Couple-praying:
Tips for praying
with your spouse
By
Julie McCarty
As
newlyweds, my husband, Terry, and I faced the standard challenge of
deciding which traditions from each side of the family we would continue.
When planning a vacation, we had to decide if we would go camping,
like my family, or stay at motels, like Terry’s family.
At Christmas, we had to decide between an artificial tree (his family)
and a live tree (my family). As the time grew near to buy a new car,
we found ourselves wrestling over purchasing a fuel-efficient foreign
brand or the domestic brand at the place my dad worked!
When it came to saying grace at mealtimes, Terry and I chose a new
family custom. We created — and still create — our own
prayers. Standing in the kitchen, holding hands, surrounded by the
blessed mess of food preparation and simmering dishes on the stove,
we ask God for guidance, pray for specific people, and thank God for
our food and for each other. Sometimes there has been laughter, sometimes
tension between us, sometimes tears, but always, prayer has drawn
us closer to each other.
In his pastoral letter on marriage, “Marriage In Christ,”
(www.stcdio.org) Bishop John Kinney of St. Cloud, Minn. remarks that
senior couples have told him that “Prayer is the glue that held
us together.” Some couples feel that praying together is almost
more intimate than sexual sharing.
Many Catholic couples have never experienced what I call “couple-praying,”
praying together, just the two of them. Where does one begin? After
20 years of experimentation, here’s what Terry and I have learned
(so far!):
Make a plan
When you want to go to a football game, you make arrangements. If
you want to pray as a couple, you need a plan. Ask the Holy Spirit
to guide you. Then, discuss when, where, and what method of prayer
you will use. What simple steps will you take to insure the fewest
interruptions possible?
Select a prayer style that works for both of you.
Look for common ground. For example, if your spouse is Lutheran, he
or she is probably not comfortable praying the rosary. Be willing
to try something new.
Praying spontaneously, that is, in your own words, is a great way
to pray together, but it can feel intimidating at first. Begin by
saying a familiar prayer together, like the Our Father. Then, take
turns praying for your needs, your children, your friends, or other
special intentions. Thank God for good things that happened in your
day. End with a familiar prayer like the Glory Be.
Scripture-based prayer forms are also good for couples. In the book
“Marital Spirituality: The Search for the Hidden Ground”
(Paulist Press, 1999), authors Patrick and Claudette McDonald describe
a simple way for couples to share Scripture together, based on the
ancient tradition of “lectio divina” (holy reading).
One couple I know does the short form of Evening Prayer together,
the Church’s daily prayer based on the psalms and other readings.
Respect each other’s needs
Never use prayer to manipulate the other person, like praying aloud
that your spouse will give up a bad habit. Pray instead for your own
transformation.
One person in a marriage is often more extroverted than the other.
If you are naturally talkative, look for ways to give your spouse
the silence he or she needs to muster the courage to speak. If you
are the quieter spouse, try thinking ahead of time of one simple prayer
intention. You don’t have to share every personal thought during
prayer.
Allow
for sacred silence
In our culture, many of us are afraid of silence. However, as our
prayer lives deepen, we discover special, sacred times of silence.
Allow little spaces of time between segments of your prayer time.
This gives God a chance to speak within.
After your final “Amen,” end with a hug and a kiss.
As sacrament, your marriage is meant to be a sign of God’s love
in the world. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide
in God, and God abides in them” (I John 4:16). So, go ahead,
seal your prayer with a kiss!
Do you have tips for couple-praying? E-mail them to Julie McCarty
at soulwriting@yahoo.com or mail them to The Catholic Voice. Please
include your name and address.
(Julie McCarty, M.A.T., is a married woman and freelance writer
from Eagan, Minnesota, whose syndicated column on prayer, “The
Prayerful Heart,” appears in diocesan newspapers around the
country. She would like to hear about other tips for couple praying.
They can be e-mailed to her at soulwriting@yahoo.com or mailed to
The Catholic Voice c/o Julie McCarty. Please include your name and
address.)
Now
is not the time to abandon
Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo
By
David P. Gushee
Religion News Service
OSIJEK,
Croatia—I write from eastern Croatia, where I am spending a
week teaching a course at a small evangelical seminary called Evangelical
Theological Faculty. The lessons I am learning here are extraordinary.
The last time many Americans paid much attention to Croatia was in
1991, when Yugoslavia was falling apart and events in Croatia made
the daily headlines for a while. The town I am in, Osijek, lived through
the events of those days.
What happened then was that the uneasy ethnic confederation making
up Yugoslavia began to fall apart. Linguistically similar but divided
groups, all of Slavic background, constituted that nation —
Macedonians, Slovenians, Muslims, Montenegrins, Croats and Serbs jostled
together in a sprawling nation cobbled together after World War I.
Due primarily to the nationalistic pandering of Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb, non-Serb territories began to secede from
Yugoslavia in 1991. Slovenia escaped first, and was allowed to remain
independent after a brief war.
Croatia tried next, and this the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government
was not willing to accept. Serbian troops crossed into Croatian territory
while shelling obliterated the lovely old city of Vukovar on the far
eastern edge of Croatian territory.
I visited Vukovar recently. It is a town with every third or fourth
house still in ruins, remnants of a war that traumatized the entire
population. Not only did the Serbs and Croats engage in regular street-to-street
fighting, and not only was the city shelled, the Serbs also committed
a number of atrocities during the fighting. My hosts took me to a
sad spot just outside Vukovar. There, 200 wounded or sick Croatians
who had been taken out of Vukovar’s hospital were executed and
dumped in a mass grave.
