After Lament ... On the Road to Emmaus

It is through the process of Lament that we come to the realization that all of our hopes have been stripped away and what remains is Jesus on the road to Emmaus. 

In lament, we cry out to G-d to be the redeemer of our current crisis. Through the process of lamenting, we eventually learn to relinquish our notions of being in control. After lament, all we have left is agency in how we respond to G-d and to the dis-ease of our current situation. 

And now, finally, after lamenting, we understand just how pathetic all this really is. Pathetic, as from the Greek pathos, meaning experience or condition or emotion of suffering. Pathos is the road to Emmaus. It is a situation that can not be avoided or circumnavigated, only endured as we go through it. It is walking that road with our shattered hopes until, step by step, we come to accept that this is indeed the way things are now.

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“Pathos Entered English in the 1500s. The Greek word páthos means "experience, misfortune, emotion, condition,” and comes from Greek path-, meaning “experience, undergo, suffer.” In English, pathos usually refers to the element in an experience or in an artistic work that makes us feel compassion, pity, or sympathy. The word is a member of a big family: empathy is the ability to share someone else’s feelings. Pathetic (in its gentlest uses) describes things that move us to pity. Though pathology is not literally "the study of suffering," it is "the study of diseases." Other relatives of pathos include sympathy, apathy, and antipathy.”  

(Pathos Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster from Merriam-Webster online dictionary.  https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › pathos. Accessed Aug. 24, 2023.)

Pathos can also be understood as that quality of our experience that appeals to our emotions, evoking our internal response to suffering. It is the impetus to compassion and the beginning of empathy. In the pathetic, where we must accept our crisis for what it is, we are invited to change our perspective and relationship with suffering. It is our suffering that prevents us from recognizing Jesus on the road with us, even as the Christ listens intently to all that we had hoped for that is not, and will not, come to fruition. On our pathetic journey, we are wrestling with accepting what we thought was unacceptable. We struggle to understand how we are to respond. Do we stay and do nothing? Do you stay and fight to the point of exhausting everything, or do we shake the dust off of our feet and leave? 

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On that difficult walk to Emmaus, we are encouraged by Christ to name all that is lost, to open our eyes to what is happening, and to release our expectations of how we want things to be. Don’t we perpetuate our own suffering by refusing to accept that things are not how we want them to be? Isn’t our own suffering a denial of self-acceptance? When we are in crisis and have lamented all that is not right, begging G-d to come to the rescue, what is left for us to do while we wait for G-d to respond? At the end of our lamenting, when we are depleted and exhausted with nothing left to say, what would the Holy One have us do?

We are not G-d. We are not in control. All we really have now is just agency in how we respond to the pathetic situation we find ourselves in. Now we begin to comprehend that we do have agency in responding to that which feels so out of control. In our embodied movement with the Divine on the road to Emmaus, we have the opportunity to participate in relieving some of our own suffering by accepting what is, in fact, a pathetic condition. 

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Even though this is not what we had hoped for and this is not what we want, movement is change. Change is almost always stress-filled. It is uncomfortable, but it is a development in our situation. To ease our own suffering, we must accept that things are not in reality playing out as we had hoped or how we want it to be. We just have to keep moving through it. It sounds so simple, and yet is so hard to do.

This acceptance can’t come without empathy. The Risen Christ joins us on the road to Emmaus, present with us in the pathetic journey to acceptance. Empathy, again coming from the Greek, means to be in the pathetic. Christ is with us in the pathetic, in the suffering. Emmanuel; G-d with us. We are not alone in our suffering. G-d is with us, even if we are blinded to the Divine’s presence. 

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Perhaps, like other disciples before us, it is only after the fact that we can acknowledge that our hearts were burning as the Christ spoke to us on the journey. Didn’t it all become clear as we moved along the road together, while the Holy opened up the story of this suffering, and the significance of our pathetic part, in the ancient story of our faith? When we can finally acknowledge that we are indeed suffering, and a source of our suffering is our own repudiation of what is, that’s when compassion comes flooding in.

