often leaving people with the “impression that their embodied loving did not lead to mystical love.”(5) However, spiritual and sexual union with G-d is indeed being experienced by believers within the Christian faith through love mysticism, and that same unification is possible within covenantal partnerships.

Ruffing describes two discernible paths of mystical union with the Divine, both of which can be applied to covenant relationships, like marriage. “One path feels like romantic love: God arouses the desires of the human beloved, engages in courtship, and makes love with the human beloved.”(6) This path follows the classical stages of “awakening, recognition, purification, surrender, and transformation,”(7) with alternating periods of felt Divine presence and absence. This path toward mystical union develops within ongoing and ever deepening intimacy with G-d together as covenant partners. Committed covenantal partnerships may experience this path of love mysticism through their embodied experience of cleaving together as one over a lifetime toward marital union with G-d and mutuality among all three partners of the covenantal relationship.

Another possible path described by Ruffing feels “more vague. We yearn for God, who paradoxically feels absent and present simultaneously.”(8) Characterized by unknowing or darkness, this path discerns G-d’s presence through “quiet, silent, loving attention toward G-d,”(9) and seeking G-d together sexually and spiritually. This pathway of love mysticism may reveal that the covenant partnership is indeed in deep, fulfilling mutuality with one another and “already in union with the divine.”(10) This “mystical process gradually brings all levels of the self (and the marriage) into harmony,”(11) affirming to the couple, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that they are already in loving union together with G-d as a covenantal three-some. Though indescribable, this form of love mysticism within covenantal relationships can be understood as feeling intimately known, seen, desired, and loved by each other as made in the image of the Divine, as well as feeling intimately known, seen, desired, and loved by G-d as a couple, all while intimately knowing and sensing G-d as an equal member of the covenant relationship.

Both paths of love mysticism progress toward union with the Divine and can be found in covenant relationships within scripture. The wisdom literature of Song of Songs describes the physical longing and pleasurable exploration between the Lover and beloved as each desires spiritual consummation and ultimate union. The story of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1 suggest that through loving, covenantal sexual union with her husband, Hannah is re-membered by G-d.(12) She is re-collected by G-d back together as one in covenant and reminded of her wholeness as a cleaved beloved one in physical mutuality with her partner and G-d. Knowing that procreation was not the expected outcome of their embodied lovemaking, Hannah and her husband participate in the very act of making love with G-d on their return from Shiloh. It is through this loving mystical union that Hannah and Elkanah became co-creators with the Holy. Ruffing is clear that through these paths of love mysticism “God does make love with quite human beloveds in unmistakable ways.”(13) This same path of co-creative love mysticism in covenant relationship can be found in the story of Abraham and Sarah after they entertained angels unaware, as well as in the annunciation of Mary, herself a spiritually and sexually integrated person made in the image of G-d and in intimate, embodied covenantal partnership with the Holy of Holies.

- excerpted and adapted from Love Mysticism in Couples Spiritual Direction by Mary-Carolyn M. Allport, May 2, 2022.

Bibliographical Resources & References

1. Ruffing, Janet K., RSM, “Searching for the Beloved: Love Mysticism in Spiritual Direction,” in Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 95-123.

2. Ezekiel 37:1-14.

3. Ruffing, Janet K., RSM, Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 96.

4. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 104.

5. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 104. 

6. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 96.

7. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 96.

8. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 96. 

9. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 96. 

10. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 97. 

11. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 97.

12. 1 Samuel 1:19-20.

13. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 118.

Spiritual Direction with Couples (continued)

How, then, can spiritual companions hold a sacred space where covenant partners may feel safe and brave enough to honor their covenant relationship in Spiritual Direction? First, directors can remind couples of the promise from Matthew 18:19-20 that if two discern about anything in prayer, then that discernment will be blessed by our heavenly Divine Lover. For where two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, the Triune G-d is there among them, helping them discern. Claiming this promise, covenant partners can trust that they are not alone in their covenant relationship, listening for the third voice of Divine Wisdom during spiritual direction.

Second, directors can invite the covenantal three-some to discern an honest definition to their covenantal relationship and begin to understanding the larger spiritual development of their marriage, not just the individual spiritual development of each covenant partner. (Giblin 1995, 545) With the care of a Spiritual Director, couples may begin to understand the rhythms of their covenant relationship, not unlike the cyclical nature of The Name’s relationship with all of us found throughout scripture.

