A Time Of Wedding

FRI., JUNE 10, 1983, 3:40 PM
PHOENIX, MD, DYER’S BASEM’T

The planning is coming to fruition and the central family event of this trip is about to occur. In these times of travel with Lenore you do not come often for instruction, but the reality of this relationship of Ours, o son, is everpresent. I did not exactly call you today, but I responded as you knew it was time.

A time of wedding is, indeed, a special time… in both the secular world and in the realm of spirit that is Mine to direct. In secular, cultural terms a wedding is a joining of families, a new legal relationship, and a time of giving up the position of single person and accepting one as part of a husband and wife combination, which is both a new emotional “place” and an altered social position. It is part of virtually every culture, and it is an institution I founded… for the good of human relationships.

Marriage can be just this social shift, and as such it has value. I desire that even those who are not in active, personal relationship with Me should live enjoyable, productive lives, and the wedded state is still that which assures the most positive values from life.

Now certainly I am aware that some marriages should not happen, that some produce mixtures of pleasure and pain, and that some simply die, and the partners must extricate themselves as best they can. I cannot create a perfect human institution. Even the church, in its institutional form, is, at times, an embarrassment to Me. But, frankly, I see no good alternative for the church nor for marriage. It is not right to revile the institution because individuals or groups let their weaknesses and differences erode its inherent strength.

Most of those who come to a time of wedding, even in the secular context, involve their spirits. To genuinely love the new partner, to feel responsibility for her or him, to pledge fidelity and integrity, and to agree to continue the relationship in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want… these are all manifestations of the human spirit. They have intellectual and emotional components, but their essence is spiritual.

However, as you suspected, the time of wedding that pleases Me the most is that in which spirits who already have relationship with Me come together and genuinely invite Me into the marriage. The combinations, of course, are innumerable, and I joy both in the ones where both are in Me comfortably and in marriages where there is some challenge to Me to make those who are more reluctant more open and accepting.

You and Lenore have grown well together, and though you puzzle over why your sons have gravitated to more orthodox, liturgical churches, it is no coincidence that each of the older sons has a strong relationship with Me, and that present marriages of Bob and Michael reflect this. John Patrick eventually shall incorporate his faith into a marriage, and, as I have told you, leave Matthew to Me for the present.