The Sacred Art of Marriage: 52 Creative Ways to Grow Your Married Life

By David Robinson

The Sacred Art of Marriage explores married life as an art studio with fifty-two tools to creatively craft your spiritual life together. Drawing upon the fourth chapter of The Rule of St. Benedict, this book offers married couples fifty-two weeks of spiritual practices and ancient wisdom to deepen your marriage. Newlywed couples planning and preparing for married life will encounter in this book a variety of creative plans and patterns to put into practice, including daily, weekly, seasonal, and annual patterns of healthy, married living. Journeying through a year of marriage, readers move seasonally through this four-part book, from Summer, into Fall, through Winter, and around to Spring. In The Sacred Art of Marriage, you'll discover ancient wisdom and practical ways to deepen your spiritual life together across seasons as you grow together in God's gift of marriage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jan 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781498233293

David Robinson

David Robinson is the founder and CEO of Vertical Performance Enterprises, a leadership and management consulting company specializing in executive leadership development and organizational performance improvement. A former fighter pilot, TOPGUN instructor, and U.S. Marine Corps colonel with over three decades of experience leading high-performing teams in complex, dynamic, high-stakes operating environments, David is a senior advisor to Fortune 1000 companies and an international speaker on the subject of leadership effectiveness. His passion is helping leaders inspire their teams to change their world. David grew up in Winchester, Virginia and currently lives with his family in Hilton Head, South Carolina. www.verticalperformance.us

Book preview

Part One

Summer

Look at the fig tree and all the trees.

When they sprout leaves,

you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.

Even so, when you see these things happening,

you know that the kingdom of God is near.¹

In 1981 , I was married to my best friend in July, on a warm summer day. We honeymooned at a family friends’ beach cabin on the coast in Washington State, enjoying the warm sun and long evening light. Over the past the thirty years I’ve officiated at hundreds of weddings and most of them were in summer, many of them outdoors on the beach. Couples often choose to begin their married life in summer. We begin this fifty-two-week journey in summer. I love how Ann Voskamp writes about living with gratitude, including giving thanks for the beautiful gift of summer.

I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and th4e rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.²

Marriage is a living expression of God’s presence here on earth. As Jesus reminds us, The kingdom of God has come near.³ That is God’s design and hope for you and your marriage, to reveal God’s presence through your life together. This year, as you journey together week by week, season by season, continue seeking the presence of God, the heavy perfume of wild roses, and all the good things that a good God gives.⁴

1. Luke

21

:

29

–

31

. All Scripture quotations are in the New International Version unless otherwise stated.

2. Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts,

58

.

3. Mark

1

:

15

.

4. Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts,

58.

Chapter 1

Love God

Luke 10:27; RB 4:1

From the start, Benedict invites us to become lovers—lovers of God. Benedict puts loving God at the top of his list of tools in the sacred art of life together. First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all your strength. ⁵ Love is the primary purpose of marriage and most significant tool in your life together. God designed marriage for love. God brings couples together to be lovers, lovers of one another and lovers of God. Quoting the Gospels, Benedict calls you to love God with your whole self, heart, soul, and strength. This is the first and most important commandment.

Married couples often replace this primary love of God with other types of love, such as romantic love, erotic love, or loyalty love. These other loves have their valued place in a healthy marriage, but not as the centerpiece. When sexual love is placed at the center, your marriage will suffer. Our physical attraction and sexuality do not have enough long-term endurance to act as the foundation for marriage. The same holds true for loyalty love. Loyalty love demands a spouse to be loyal to my family, my ethnicity, my heritage, my agenda, my plans, and my happiness. Place this form of love at the center of your married life and watch your marriage wither. Life calls for many loyalties, but supreme above them all is our life with God, both in receiving God’s love and offering our heart love to God. Only when God is at the center do all the other loyalties, attractions, and desires we call love find their right place.

The foundational love in marriage is the love of God. Couples that grow in their love for God grow in their love for one another. The classic example of this is the sacred marriage love triangle, with God at the apex and a husband and wife forming the base. The closer you grow in your love for God, the closer you also grow together in your love for one another. Another way of thinking about this three-way relationship maybe the following, with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the foundational base, upholding you as a couple at the apex. The more you rest your life and marriage upon God, the greater strength and love you’ll find together. This first exercise offers you opportunity to converse about your love for God in your marriage relationship.

Week 1: Love Survey

Read each statement aloud. Write in the margin next to each statement a number on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 as not at all and 5 as strongly agree in relation to the statement. After going through the love survey add up your total. Then read each statement aloud again and offer your thoughts about loving God and loving your spouse.

• I have an idea of what it means to love God.

