Ours is a traditional marriage, nurtured and supported by participation in the Christian church and by faith that was shaped in our original family and church experiences. We met at a PYPS meeting in 1957 and married in 1962.
Marilyn: My family shared a Celtic culture and a Presbyterian faith. My father's pioneer ancestors cleared land in the 1790s, built a log cabin, established themselves as stonemasons and raised a large family. They set aside land on which a Presbyterian church was built. As a child, I attended anniversary services there each June surrounded by an overflow congregation, 80 per cent of whom were relatives. There, I was known as the daughter of Len Thomson but I knew I was a child of God. In my early 20s, while attending a PYPS conference (the theme was Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve) I felt God nudging me to decide what I would do with my life. I went to Ewart College to prepare myself to be a professional church worker.
John: My parents, both from farm families, were not particularly religious although they had attended Methodist Sunday schools. A significant element in my faith formation was my mother, and maternal grandmother, who sang hymns as they did the housework. A favourite of theirs, and of mine still, is The Old Rugged Cross. I now know that I began to feel close to God, a closeness that reflected awareness of my mother's love for me, as I was around her when she was singing those hymns. The ministers and other people I came to know in church nurtured that sense of the closeness of God. I spent a lot of time at church as a preteen and teenager. When I shared my discernment, in Grade 11 (as a result of PYPS experiences similar to Marilyn's), that I was being called to be a minister, the response of most people was "of course."
Marilyn and John: Our first significant conversation occurred when John arranged to sit next to Marilyn at a Presbytery PYPS Good Friday morning breakfast. We became engaged in discussing something from the service, emerging from our intense discussion to realize that those around us were long since ready to leave.
As a young married couple, we tried to develop the habit of praying together in a traditional way. That did not work for us, although it has always been important for us to say grace together at the evening meal. Our shared prayer life, like our first intense conversation, is primarily lived out in the way that we talk about the things that are important to one or the other or both of us—meaningful conversation in the presence of God that intensifies and enhances our relationship with each other.
This is a rather non-traditional understanding of prayer. It is grounded in our experience of growing up in families and other relationships in which the presence of God and the reality of God's love was a given. Our experience runs parallel to that of Malcolm Boyd, as reflected in his 1960s collection of prayers, Are You Running with Me, Jesus? It resonates with a comment made by Dr. David Hay at Knox College during a lecture on prayer, when he looked out at the University of Toronto campus and wondered out loud what it would be like if we "prayed with our eyes open."
Participation in congregations that practice the presence of God has been a significant factor in deepening our relationship with each other and with God. Those congregations, and the presbyteries of which John has been a member, have had their share of struggles and conflicts. The sense that we have been "muddling through" in the presence of God, assured of God's love, has saved the day and been good training for our personal muddling through.
Knowing that our relationship is being lived out in the presence of God means that there is no escaping the truth about what is going on. Like any other couple, we have our conflicts and struggles. Truth seeking in the context of conflict or family trauma is made safe by the knowledge that God loves us even when we don't like each other or ourselves very much!
We have both been involved in meaningful paid and volunteer work in the church and community throughout our marriage and understand that to be a significant element in the development of our faith and the deepening of our relationship. The work we have done has also helped us develop self-awareness and relational skills that have benefitted our relationship.
We have been challenged to be the best that we can be by the many crises, and the joy, of parenting and grandparenting. Both of our children live nearby. Our daughter Jane, and her family, are active in the same church as we are, with Jane and John both serving as elders. Our intellectually challenged son, James, attends church with us each Sunday. When we asked him, after he took Communion for the first time, about the meaning of Communion, James replied, "God loves me." We very much enjoy the inquisitiveness of our two preschool grandchildren and their unsophisticated way of loving and seeking love. We have been blessed by the two dogs that have been our family pets during the last 23 years (recently our dog licked the tears off the cheek of a grieving friend). In many ways, throughout our marriage, our children, our grandchildren, and our dogs have been "Christ for us."
And we do play, sing and listen to sacred music in our home!
In today's society, stories such as ours are becoming relatively infrequent — almost dinosauric. Songs that communicate the essentials of the God-human relationship are not what most teenagers and young adults listen to these days. There is little reinforcement in families and in society for young people and young adults to participate in the Christian Church, to experience relationship with God and to grow in that relationship, and to practice the presence of God and know that God loves me/us. Fewer couples give priority to developing their own faith and the faith of their children. We are not talking about drilling a belief system into people's heads but about living relationships that practice God's presence. It seems to us what we need in marriage and family relationships and in the Christian church.