Compassion - with suffering. Compassion is a gift from Christ on the road to Emmaus. It is finally the Divine’s response to our laments. It is the Divine’s communication that we are not left alone to carry the burden of our pathetic situation, but, indeed, G-d is with us in our suffering. Once we can accept that, really accept it without any doubt, accept that G-d is with us, does not abandon us, and continues to love us just as we are in the pathetic place that we are ... well, that acceptance just might be the hinge of our critical circumstances. When our eyes are finally opened and we recognize who Christ is, recognize who we are in relationship with G-d, and recognize who G-d has created us to be in this pathetic world, we can finally, truly accept that we are loved, lovable, and capable of so much loving - even of ourselves in this pathetic experience.

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If we believe that we are made in the image of G-d, the Trinitarian Divine, the Holy Loving Community, then we believe that, like G-d in Community, we are loved; we are lovable; we are loving. When we accept that G-d is loved, lovable, and loving and that our identity is loved, lovable, and loving, we may finally accept that we are worthy of compassion - and not just from G-d, but from ourselves. 

Our acceptance of what is and release of what we wanted, is an invitation to tap into the aquifer of living water that never ceases. This source of living water, which is constantly refreshing and renewing our own self-compassion, is founded in Christ’s compassion for the us and the world.

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Spiritual & Sexual Covenantal Union

A 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) Ruffing offers a possible process for participating in a path toward love mysticism (2) that is applicable for covenant partnerships, as well. 

First, to become adult lovers, covenant partners must overcome their separateness, developing the capacity to participate in intimate relationships, and learn to be with each other and G-d without losing themselves. As the poet Gibran reminds us, there is a delicate balance between mutuality and codependency. “Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. ...Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.”(3)

Second, covenant partners may discover entirely new identities as “I” in relationship with the Thou, or as “we” in relationship with the Trinitarian Them. By releasing any preconceived notions of western dualism and/or autonomy, covenant couples begin to perceive the Divine Lover (and one another’s belovedness) not as Other or stranger, but as One cleaved in unity and mutuality. Seeing the covenant relationship as a holy three-some, each member understands their identity by who they are together in the whole covenant relationship. This enlightened identity comprehends that I am because we are and we are because G-d is...with us.

The third stage of this process shifts from perceiving G-d as outside the covenant relationship to sensing each of the three-some’s members’ presence as a part of a whole. This shift in perception looks within while simultaneously looking outside the covenantal three-some (to all of the rest of creation) from G-d’s perspective as perceived from within the covenant relationship. The covenant relationship becomes a window for understanding everything outside the three-some from a Divine shaped perspective. Sensing that the covenant relationship is spirituality and sexually unified with the Divine (and that G-d is a mutual member of the cleaved one-ness of the covenantal three-some), the partners in the covenant relationship begin to appreciate G-d’s desires as expressed through the actual covenant relationship - both with the covenantal partners internally and with all interacting externally with the covenant relationship. This stage may be compared to the Body of Christ. Although there are many members of the Body of Christ, each member grows into understanding the interrelatedness of the Body’s connections from the point of view of the integrated Body, not just from the perspective of the hand, or foot, or ear, or eye. It is a synergistic hermeneutical perspective that appreciates all of G-d’s creation holistically from within the point of view of the Body of Christ.

Fourth, covenant couples eventually experience the Divine Lover as the source of all loving, even the source of each member’s loving for the covenantal three-some, as well as the source of all desiring and desirability within the covenantal relationship. Through intentional spiritual and sexual mutuality with each other and the developing mystical loving union with the Holy, covenant partners know that the very substance of all that they are individually, all that they are together as a couple, and all that their relationship will be comes from the Holy and returns to the Holy in mutually satisfying and pleasurable consummation spiritually and sexually. Ruffing suggests that “such unitive experiences lead to a God-human partnership with feelings of equality, reciprocity, giving to God as well as receiving, and mutual care and pleasuring.”(4) These contemplative and climactic experiences both satiate and stoke all desiring within the covenant relationship, drawing the partners into deeper and deeper intimate union with G-d and each other.