This was just one of many such incidents during the wars that raged
across Croatia, Bosnia and later Kosovo during the 1990s. It was not
just army against army but neighbor against neighbor.
The great majority of the mayhem was done by Serbs against Croats,
Bosnian Muslims and Kosovar Albanians, but that leaves plenty of incidents
of violence in other directions as well.
At least 200,000 people were killed during the war, most in genocidal
mass executions or random shelling, and countless numbers were raped
and tortured. The thirst for truth, justice and, yes, vengeance continues
to run deep here.
Thirteen years later, Croatia is an independent state run by its own
elected government with little help from the West. Bosnia and Kosovo
both remain under the effective control of Western occupying and pacifying
forces. Most observers here believe if the troops were to leave, the
violence would erupt again.
Traveling around this particular region, one sees many evidences of
a strict Croat-Serb apartheid. There are Serb coffee shops and Croat
coffee shops, Serb sections of town and Croat sections of town, and
so on.
There are three kinds of hope for this region, and all are relevant
to readers in the United States. First, the United States must continue
to support NATO troops and United Nations personnel in Kosovo and
Bosnia, including the American troops that are here.
Given our military involvements worldwide, it might be tempting to
withdraw troops from this region. This would be a disaster. We did
not do enough to prevent genocide last time. We can prevent it next
time by staying here until we are no longer needed.
Second, we can support the integration of nations from the former
Yugoslavia into the Western world and global market economy, but only
as they conform to international standards of democracy and respect
for human rights.
Third, we can support efforts at interfaith and interethnic reconciliation.
So: Send troops, send advisers, send missionaries, send money, send
prayers, in the direction of this region. Many here are looking to
our nation and its people for a better future.
(David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union
University in Jackson, Tenn.)
Should
churches stay empty while
the poor remain out in the cold?
By
Rabbi Marc Howard Wilson
Religion News Service
In
the best of all possible worlds, all homeless people would transition
into independence and off the public dole.
That is happening to some significant degree via agencies whose sole
purpose is to provide the resources and guidance to move the homeless
into productive lives. These initiatives are still receiving considerable
public funding, as they should be. The premise is one to which liberals
and conservatives should both subscribe: It breaks the vicious
cycle of welfare dependency.
So much for the best.
But once “cursing the bums” subsides, I hope we would
agree that barebones emergency shelter for even the most persistently
homeless is a societal mandate. The alternative would likely be sleeping
in a rusted car or under a viaduct. Besides, they are not all “bums.”
Homeless also includes blameless babies, abused women and people without
means who are mentally/physically disabled. We can let them starve
or freeze, or we can provide them a roof, a cot, a shower and at least
a bologna sandwich.
Ask anyone who works with homeless people. The emergency shelters
are already full. People are on waiting lists. Resources are depleted.
Babies are out on the street for want of any port in the storm.
Public funding for emergency shelter? Yes, the issue is debatable.
But, this I do know: Public funding should not be an issue. Drive
up and down your neighborhood. Look at all the big houses of worship.
Look at all the rooms with lights off. Look at all the unutilized
space. Look at the kitchens that are used once, maybe twice, a week.
Look at how few houses of worship provide a meal and shelter for the
homeless. Despite their heroic efforts, look at how few houses of
worship even offer their space to initiatives like Interfaith Hospitality
Network.
Sometimes it is tough to figure out whose job it is to provide essential
community services. In this instance, there is no question. Houses
of worship not only have the divine mandate to feed the hungry and
offer refuge to the homeless. Many of them also have the space, manpower
and wherewithal to bring homeless people under their roof, at least
during the coldest months of winter.
They are not doing it.
They may contribute generously to other overtaxed ministries and agencies,
but their own space remains clean, heated, lighted ... and unoccupied.
Lots of programs in houses of worship come into being from the bottom
up. Well-motivated, eager laypeople can pull together the resources
to do honorable things. But, the mandate to do something so visionary
and aggressive as providing shelter for the homeless demands a top-down
initiative.
Bluntly, if your congregation is ever to provide shelter, it will
emerge from a bold call from the Sabbath pulpit by the senior pastor/rabbi/priest.
Pastoral “support” is not sufficient.
I speak from a modicum of personal experience. Calls from my own pulpit
in 1982 and 1986 established the first two synagogue-based shelters
in the country. I would like to say that I was the “founder”
of the shelters, but the best I can claim ever is that I was their
primary stimulant. From that point on, the laity made it their vision.
Every pastor must know that feeding and sheltering the homeless is
a biblical imperative. It is literally the punchline of Isaiah 58:
“This is the fast I desire ... to share your bread with the
hungry and to take the wretched poor into your home”
Hence, this issue is not “Should the preacher preach about it?”
but “Will the preacher preach about it?”
Every homeless person we see huddled under a viaduct should tug at
our conscience. But, every persistently unutilized room in a house
of worship should evoke words like “shame,” and “dishonor,”
and “disgrace.” That profound sin of omission should lead
us directly to the study of our minister/rabbi/priest, where our appeal
should bear the reminder that before one can save the world, he must
bring the “wretched poor “ into his home.
(Marc Howard Wilson is a rabbi, syndicated columnist and community
relations consultant in Greenville, S.C. )
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