• I know personally and passionately what loving God is all about.

• I love God with my whole heart.

• I love God with my whole soul.

• I love God with all my strength.

• I seek practical ways to encourage my spouse in his or her love for God.

• Loving God has helped us grow closer together in our marriage.

• My love for God is more important than sex, friendship, family, or career.

• I want to grow deeper in my love for God.

• I am confident God loves me and I am confident God loves my spouse.

Add up your total. Thirty-five points and above describes people who have a vibrant, healthy, and mature love life with God. Twenty to thirty-five points describes those who are growing stronger and more confident in their love life with God, with more growth ahead. Below twenty points is where many people are in our world who are unsure about God, yet who yearn to know about God and grow spiritually. Now go back over this survey and choose one statement which might help you to make loving God a higher priority. Circle this sentence and talk about one idea you have for improving your love life with God.

Marriage Notes: write here any ideas, comments, or questions that have come up while doing this exercise together. Each chapter below includes space for marriage notes in which you may write insights or ideas you’ve found helpful for growing your life together.

5. Luke

10

:

27

; RB

4

:

1

.

Chapter 2

Love One Another

John 13:34; RB 4:2

People are designed by God to live in love relationships with other humans. This truth emerges on page two of the Bible. According to Genesis, in the idyllic garden of Eden, there was something that was not good. The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’ ⁶ We are designed by God for relationships. God built into our inner nature a capacity to love others in close relationships. Since human disobedience marred the original design of God, all people have had difficulty carrying out the second great commandment, the command to love your neighbor as yourself. ⁷

Marriage is no different. We enter marriage with good intentions and high ideals. In over 400 weddings I’ve officiated, I’ve never known a couple that planned their divorce at the same time they planned their wedding. Yet, we all have seen marriages fall apart; sometimes abruptly, sometimes slowly.

One of the first challenges you face as a newlywed couple is disillusionment. Within the first few months of marriage, husbands and wives begin to ask themselves, What have I gotten myself into? After a few months or years, you begin to notice things about your spouse you hadn’t noticed before. She texts during meals. He picks his toes in bed. She leaves the lights on all day. He snores through the night.

You’re not married to the Queen of the Tropics. Much of the time, marriage is more comedy than fairy tale, more frog than prince. The idyllic relationship you dreamed about in your single days before you got married departed several years ago, and now lives far away on some South Pacific island paradise. While your dream self lies on a beautiful beach, sunbathing in the tropics, here you sit in a run-down rental, paying bills, discouraged, irritable, and feeling distant from the person you married. You have met the enemy and the enemy is yourself. You are disillusioned, beginning to live in the real world of marriage, wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into.

The word disillusionment means to be separated from your illusions. Months before a couple gets married, I try to introduce small doses of disillusionment during our brief meetings of premarital preparation. I tell them that disillusionment will come. It comes to all healthy marriages and it is not necessarily a bad thing. When couples learn to expect this natural separation from their illusions, they begin to accept the reality of the person they married. Then the sacred work of loving one another can truly begin. After loving God, the most important work in your marriage is learning to love one another, as Jesus declared: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.⁸

Week 2: One Anothering

Read through the following list of creative ways to love one another. These are all taken from the New Testament, creative variations on Jesus’ basic instruction to love one another as I have loved you. After reading through the list, circle the items on the list that seem to come easily to you as a married couple. Underline the items that are a challenge or an obstacle in the way you relate to each other. Finally, select one circled item and one underlined item, and talk together about your current strengths and weaknesses in loving one another.

Creative Ways to Love Your Spouse

• Be devoted to one another (Rom 12:10).

• Give preference to one another (Rom 12:10).

• Be of the same mind toward one another (Rom 12:16).

• Let us not judge one another (Rom 14:13).

• Build up one another (Rom 14:19).

• Accept one another (Rom 15:7).

• Admonish one another (Rom 15:14).

• Care for one another (1 Cor 12:25).

• Serve one another (Gal 5:13).

• Bear one another’s burdens (Gal 6:2).

• Show forbearance to one another (Eph 4:1–2).

• Be kind to one another (Eph 4:32).

• Be subject to one another (Eph 5:18–21).

• Do not lie to one another (Col 3:9).

• Bear with one another (Col 3:12).

• Forgive one another (Col 3:13).

• Teach and admonish one another (Col 3:16).

• Increase and abound in love for one another (1 Thess 3:12).

• Comfort one another (1 Thess 4:18).

• Encourage one another (Heb 3:13).

• Stimulate one another to love and good works (Heb 10:23–25).

• Do not speak against one another (Jas 4:11).

• Do not complain against one another (Jas 5:9).

• Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another (Jas 5:16).

• Be hospitable to one another (1 Pet 4:9).

• Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another (1 Pet 5:5).

• Greet one another with a kiss of love (1 Pet 5:14).

• Love one another (1 John 3:11).⁹

6. Genesis

2

:

18

.

7. Luke

10

:

27

; RB

4

:

2

. All quotations from The Rule of St. Benedict are from Fry, ed., RB

1980

.

8. John

13

:

34

; RB

4

:

2

.

9. From Aldrich’s Lifestyle Evangelism,

102

–

3

.

Chapter 3

Dress for Marriage Success

Colossians 3:12; RB 4:3–4

I officiated at a wedding one stormy Saturday in February a number of years back. The wind was blowing with gusts of well over eighty miles per hour. Cold, slanting rain was pelting the windows of the sanctuary of the church building as people began to arrive from out of town for the big formal wedding. The first few guests lucky enough to park close to the building arrived in pretty good shape. The closer the time came for the wedding to begin, the more bedraggled the people looked when they finally made it into the church building. Men arrived in rain-drenched suits. Women wearing fancy dresses and heels stepped out of the storm looking flustered, with hair plastered to their heads, trying to compose themselves before stepping into the sanctuary.

The wooden sanctuary creaked like an old wooden sailboat on the high seas. Concerned faces looked at me to see if there was any need for alarm as the building groaned in the storm. The bride and groom looked magnificent, as they always do. The wedding went very well, as they almost always do. I’ve seen the couple year after year and they are doing great. The storm did not ruin the wedding day. Nor did it ruin the marriage.

I love weddings on stormy days. The natural elements outside conspire together, offering the bride and groom a realistic portrait of what lies ahead. Every marriage weathers stormy times. Renowned British adventurer Ranulph Fiennes puts a positive spin on Mother Nature with his iconic statement, There is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.¹⁰ Even healthy marriages face bad weather. Too many couples today wear inappropriate clothing to weather the storms of marriage.

Understanding this common human predicament well, Benedict offers warnings early in his list of spiritual tools to remove our inappropriate clothes. When we have the slightest inclination to do harm or to wander away from our marriage vows, Benedict’s wisdom shines through the confusion and reminds us of our higher calling. We are encouraged to cast off dirty laundry and dress marriage in appropriate clothes. Benedict draws on the Ten Commandments’ Thou Shalt Not list: You are not to kill. Do not commit adultery.¹¹ These two warnings call us away from the soul dangers of anger and lust, the inward expressions of murder and adultery. As Jesus instructed us,

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. . . . You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.¹²

One of the passages I read at nearly every wedding has to do with all-weather wedding clothing. The passage was not originally written for husbands and wives. It was written for a community of faith in the ancient town of Colossae. All the same, I’ve found it addresses one of the central daily habits of healthy marriages, the habit of dressing wisely.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.¹³

Week 3: Dressing and Undressing

Try putting on and taking off the clothes listed below according the days of the week.¹⁴ As you are putting on your physical clothes in the morning, tell yourself, Today I will put on compassion. As you undress at night, challenge yourself, Tonight I will take off anger and rage. Give this dressing and undressing a trial period of one week to see if there is any alteration in your way of relating to one another as husband and wife.

1. Sunday: Take off anger and rage. Put on compassion.

2. Monday: Take off malicious words or deeds. Put on kindness.

3. Tuesday: Take off sexual immorality and impurity. Put on humility.

4. Wednesday: Take off lust and evil desires. Put on gentleness.

5. Thursday: Take off impatience and rudeness. Put on patience.

6. Friday: Take off resentments and grudges. Put on forbearance.

7. Saturday: Take off trash-talking and lying. Put on forgiveness.

Marriage Notes:

10. Brandeth, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations,

319.

11. Exodus

20

:

13

–

14

; RB

4

:

3

–

4

.

12. Matthew

5

:

21

–

22

,

27

–

28

.

13. Colossians

3

:

12

–

15

.

14. Colossians

3

:

5

–

10

,

12

–

14

.

Chapter 4

Live with Gratitude

2 Corinthians 9:6–11; RB 4:5–6

Expectations and tensions run high at weddings. One of the most relaxed weddings I’ve ever performed was an outdoor wedding at the state park just north of our village. I arrived as I usually do about thirty minutes before the ceremony and waited at the bluffs overlooking the ocean. The bride and groom came strolling up casually about ten minutes past the time when the wedding was supposed to begin. The bride had her two little daughters in tow, both dressed in gorgeous white flower girl dresses. The groom wore a classy-cut tuxedo and his bride was layered into the most expensive and formal wedding dress