Ultimately, continued spiritually and sexually integrated connection with the Divine Lover as covenantal partners through loving mystical union leads to transformation of the covenantal relationship and its partners. Mystical loving union of the Lover and the beloveds shapes the members of the covenant relationship in such a way that it becomes apparent to those outside of the covenant relationships. The transformation of the union can be seen in the interactions that the covenant relationship (and its members) have with children, family members, neighbors, other married couples, faith communities, or when entertaining strangers encountered in the world. This loving mystical metamorphosis bears the fruits of the Spirit that Paul discusses with the Galatian believers: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.(5)

Marriage, especially covenantal marriage in the Christian tradition, is considered to be different than other relationships, set apart by authentic intimacy with, and belovedness of, all three covenant partners. Ruffing suggests that “[i]ntimacy with God, like intimacy with significant others in our lives, is characterized by being and expressing one’s self while in the presence of one who is important to us.”(6) Belovedness - to be chosen and cleaved together as one with each other and G-d - contributes to the holiness (set apart-ness) of the covenant relationship. So the covenantal three-some is recognized as a holy container for such an embodied spiritual and sexual integration in relationship with each other and the Divine.

Love mysticism is a path available for covenant couples to experience this holy ecstasy with all three of the covenant members of their union. Ecstasy (being beside one’s self or finding ourselves literally beyond our embodied or intellectual control), describes the very state of loving mystical union within the covenantal three-some. Individual partners are no longer their own, no longer dualistic autonomous others, but one -whole and complete -and part of something more than the individual members combined. Where the covenant relationship ends and G-d begins is no longer distinguishable. This integrated spiritual and sexual mystical union transforms the marriage relationship into G-d’s presence and desire for loving union with others in the world, establishing the covenant relationship as a living, moving, and sacramental be-ing.

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

Bibliographical Resources & References

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

2. Ruffing, Janet K., RSM, Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 107-108..

3. Gibran, Kahlil. " On Marriage," in The Prophet (New York: Knopf, 1925), 19-20.  For additional information, see also https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/09/27/kahlil-gibran-the-prophet-love-marriage/

4. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 115. 

5. Galatians 5:22-23.

6. Ruffing, Spiritual Direction, 126.

RISK

    We are ambivalent about risk, aren’t we. It threatens danger and unwelcome loss while tempting us with the possibility of reward. It entails exposure to concealed consequences and requires faith that future conclusions, in the words of Julian of Norwich, will be well and that all manner of thing will work out well. Risk makes us vulnerable to the unknown while demanding our agency to respond to that which is unknown. Risk is also the spiritual disciple of taking the next right step without the assurance of favorable outcomes, but the belief that it will lead to the next right step after that. Risk is a necessary part of becoming fully human, chancing the integration of our whole body, mind, and soul in order to flourish in our own messy lives.