Third, directors can help covenant spouses to identify and articulate where spirituality and sexuality intersect within their marriage. “Something like the laddered strands of the DNA double helix, sexuality and spirituality are intimately tied together. We cannot have one without the other” (Lommasson 2005, 112). When a covenantal relationship is understood to be a holy three-some, what may be miraculously revealed within their marriage when covenant partners begin to understand that “[s]exuality is never just about sex, and spirituality is never just about spirit?” (Lommasson 2005, 112)

Lastly, directors can prompt covenant partners to listen to their marriage, hearing the Holy Spirit reveal to them those places where and when their marriage has been, or is called to be, a sacrament of G-d’s covenant. With the marriage as the director and the directee, the three-some of their covenant relationship may begin to discern the belovedness, giftedness, and purpose of the relationship. 

Spiritual Companionship with covenant partners needs its own tending and stewardship. As a sacrament of G-d’s covenantal relationship with all of us, covenantal partnerships, like marriage, can be the container for the Holy Spirit to live, move, and have being in the already/not yet nature of the Kingdom of G-d. By honoring the sacred space needed by couples to listen and communicate with the Holy Spirit, Spiritual Directors may highlight for spouses that their marriage is indeed a ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation. As an embodied, living testament of Jesus’s first miracle at the wedding in Cana, covenantal marriage can transform the waters of the couple’s individual lives into their marriage of gospel wine. (ANZPB 1997, 787)

- excerpted and adapted from Couples Spiritual Companionship by Mary-Carolyn M. Allport, December 6, 2021.

Bibliographical Resources and References

1. Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. A New Zealand Prayer Book: He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa. San Fransico: HarperCollins, 1997.

2. Episcopal Church. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David According to the Use of the Episcopal Church. New York: Seabury Press, 1979.

3. Episcopal Church. Report from the Marriage Task Force of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/ download/12485.pdf, 2015.

4. Giblin, Paul. "Spiritual Direction in Couples." Presence 11, no. 04 (December 2005): 50-56.

5. Giblin, Paul. “Marital Development: Psychological and Spiritual Dimensions.” In Handbook for Spirituality for Ministers, edited by Robert J. Wicks, 545-568. New York: Paulist, 1995. ISBN: 0-8091-3521-3.

6. Grant, Carl. “Come Holy Spirit: Spiritual Direction and the Eucharistic Epiclesis.” Presence 23, no. 03 (September 2017): 18-21. 

7. Lommasson, Sandra. 2005. "Tending the Sacred Fire: Sexuality and Spiritual Direction." In Sacred is the Call: Formation and Transformation in Spiritual Direction Programs, edited by Suzanne M. Buckley, 110-121. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co.

Spiritual Direction with Couples is Unique

Then The Name said, “Here is My eternal covenant with you, my sacred bond, between Me and you - I will be your G-d and you will be my beloved. As for your eternal covenant with me, your sacred bond, between you and Me - you will be my beloved and I will be your G-d. From this point forward, we will have a sign to remind us of this promise and it will be inherited by all. I will be G-d to all of you and all of you will be my beloved ones. This is our covenant, which we shall keep.” (from Genesis 17)

Spiritual Direction with couples is not the same as group spiritual guidance and needs to be understood as something more than just individual spiritual direction with two people present.  Through Spiritual Direction with couples, we're able to honor the sacred space where covenant partners may explore and come to understand their union as something more than just two individuals contractually coming together. As an embodied reality of two persons being fully one through G-d’s miraculous love, covenant partnerships can be a sacrament of G-d’s covenantal promises and have a spiritual journey of their own. 

Covenant Theology is our lens for interpreting who G-d is, who we are, and how we are to be in relationship with G-d. It is also a way for us to understand our relationships with each other, especially our most intimate and committed relationships. Marriage is a way of living into a covenantal theological perspective, "a vehicle of holy living.” (Task Force on the Study of Marriage 2015, 17) Aided by G-d and a community of faith, our covenant beloved-ness reveals that “Eternal Love never fails.” (ANZPB 1997, 785). The covenantal commitment made by spouses is a sign of their promise to draw ever closer to each other as they draw closer to G-d, seeking to know and be known ever more intimately and deeply. "[T]he metaphor of the Divine Lover who draws the beloved ever closer” is repeated throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, “[portraying] the human-divine relationship in the love language of the joyful intimate ‘knowing’ of covenanted spouses.” (Lommasson 2005, 112) 

“And I swear,” said The Name, “you will call Me your Spouse, never addressing me the same way you do any other relationship. I will make an eternal covenant with you, My beloved. I will marry you for ever; I will never leave you nor let you go. You will be My spouse in steadfast tenderness and loyal love, in righteousness, justice, and mercy. Our marriage will be honest and truthful. You will be My beloved spouse in faithfulness, and you will know me intimately as The Eternal Holy One, your Divine Lover.” (from Hosea 2) 

