Excerpt from
Claiming Our Deepest Desires
The Power of Intimate Marriages
M. Bridget Brennan
Jerome L. Shen

The Scripture selections are taken from the New American Bible copyright © 1991, 1986, 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 3211 Fourth Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20017-1194 and are used by license of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

© 2005 by the Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of the Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, P.O. Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

Introduction

A. Purpose of this book

Writing this book will help us grow in love and intimacy. We want to live what we write. In working out our conflicting, different, and even similar views of life and relationship, we hope to forge a greater unity and intimacy. We trust this process will infuse our writing with the total energy of our experiences rather than just the intellectual learnings that are devoid of life’s experiences. We hope that in the process we will express our love for each other and our belief and trust in the God of love.

Our friends and colleagues have encouraged us to write this little volume. Through our studies (mostly Bridget’s), our reflections on our experience, and insights from friends and faith groups, we have come to a greater understanding and appreciation of relationship. We have shared our reflections with others in retreats and seminars. Many of those who have heard us find what we have to share helpful and resonant with their own experiences. Encouraged by those responses, we want to present our story to a larger audience.

We discuss the spirituality of marriage to help married couples realize that they are already living spiritual lives. We refer to the documents of Vatican II to let married couples recognize that they are implementing the prophetic vision of Vatican II. Our purpose is to affirm and inspire couples to live their marriage covenant.

But most of all, we write this book in gratitude to God for the gift of relationship. It is our hope that these pages will help you, the reader, gain a greater appreciation of your relationships and experience the joy that God has promised us who love.

B. What we believe (Spirituality of Marriage)

A number of central beliefs constitute the spiritual foundation of all that we say in this book. We have learned these tenets from our faith in Jesus Christ and have found them to be true in our own experience. God gives us the gift of intimacy and calls us to relationship; Jesus reveals himself to us in our human loving; and the Holy Spirit leads us to love’s perfection in heaven. Love, intimacy, and relationship will not be possible if we do not have faith in God.

We believe that we are created in relationship and for relationship. We are created in relationship with God, our Creator, with our fellow human beings, and with all of nature. We find our identity when we discover our relationship with God, with our fellow human beings, and with nature. We are created for relationship with all those who touch us and are touched by us. In relationship, we experience both the joys and the sorrows of love and intimacy.

We believe that relationship is a gift from God. Most specifically, Jesus revealed this gift to us at the Last Supper (John 17). The gift of relationship is given so that the purpose of creation may be accomplished—that we come to know God’s love for us. Relationship is a gift from God so that we experience both God’s love and complete joy.

We come to know God through relationship with other persons. In marriage our spouse is that specific other person with whom we grow in love and intimacy. “If anyone says, ‘I love God’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

We grow to love, to be intimate, to know each other through our experiences. Our experiences are total experiences: intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual. We grow and learn from our experiences when we are aware of them and understand and accept their meaning. For a married couple, those experiences are not only life lived together, but also individual experiences that are shared with each other. When we share experiences, we enter into each other’s individual experiences. Life is the total summation of our experiences. The meaning of life is the meaning of our experiences.

We believe that relationship is worthwhile in and of itself. Although love for one another is most often expressed in being and doing for each other, love and intimacy are much more than that. The essence of a relationship is the gift of myself to another and is worthwhile even if we do nothing for each other; it is unconditional.

We believe that joy, sorrow, peace, and happiness are fruits of good relationships.

Joy is an experience. It is the experience of love and intimacy, of the goodness of my beloved, of my own goodness because I am loved. My joy is complete when I can experience the moment of intimacy and at that same time understand, appreciate, and accept its meaning. My joy is diminished when I cannot enter fully into the moment. I may not recognize someone’s love for me. I may doubt my lover’s intentions or reject the intimacy out of fear. I can feel myself unworthy of being loved. Rembrandt’s painting Return of the Prodigal Son evokes a moment of great joy when all doubts of contrition and forgiveness are laid aside in the face of the great love and intimacy expressed by the embrace of the father and son.

Sorrow is also a fruit of relationship. There is no sorrow or pain for the loss of loved ones or for breaks in relationships if there is not love in the relationship. We cannot be hurt if we do not risk relationship. Nor can we experience love and joy if we do not risk relationship. The depth of our sorrow reveals the depth of our love. Relationship does not end in death but continues and reaches its perfection in heaven. Thus, sorrow is temporary and turns into joy when the perfection of relationship is achieved.

Peace and happiness are fruits of good relationships. Peace comes from knowing my relationships and understanding that they are secure and will last. If I can fully trust my relationships, then I can be at peace, even in the midst of turmoil. I have no fear because I know love will conquer all.

Happiness results from the experience of joy. It is not simply the satisfaction of our expectations or needs. We often find happiness when we do not expect it. Sometimes we are disappointed by that which we think will make us happy, and are pleasantly surprised by that which we do not expect. Therefore, rather than seek peace and happiness, seek to build relationships of love and intimacy. For peace and happiness are fruits of good relationships. Instead of asking what will make us happy, we can ask, “How can we grow in love and intimacy?”