    The incarnation is G-d’s embodied self-revelation to us through the local vernacular that we can comprehend - flesh. Quite risqué, it is G-d with skin-on. Relationally, the incarnation is G-d putting some skin in our unpredictable game of life, making an investment in us that is worth the inherent gamble. “The word did not just become flesh and dwell among us,” Ronald Rolheiser explains, “it became flesh and continues to dwell among us. In the body of believers and in the Eucharist, God still has physical skin and can still be physically present seen, touched, smelled, heard, and tasted.”(1)
    The mystery of the incarnation then, and the embodiment of Christ through believers now, serves as G-d’s ultimate conveyance and connection in action. It is G-d’s loving desire to be in intimate, authentic relationships with us regardless of the risk. Through a neo-orthodox theological lens (2), this is the greatest act of love. “[T]he very humanity of God is seen through the outpouring of God’s love, which,” Kelly Brown Douglas points out, “is God’s reaching out to be in particular relationship with humanity.”(3) This act of loving presence on the part of G-d is a natural overflowing of G-d’s love for G-dself in community.(4) Taking on the flesh of humanity, enrobing himself in our corporal nature, Jesus the Christ exhibited for us the paramount paradigm of humanity, integrating flesh and spirit as a model for our existence. The incarnate Christ demonstrates the perfected process of becoming fully human as the embodiment of exemplary right relationship with the Divine and the goodness of creation.  Therefore, as imitators of Christ, our becoming fully human compels us to emulate G-d’s embodied, loving presence in relationship with the created order. Like Christ, to be in loving relationship with the Holy One is to also be in loving relationship with others, just as we are in our enfleshed humanity. Also like Christ, this is the greatest manifestation of love made real, but it is also our greatest manifestation of real risk. 
G-d in Community is more than sufficient for G-dself, whole and complete - by definition, perfect -lacking nothing in perfect union. Creation is a cosmic consequence of Divine love overflowing and breaching the banks of the boundless borders of G-dself. There is no inherent risk in G-d’s divine loving of G-d’s-self, only absolute authenticity and mutuality in intimate appreciation and desire. Creation, as a blessed byproduct of such sacred erotic adoration, is not inherently risk-filled either. Contrary to Elizabeth M. Edman’s argument, in order to create us, G-d did not take a risk.(5) The risk came in choosing to love G-d’s creation. The incarnation of the Word, Christ enfleshed dwelling with us, is love embodied and risk revealed. Edman’s words, though, cannot be more true, “God put God’s heart on the line for us.”(6)
    Kelly Brown Douglas responds that although the incarnation is evidence that “women and men are loved by God, it is not inevitable that they will share in the love…To do so requires that individuals freely choose to share the love of God as God freely chose to love them.”(7) Therein lies the risk. It is risky to authentically love the other who is gifted with the freewill of choosing whether to accept or deny that saving love.(8) Freewill is gifted to all humankind, even Jesus of Nazareth. By taking on our humanity and perfectly embodying the integration of the Divine and the flesh, Jesus the Christ, the Word of the Triune G-d, takes on all the complexities of humankind, both risk and reward. 
G-d’s love is more than enough to take on the risk of loving us in our embodied humanity, with no guarantee that we will chose to love G-d in return. Revealing G-dself through the incarnation enfleshes G-d’s love for us, but “revealing oneself authentically carries potential risk.”(9) The risk of authenticity is necessary if the incarnate Christ is to model for us embodied human flourishing. “In order to find a deep, intimate connection,” as Edman says, “[to] love and be loved deeply, intimately - we have to reveal ourselves.”(10)

In the incarnation, G-d demonstrates that love is worth the risk of revealing ourselves authentically for intimate “communication and communion.”(11) G-d embodied this risk through the incarnation, taking on our human form - even in the precarious weakness of a migrant, houseless infant; even in the precarious weakness of an oppressed minority; even in the precarious weakness of a body battered and sacrifice for the other - all to love us enough to risk connecting with us. G-d risks loving us because G-d has faith in us - that we are worthy of G-d’s love. Isn’t that the miracle of the incarnation? That G-d is willing to Relinquish Indelible Sacred Knowledge (RISK) that creation will choose to love G-d in return requires G-d to give humanity agency in how we respond to G-d’s love. We know love, because G-d loves us first. We risk love because G-d risks love first. For us, that means we must Realize our Incomplete Sapience of Kenosis (RISK) and have faith in G-d. Ultimately, the Reward for our Inability to Substantiate Karmic-consequences (RISK) is to believe not only that G-d has faith in us, but that G-d has faith in G-dself - that G-d is worthy of our risky love, too. 

1.Ronald Rolheiser, Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality (New York:Image, 2014), 80.

2.Carrie Allport, “A Spirituality of Crisis” (GTS AT 399: Independent Study: Crisis & Kairos, 2021), 2.

3.Kelly Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999), 113.

4.Belden C. Lane, “Christ’s Descent into Hell, Hadewijch, and the Fierceness of Love: A Spirituality of Holy Saturday,” in Spiritus 23, no.1 (Spring 2023), 146-154.

5. Elizabeth M. Edman, “Risk,” in Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016), 43-64.

6. Edman, Queer Virtue, 44.

7. Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church, 114.

8. Frederick Buechner, “The Road to Emmaus,” in The Magnificent Defeat, (HarperSan Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1966),  82-89.

9. Edman, Queer Virtue, 45.

10. Edman, Queer Virtue, 46.

11. James B. Nelson, Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1978), 18.

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.