Marriage, at least Christian marriage in the Church, is interpreted as a covenantal relationship that serves as an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual covenant that we have with our Divine Lover. Thus, as a sacramental expression of our covenantal spiritual relationship with G-d, marriage serves as a symbol of how we are called to be in loving relationship with one another based on how we are called to be in relationship with G-d and vice versa. The way our Divine Lover embodies this covenant as a triune G-d and lives it out through Christ and the church serves as “a model which earthy marriage should emulate in order to be holy.” (Task Force on the Study of Marriage 2015, 19) 

To be holy is to be set apart as something not like any other. It is to be established and constant, even in the midst of chaotic change. Covenantal marriage, then, is set apart from other relationships as a container for our embodied and lived out expression of this covenantal understanding of relating to G-d and each other. Just as the chalice is a container set apart from other cups for the Eucharistic wine, so Christian marriage helps us live into and understand the mystery of our faith. The chalice doesn’t make the wine into the Eucharistic blood of Christ, that is the work of the Holy Spirit though the mystery of the epiclesis. In the same way, marriage itself doesn’t make the relationship between spouses into a sacramental covenant relationship; that, too, is the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. Much like the Eucharistic Prayer, though, the Blessing of the Marriage, within the wedding ceremony in the Book of Common Prayer, requests that the power of the Holy Spirit dedicate the covenant relationship for a divine purpose, to be devoted and set apart, to be consecrated. (BCP 1979, 430) 

However, unlike the epiclesis of the Eucharist prayer, the wedding prayer of consecration is not repeated on a regular basis. Like the cross, it is a once and forever blessing. So, if “[t]he understanding...(remains) that the bond and covenant of marriage is enacted by the couple themselves, and the function of the church is to solemnize the event,” then the on-going work of nurturing and stewarding the covenant relationship, the on-going work of sanctifying (or setting apart) the marriage, then, is the responsibility of the couple in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the “...ministers of the rite are the couple themselves.” (Task Force on the Study of Marriage 2015, 16) 

Fortunately, covenantal partners do not have to do this work alone. Like the Eucharist prayer, Spiritual Direction with married couples “can become a tacit enactment of the epiclesis,” (Grant 2017, 18) inviting the divine presence (known in the Hebrew as the Shekinah) of The Eternal Holy One to empower and encourage a covenantal three-some within Christian marriage, shared by both spouses and the Third Person of our Triune G-d. The Shekinah of the Divine Lover experienced in Spiritual Direction highlights for the earthly spouses the sometimes unrecognized daily presence of the Holy Spirit within covenantal marriage. Thus eucharistic in nature, spiritual companionship with couples nourishes the covenant of marriage, “supplying the essential and ineffable nutrients” (Grant 2017, 20) needed for each spouse, as well as “for purposes beyond the individual life of” each covenant partner. (Grant 2017, 20) Ultimately, “the nourishment enjoyed by the (couple) is not solely for (them) but vicariously for everyone in (their) sphere of influence.” (Grant 2017, 20)

Through Spiritual Direction with couples, the covenant relationship contained within the marriage “becomes the (directee and the) director, inviting partners into new areas of growth, healing, and wholeness.” (Giblin 2005, 50) A Spiritual Director, then, need only hold sacred space to witness and encourage “[p]artners ...to listen to (the Advocate) speaking through their marriage.” (Giblin 2005, 54) As a covenantal three- some, spouses begin to “raise their awareness of (the Holy Spirit’s) presence in and through each other, to view their shared experiences, communications, conflicts, decision making, even (their everyday) lives together as grounded in (The Divine Lover’s covenantal) love.” (Giblin 2005, 55)

- excerpted and adapted from Couples Spiritual Companionship by Mary-Carolyn M. Allport, December 6, 2021.

Bibliographical Resources & References

1. Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. A New Zealand Prayer Book: He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa. San Fransico: HarperCollins, 1997.

2. Episcopal Church. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David According to the Use of the Episcopal Church. New York: Seabury Press, 1979.

3. Episcopal Church. Report from the Marriage Task Force of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/ download/12485.pdf, 2015.

4. Giblin, Paul. "Spiritual Direction in Couples." Presence 11, no. 04 (December 2005): 50-56.

5. Giblin, Paul. “Marital Development: Psychological and Spiritual Dimensions.” In Handbook for Spirituality for Ministers, edited by Robert J. Wicks, 545-568. New York: Paulist, 1995. ISBN: 0-8091-3521-3.

6. Grant, Carl. “Come Holy Spirit: Spiritual Direction and the Eucharistic Epiclesis.” Presence 23, no. 03 (September 2017): 18-21. 

7. Lommasson, Sandra. 2005. "Tending the Sacred Fire: Sexuality and Spiritual Direction." In Sacred is the Call: Formation and Transformation in Spiritual Direction Programs, edited by Suzanne M. Buckley, 110-121. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co.