Together for 47 years!

As I stood watching this pair of Kingfishers perched in a shrub, beside the stream below our property, my memory went back to the years that Anna and I have been together.  This pair of Kingfishers were perched in two branches close to each other, both looking ahead!

That engaging look into what is ahead drew my attention to a frequent conversation that Anna and I have had for a while about what we are to be as a couple in the years ahead of us!

This sight was in the twilight, when the Sun was yet to rise in the horizon! So there was a restriction to the distant vision even for the King fishers who have an exceptional distance vision! 

While both of us are in our early seventies, we keep asking to each other about being more creative and effective in the way we can bring encouragement to others. 

The routine for us begins with a meeting around the table in our study early in the morning with a cup of coffee. That is when we have a conversation time of thoughts that have surfaced within us during the night or in the morning. The time of reading and prayer leads us to the events of the day. 

Anna is at home during the day and I spend the day at the hospital. 

The evening time around the supper table is another conversation time with recollections and reflections. The habit of closing the day with reading and prayer sometimes get crowded out with pending work. We have been trying to revive our singing habit; we have conversations with our children on most Sundays. 

During our years at Chennai and Vellore we had the habit of spending about four hours on Wednesday evenings in a retreat house for practicing silence and reflection ending with a meal in the retreat house. Those experiences bridged us into the journey towards each other and  in treasuring communion between ourselves 

We have had a Friday Forum for a few friends from our time at CMC Vellore. Now it continues by an on-line meeting. This was our way to introduce the theme of Life, Living and Learning

We have been used to taking a break of four weeks once in two to three years during our times at Chennai and Vellore  and spending that time in a retreat setting along with few others. That became times for revising life, the fruits of which remain with us even now and anchor us in our faith journey. 

We felt accompanied by senior friends for most part of our married life. We recall association with few friends with whom we have been involved in their formative journey. They live in different places in the world and live out their vocation. 

It was in our work places we experienced the joy of fellowship and partnership. There were occasional strain in relationships at work place, but the memories of joy subsume those stray events. 

Both of us from early in our marriage intended our home to be a place of our formation. So listening and sharing became the ambience of our relationship. We listened more than we argued. We sought for a middle path when our polarised positions restricted us. When we made wrong choices we learned to understand each other rather than blame each other. We pursued the practice of co-parenting, weekly family times, and week-ends set apart for children.

We practiced reading to each other, reading to children and writing a journal of our experiences. In the recent years I converted it into this blog, while Anna gathers photographs to recollect events and stories. 

We have disagreed and had different opinions on some occasions.  We practiced structured conversations when our emotions overlook us, so that we could offer space to each other to speak and listen. By practicing to be silent and reflect, we are learning to discern the way forward when we have differing opinions on some matters. Both of us have been on an incremental journey of giving and forgiving. 

Our longing for each other has grown because we  offer space to each other to grow and the result has been an expanding common space between us. 

We are different, but the common ground between us is without a boundary or conditions!

We live to love and be an offering to each other...we get up and start all over again when we  have fallen or hurt each other. 

The joy of living is in discovering the depth beyond what is known! So it has been a journey towards each other in pursuit of the 'two becoming one'! The journey itself is the destiny of relationship in marriage!

While these thoughts were surfacing in my mind, following the sighting of the Kingfisher pair, I returned to the cottage. I was greeted by this jasmine bush, with its pair of flowering branches. We are ageing, but reminded to be flowering and staying graceful!

The joy of living is an experience, because of an eternal truth, spoken by Jesus of Nazareth, 'I am the vine and you are the branches'!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)