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COVENANT GROUP DISCUSSION:  MARRIAGE
compiled by Dahven White

"Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion, but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting that any romance, however passionate."
--W.H. Auden

” I swear I think marriage is the most mysterious covenant in the universe. I’m convinced that no two are alike. More than that, I’m convinced that no marriage is like it was just the day before. Time is the significant dimension—even more significant than love. You can’t ask a person what his marriage is like because it will be a different marriage tomorrow. “

Anita Shreve The Weight of Water

Part I
Why do people enter into the institution of marriage?  How has marriage confirmed or differed from your expectations of it?  How do you change within a marriage without violating the initial contract?  How has marriage changed you? 

Opening Reading:

"AS WE ASK IN THE PRESENCE OF THESE DEAR FRIENDS AND FAMILY AS WITNESSES:
DO YOU, XXXXXXXXX  NOW CHOOSE XXXXXXXXX  TO BE YOUR LIFE COMPANION, TO SPEAK TRUTHFULLY AND LOVINGLY TO HER, TO ACCEPT HER FULLY AS SHE IS AND DELIGHT IN WHO SHE IS BECOMING, TO RESPECT HER UNIQUENESS, ENCOURAGE HER FULFILLMENT, AND COMPASSIONATELY SUPPORT HER THROUGH ALL THE CHANGES OF YOUR YEARS TOGETHER?" 
--Marriage vows

Closing Reading:

In the marriage ceremony, the ease of falling in love is replaced by the arduous task of staying in love. Romance is the involuntary result of fleeting emotion; marriage is the creation of time and will.  For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is preparation. And that is why we fear marriage and aspire to it, and that is why it is impossible and imperative, and that is why nothing is sweeter. 
--Dahven White (with inspiration from many sources)


Part II

What does it mean to spend a lifetime together?  What hardships have you faced as a couple and how have you handled them?  Does every couple betray each other in one way or another?  What is gained by those who survive the challenges of marriage? 

Opening Reading:

Marriage in the West is like a pot of water on the boil that can too quickly turn to steam and disappear.  A Chinese marriage is a pot of cold water on a slow flame that gets warmer and warmer over a lifetime. 
-- Tien Fang

Closing Reading:

Imagine a world where people have no memories.  When it is time to return home at the end of the day, each person consults his address book to learn where he lives.  Arriving home, each man finds a woman and children waiting at the door, introduces himself, helps with the evening meal, reads stories to his children.  Likewise, each woman returning from her job meets a husband, children, sofas, lamps, wallpaper, china patterns.  Late at night, the wife and husband do not linger at the table to discuss the day's activities, their children's school, the bank account.  Instead, they smile at each other, feel the warming blood, the ache between their legs as when they met the first time fifteen years ago.  They find their bedroom, stumble past family photographs they do not recognize, and pass the night in lust.  For it is only habit and memory that dull the physical passion.  Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch is the first. 
--Alan Lightman (from Einstein's Dreams)