As we drove east across Ohio and through the mountains of West Virginia on our way to visit our kids and grandkids for Mother's Day and out grandson's First Communion we began to reminisce, first about car trips with our children when they were younger, and then about other high points in our marriage and family life. Soon we were reaching out to one another, briefly touching as we spoke. It was an important ritual of connection after a busy week of work, meetings, and struggles to get the household chores done.
Loving at a distance can be about physical separation, as when one partner must travel, or even when we live and work in different places. But one of the biggest challenges to every relationship is the distance that comes as we each become lost in the labor of everyday life.
This week marks the Feast of the Ascension. In this week's Gospel, Jesus leaves his disciples to return to his Father and, as he does, he promises that although they will no longer be together, they will remain united across the distance of time and space.
How?
Our memories drew us closer because they were reminders of key moments in our relationship, times when our love was manifest in actions.
Greek philosophers divided time into two categories: kairos and kronos. Kronos is sequential time, the time of clocks and calendars; it is linear time moving inexorably out of the past into the future. Kairos is numinous time, the time of dreams and festivals, pregnant with meaning.
The Church fathers followed this distinction in dividing the Church calendar into times of fasts and feasts, celebrating particular moments in which we recall the kairos of God's love made manifest, particularly in the incarnation, ministry, and death and resurrection of Jesus. These moments are contrasted with ordinary time, in which we need to try to hold on to our vocations in the face of the demands of everyday life.
Your wedding was a kairos moment. The birth of each of your children. In marriage, creating those kairos moments, those moments when love swells and commitment is manifest, is crucial.
There are many ways to create such moments of quality time.
Commit to a monthly, biweekly, or weekly date night. A date differs from ordinary activities you spend together like playing a game or watching TV because it is a scheduled, interactive activity that takes you outside of your normal routines. If you are feeling particularly brave, consider committing to an adventure date night in which your date is a mystery to you both until you scratch off the instructions.
Create rituals. Mark was in graduate school and Dawna was working part-time. We had two kids and money was tight. But on Monday nights, Dawna would stop on her way home at a funky ice cream parlor that served exotic sundaes named after movie stars (the Betty Grable was amazing). I would have bathed and put the kids to bed by the time she got home, and we would share the sundae and have half an hour to connect about ourselves, our feelings and our plans before plunging back into childcare, schoolwork, and jobs. We don't miss those days--but we still fondly recall those special moments we carved out for ourselves. Our understanding of how important rituals can be to a family was greatly influenced by The Intentional Family by William J. Doherty, which we cannot recommend highly enough.
Road trips and vacations. Our children fondly remember being bustled out to the car while it was still dark and snuggling in their blankets to the sounds of the radio and the muted conversation of their parents. Vacations also become special when some activity is planned for each family member, but the experiences are shared by all. Smart phones need to be put away except for scheduled times each day, and parents need to set the example.
Not every date will be memorable. Not every road trip will build lasting connections. Not every ritual will become a lasting, loving family practice. But only by engaging in such activities do we create the opportunities for kairos moments.
Whatever you do to try to build kairos moments, keep one thing in mind: kairos moments emerge not from the nature of the activity but from the ways in which love manifests itself in those moments.
As Gregory Godek says in his book 1001 Ways to Be Romantic, romance is not primarily in the act, it's in the packaging. Staying in the moment is crucial, as are intimate, honest conversations (What kind of conversations? For ideas on this, you might try 10 Great Dates to Energize Your Marriage by David and Claudia Arp)
Image by Buono Del Tesoro from Pixabay
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