We believe that God calls us to relationship and makes it possible for us to love and become intimate. God has planted in our very being an inner desire to love and be loved, a yearning for relationship and intimacy that is the core and foundation of our being. As William Barry puts it, it is “the desire for only God knows what—a desire that will be only satisfied in God.”

This desire is actualized in our realization of the experience of love. C. S. Lewis describes such an experience as “surprised by joy ... an experience that had taken only a moment of time but which made everything else that had ever happened to me seem insignificant in comparison.” Barry describes such an experience as a desire for relationship and union. Such an experience also brings a sense of wellbeing and of being desired by another.

For many reasons we do not often recognize or accept the call to relationship or have the courage and generosity to accept the call. But God continually sends people into our lives to awaken that desire and to empower us to answer the call. As Len Kraus, our pastor, reminded us, God never gives up on us. God calls us even unto the very last moment of our lives and does not accept no for an answer unless it is our last irrevocable no. Our personal conversion stories and that of many others attest to the truth of this belief.

The crucial fears that keep us from knowing love and intimacy and God are

• Can I trust the intentions of the lover, and
  
• Can I trust that I am lovable?
  

Can I trust God and my human lover to love me personally and unconditionally? Or must I earn that love? Can I trust that my desire for love and intimacy will be satisfied in relationship? Or am I being misled by that desire into opening myself up for rejection and pain? Am I lovable for myself? Or am I that ugly person that no one can or will love?

We all want to know that we are lovable and that we can trust both God’s love and human love. Yet, our fear of a possible no keeps us from risking a relationship. Fear of a no prompts us to construct reasons for not asking those questions. If we do not ask the questions by risking the relationship, we can avoid getting a negative response. But if we do not risk relationship, we can never get the yes that we desire.

Relationship is a journey of redemption that means to let go of those fears that hinder intimacy, growth, and trust in God. When we let go of our fears, we gain the courage to follow our inner desire for intimacy. When we take the risk to enter into relationship, we ask the crucial questions. As we experience affirmative answers to these questions, our trust in God, in our lover, and in ourselves grows, and we are able to risk more to grow in intimacy. Our growth and redemption continue until we can abandon all fears, doubts, and self-centeredness that prevent us from unconditional love. Then we are ready to enter heaven and enjoy the perfection of relationship. Then our joy will be complete and we will receive the eternal Yes that satisfies our entire being.

As Dick Wesley asserts in his book Redemptive Intimacy, we are redeemed by intimacy. For it is the overwhelming joy of our experiences of intimacy and love that deepens our desire for relationship, gives us the courage and generosity to change, and empowers us with the hope and trust to persevere to the perfection of love.

We have learned these beliefs from our faith in God and have found them to be true in our own experiences. It is very encouraging to us that others before us and with us have also found these truths through their experiences.

We also realize that there is a possibility we may be wrong. Certainly there are many who do not believe as we do. However, if we cannot trust our own experiences, what hope do we have for the fulfillment of our deepest desires? If God is not to be trusted, there will be no hope for us and we will be the most abject of creatures, totally unable to experience joy and happiness.

But we are not wrong. We have experienced great joy in relationship. And in this book we hope to present reflections that may help you discover more fully these truths in your own experience.

Having summarized our beliefs on the spirituality of marriage, we remind the reader that a spirituality that is not relevant to practical living and that does not express itself in concrete positive actions and choices cannot yield fruit. If our spirituality does not affect how we live, then it is of no use to us. We find that many who do not actively practice their faith still believe in God. They do not practice their faith because they do not find their faith relevant to how they live.

In a practical sense, spirituality is experiencing God’s presence and actions in our lives and accepting and cooperating with God’s actions. Spirituality that is learned from our total experience of mind, heart, emotion, and spirit is the most affective and effective. If spirituality is only in the mind, it does not result in actions. It is no more than theology or philosophy. For many years I, Jerry, knew spirituality only in my mind. My pious thoughts were consoling for a while and led to many good intentions that were never carried out. It was not until I fell in love with Bridget that I experienced true love and recognized that others loved me. It was the transforming experience of love that gave me the desire, courage, and generosity to act on my good intentions. Experiencing love with one’s entire being always leads to positive concrete actions.

Spirituality that is devoid of positive action cannot yield fruit. Our desire for intimacy and relationship will wane in the face of our fears, our frustrations, our self-centeredness, and our other desires. We will lose sight of our goal of relationship and drift apart. Without God, we can not sustain positive, concrete actions over a long time.

Therefore, in the following pages we propose an integration of the spiritual and the practical aspects of marriage. Our experience is that this integration takes place gradually. As the two of us grow to become one, so it seems our individual lives become more integrated. We will try to deal with the necessary practical aspects while always focusing on the essential spiritual facets of marriage.

C. The exercises and reflections

Our hope is that this book will inspire readers to reflect and discover the truth for themselves. For this purpose we have added exercises and reflection questions at the end of each chapter. We realize that some of the questions are difficult and risk vulnerability. Therefore, we suggest the readers do only those exercises they feel comfortable with and are capable of doing. For those who do better with writing, we recommend that you keep journals of your reflections.