So far I’ve offered some practical tips on how to end marital disputes. But advice is cheap, so let’s cut to the chase. As with everything in the Christian life, quitting fighting is not fundamentally a matter of doing anything but of having a realization.
Two monks had lived for many years in the desert. One day one was summoned to the city to meet with his bishop. While there, he happened to witness a noisy dispute between two people in the street.
My book The Mystery of Marriage was published exactly thirty years ago. Since then I’ve written about marriage only once, to add a new chapter on “Oneness” to the twentieth anniversary edition. Now, for the thirtieth anniversary, some notes toward another new chapter. This is the first of a five-part series on renouncing marital strife.
A friend who appreciates my books once told me, “What I love about your writing is its quality of ordinariness.” He went on to elaborate, but unfortunately I missed all he said because I was so struck by that one word: ordinariness. I knew exactly what he meant, and rather than being offended, I was deeply flattered.
To celebrate the birth of 2015, here’s the New Year’s chapter from my book Champagne for the Soul.
Ron Reed, the Artistic Director of Pacific Theatre in Vancouver, has written a splendid Foreword to my new book Twenty-One Candles. Ron or I will be reading from my book at all the performances of Christmas Presence, PT’s annual celebration of the season with an evening of stories and wonderful music. Find out more on the PT website. And here’s Ron’s Foreword:
What, you may wonder, is the meaning of this outlandish title? Thirteen years ago my friend Chris Walton (pictured with antlers) spoke this word to me in the parking lot of Ricky’s All Day Grill, and we burst into gales of laughter. Find out why in this story, a selection from my new book published this week, Twenty-One Candles: Stories for Christmas.
(Incidentally, most of the stories in this book are fiction, but this one is true.)
I’m leafing through a file of old Christmas stories with a view to gathering them into a collection. For three decades I’ve written a new Christmas story every year to give out to friends as a greeting card. A tradition that pre-dates the internet, it’s been one way to get instantly published. We also host an annual party on Christmas Adam (if you’re not familiar with that term, read “Yabba-ka-doodles!”) at which I read my latest story aloud. So I’ve not only had my own publishing house but a radio station as well.
[Note: Thanks for this story to Dr. Jim Foulkes, who served as a missionary doctor in Africa for four decades. This is my version of a story he told me, but you can read Dr. Jim’s own account in his wonderful book To Africa With Love: A Bush Doc’s Story. Furthermore, Dr. Jim is presently at work on a collection of 28 of his hunting tales. I can hardly wait!]
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Many are aware that St. Francis preached to the birds, and St. Anthony to a congregation of fish. But let’s remember that before these saints ever preached to the animals, the animals first preached to them.
Often excerpts from my book The Mystery of Marriage are read at weddings. Recently my friend Ron Reed was asked to do this, and for the occasion he organized my prose into lines of poetry. The result is quite nice: