Marriage: from Cornerstone to Capstone

When we celebrated our golden anniversary last month, the status of our finances was the furthest thing from our mind, just as they were when we got married. Back then, when we consolidated our balance sheets--yes, we were and are accountants--the sum of our net worths was negative. My student loans had that effect, but she married me anyway.

Barriers to entry (Mendelson/WSJ) (

Few people who have our long-ago financial circumstances now tie the knot. [bold added]

For centuries, the institution of marriage functioned more as an economic contract than a romantic one—the promise of a better shot at achieving financial success and stability as a couple.

More recently, the script has flipped. Financial security is no longer a goal reached after marriage, younger Americans say, but rather a prerequisite for it...

The idea of both parties waiting to build a career or wealth before tying the knot is called a capstone model of marriage. Economists and demographers say that thinking has replaced the old “cornerstone” approach, where people would wed in their early 20s and then work together to buy a home, build a nest egg and progress in their careers...

“Marriage has become a status symbol,” said Krista Westrick-Payne, assistant director of the National Center for Marriage & Family Research. “People don’t want to get married until they have an education, have that job that can support them and they can afford a house, and they are also looking for a partner that ticks all those boxes.”

I sympathize with the desire to have financial security; in our case we didn't really feel that we were financially safe until we were in our 50's. Of course, waiting to marry until then would have made it unlikely that we would have had children.

Marrying when young and poor carries greater risk, but if you should make it, the stories you could tell.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Divorced Ryan Hambry and Morgan Dickson have dinner
together with their children at their Florida house once a week

The cliché about the economics of marriage--"two can live as cheaply as one"--remains true even though the marriage is over. Some divorced couples continue to live together because their housing costs would rise substantially if they were to sell their house with a low-interest mortgage.

For divorcing couples, there is a particularly tricky version of what housing professionals call the “lock-in effect,” where homeowners stay in place because they don’t want to give up their low rates. Across the housing market, the lock-in effect prevented almost two million home sales between mid-2022 and mid-2024, according to Federal Housing Finance Agency research. The number of people moving is significantly lower than it was before the pandemic, according to Bank of America.

Some ex-spouses are choosing to “nest,” an arrangement in which the kids remain in the family home and the parents rotate in and out. The practice has been around a long time, but it has gained popularity as the costs of moving have risen, according to family-law attorneys and mediators.

There are compelling short-term financial reasons for not cutting the cord completely, but keeping the family house under joint ownership will make it difficult to find other partners, relocate to other cities, and move on with their lives.

A Golden Year

Your humble blogger has had a number of health scares over the past year, to the extent that it was problematic whether I would see this day. Well, I, we, are still here.

We commemorated our anniversary by asking the lady minister to bless our union. After she did so, some members of the congregation, which had supported us during our time of trial, applauded.

I spoke to them during coffee hour and let them know how much I appreciated their prayers and being part of a community that believed in the primacy of the Word, before which concerns of the world are secondary.

The recessional hymn was "Be Not Afraid," which has comforted many who are facing the unknown. We who are in the winter of our lives are asking questions whose answers are all-important and don't come with guarantees that satisfy the scientific mind. In the end we are forced to trust the One who said "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."

Finding Tradition on Their Own

It's a tale as old as time. These relationships still exist, and now some women are bragging about it.

Stay-at-Home Girlfriends Are Having a Moment [bold added]

The typical stay-at-home girlfriend video opens on a young woman in a pristine apartment. At 8 a.m., she makes the bed and cooks pancakes for her boyfriend before he goes to work. After a green juice, it’s time for self care: a private Pilates reformer session and a microcurrent facial. Then, she has lunch with a girlfriend at a local hot spot, goes for a long walk and listens to a podcast before it’s time to get ready for date night.

Clips like this abound on TikTok—smooth, hypnotic videos presenting an idealized vision of a traditional marriage, minus the wedding ring, plus a dose of the current wellness boom. Being a stay-at-home girlfriend (or SAHG for short) is all about supporting your boyfriend with tasks like cooking and housework, plus a rigorous self-care regimen to keep up appearances. The phenomenon reflects a Gen Z move away from mid-2000s “girlboss” hustle culture, and toward aspirations of a softer life.

As to what the men get out of these relationships, it may seem obvious from the photos of three SAHG's above, but the writer feigns ignorance.

Often, the boyfriends themselves are the ones to propose these arrangements. They’re working a lot, or traveling a lot, and want extra support at home. Or they just enjoy paying for everything.

This lifestyle choice is antithetical to woman-needs-a-man-like-a-fish-needs-a-bicycle feminism, but true liberation is the freedom to live the life you want, not the life that people say you should want.

Two Ex-es Can Live as Cheaply as One

(Image from Freepik)

High housing costs have forced some divorcing couples to continue to live together:

Behind the uneasy arrangement is the housing market. Mortgage rates are over 7% and average home prices have hit record highs. This means more couples can’t afford to leave their home with its less than 3% mortgage interest rates and set up two different households.

Renting isn’t always an option either given that rents have risen more than 9% over the last two years.

Estranged couples stuck together are trying to create boundaries. Husband on the second floor. Wife on the first. They assign his and her cupboards in the kitchen, schedule laundry time and text whereabouts as needed. One woman locks her bedroom door and keeps her supply of batteries and toilet paper in her closet.

Many don’t tell colleagues about the set up because it seems unthinkable or they are embarrassed. They try to maintain civility for the kids and hold tight until they can afford to buy, rent and furnish two homes.

Couples used to remain together because of the social stigma of divorce.

Today the norm is to move out, "move on," and cut ties as quickly as possible.

If the couple still lives under the me roof, their acquaintances may correctly surmise that they don't have the funds to split up.

The new morality: failure in a marriage is no longer embarrassing, but it is shameful if one doesn't have the money to move out. The world has changed, not necessarily for the better.

Upholding These Two Persons

At Saturday's wedding the reader recited the passage from Matthew 19:

And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

The culture that took the above passage to heart has almost completely vanished. In half a century fundamental Christian beliefs--bolded above--about the nature of mankind and the nature of marriage are not widely accepted.

"Made them male and female" has given way to a multitude of genders, not only in the general population but sometimes in the same individual in the course of his/her life.

More fundamentally, human beings were not "made" by a sentient God but are the product of molecules banging together randomly over billions of year.

And while "two shall become one flesh" was never meant to be a physical truth, its spiritual and metaphorical meaning is now highly disputed. In the secular world marriage is not a mysterious fusion of two beings overseen by a Creator; it's a contractual arrangement between individuals that can be terminated like a business partnership.

One's bloodline can be ignored, but it can never be erased, according to the modern view. A man cannot change his race or genetics, so leaving one's mother and father does not occur permanently even through they may be dead. A man cleaving to his wife to form a new entity makes no scientific sense.

"Let not man put asunder" is hardly mentioned in the era of easy, no-fault divorce, which has been embraced by Christians, non-Christians, liberals and conservatives alike. The breakdown of the institution occurred decades before the debates about gay marriage began.

It's a wonder that my niece and her now-husband chose to have a "traditional" wedding, complete with Gospel readings.

The priest asked, "Will all of you witnessing these promises do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?"

We will.

I Wonder if the Bed Vibrates

Part of the $4,500 package (WSJ)

Here's another Korean activity that might catch on internationally--"hotel" wedding proposals that cost thousands of dollars, not including the ring: [bold added]

29-year-old office worker [Oh Hae-rim] did have her heart set on one luxury: a night at a swanky hotel where her future husband would pop the question...

“Everyone prefers a hotel proposal,” Oh said. “It’s every woman’s dream.”

Oh’s boyfriend chose Signiel Seoul, a luxury hotel, which sells an “Eternal Promise” package with flower decorations and Champagne that starts at $1,200 a night. She snapped a photo of the rose petals and candles that her boyfriend prepared, and posed in front of “Marry Me” letter balloons holding a bouquet of flowers. She placed a blue Tiffany shopping bag containing a necklace next to her in the photo. Oh, for her part, gave her intended a fancy watch.

More than 40% of South Korean women want their wedding proposals to happen at a hotel, according to a recent poll by a local matchmaker. More than a third of men, in the same survey, cite “financial burden” for not wanting to propose.

Young husbands-to-be, who likely don't have a lot of won lying around, are usually the ones who pay for the proposal:

Kim Jae-hyun was stunned when his girlfriend showed him a photo of a Chanel handbag her friend received when getting proposed to at a hotel. “I started calculating how much it would all cost in my head,” he said—probably at least $3,000.

Over drinks, Kim and his friends, some married, others not, discussed whether they could afford a Chanel bag, and if it was really necessary for a proposal. His single friends thought a sincere expression of love before asking would be enough. His married friends disagreed, arguing Kim might hear about his lack of proposal panache the rest of his life.

He originally planned to propose this summer. But now he has decided to wait until the end of the year. “It will give me some time to save up,” Kim said.

Kim, listen to your married friends and spend the money. You might live another 60 years, and most assuredly you will get more than $50 of grief each year if you didn't make her proposal dream come true.

Best wishes, by the way.

Once a Decade, Whether We Need to or Not

Grand Marnier Soufflé: not as flame-boyant as 2005.

We celebrated our anniversary yesterday by going to the Iron Gate restaurant in Belmont. The French cuisine is très expensive, but we allow ourselves this indulgence once a decade (2016 and 2005).

When we're in the nursing home, we won't be able to come here. From the looks of the other white-haired clientèle, Iron Gate should worry about its diminishing customer demographic, but somehow it has survived for half a century.

We each ordered a three-course meal ending with the Grand Marnier Soufflé. The waiter did not serve it as spectacularly as his counterpart of 18 years ago, but it was excellent nonetheless.

Maybe we'll visit the Iron Gate next year, whether we need to or not.

Too Much Too Soon

(WSJ illustration)

Polls have consistently shown that the principal subjects that married couples fight about are money, chores/responsibilities, sex/infidelity, and power/control.

Often money is listed as problem area number one, because the lack of money can be the source of enormous stress. It now turns out that large gains in wealth can also foment discord, especially if the gains occur over a short period of time,

Both gaining and losing money upends partners’ understanding of shared values, beliefs or assigned roles within the relationship. When couples cannot adjust to their new financial standing and fail to communicate their concerns or desires, the marriage may be in trouble, said researchers and relationships counselors...

Researchers [David] Cesarini and Anastasia Terskaya tracked lottery winners in Sweden for 10 years after they hit the jackpot. In a working paper published in March, their team found something surprising: who held the winning ticket significantly changed what happened to the marriage.

In the long-run, male winners saw reduced divorce risk and higher fertility, leading to stable marriages and family formation. When a woman held the winning ticket, the windfall of around $100,000 and $500,000 increased the likelihood of divorce, especially for low-income women and those who earned far less than their husbands.

There are additional strains because the sudden acquisition of wealth (e.g., lottery winnings, professional sports contracts) is often accompanied by fame. It's exceedingly difficult to work through relationship problems under the glare of publicity.

All things being equal, building one's wealth slowly allows the partners time to adjust their relationship, as well as avoid the risks of having friends, relatives, and even the general public know their business.

For Richer, For Poorer

(Time photo)

Researchers say that couples who combine their finances are happier. [bold added]

deciding to move your money in together can have a big impact on future wealth. Couples who combine bank, credit-card and investing accounts are happier in the long term and find that pooling resources helps clear the path to traditional money milestones such as buying a house and saving for retirement, studies have found.

Married couples hold four times as much wealth as unmarried couples who live together, and researchers point to combining finances as one reason why.

Trust is one of the most important elements in a relationship, but circumstances can also dictate one's financial arrangements. For example, newly-formed older couples who have significant assets may wish to keep them separate for estate purposes, especially if there are children already in the picture.

For the record we owed $thousands in student loans and had negligible assets when we tied the knot, so it was an easy call to start off with joint accounts in everything. (In a community property state like California half of each spouse's income is the property of the other.) It's not clear whether joint finances augmented the balance sheet, but our life has been simpler because of it, and that's worth something in itself.

Final comment: this research may suffer from the basic flaw of survival bias, that is, it looks at existing couples, their financial relationship, their wealth, and their happiness. It doesn't include couples who took the risk of combining their finances and broke up. (Bet they're quite unhappy.) If these couples were included, the conclusions might not be so compelling.

Woodinville Wedding

The happy couple, the bride's parents,
and her brother and his wife.

It was a beautiful wedding in Woodinville.

They looked too young, but that's a bias brought on by the observer's age since we were years younger when we got married. Come to think of it, I wonder what my aunts and uncles must have thought.

The ceremony was held in the outdoor garden of JM Cellars, one of the well-known wineries in the Seattle area.

The proceedings were short with speeches by the officiant, who is the bride's friend, and the exchanging of the vows.

The dinner--entrees were steak and salmon and, of course, I had both--and congratulatory speeches were held on the patio. By evening the temperature had cooled to the high 70's. Most men doffed their jackets anyway.

As the young crowd danced the night away, we retired to the hotel in Bellevue. It was 10 p.m., still past the normal bedtime.

Tomorrow we would stop by the bride's parents' house and say our goodbyes before the drive back.

The only obligation we had was fulfilled two hours before, when the space beneath the T was blank.

Bishop Andrus Announces His Retirement

In 2006 Diocesan Bishop Marc Andrus lay in front of the
Federal Building to protest the Iraq War. (Episcopal archives)

After 16 years of service Episcopal Bishop Marc Andrus has announced his retirement from the Diocese of California:

Andrus, bishop of California since 2006, is best known in The Episcopal Church as a leading voice for care of creation and combating climate change. He has led Episcopal delegations to several meetings of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP, including the 2015 meeting where nations reached the ground-breaking Paris Agreement.

Most recently, Andrus was among a group of bishops who this month persuaded their fellow bishops to approve a “mind of the house” statement at the 80th General Convention underscoring the importance of environmental issues and addressing climate change as inter-connected with most other social justice issues that elicit The Episcopal Church’s engagement.

The succession plan involves a target date of Dec. 9, 2023, for electing a new bishop, followed by a tentative consecration date of May 4, 2024. After a transition period, Andrus said he and his wife, Sheila Andrus, plan to relocate to Virginia by the end of July 2024.

Your humble blogger has often stated his objections to Bishop Andrus' use of his position to insert Progressive politics into the Episcopal church. Moreover, his persistent support of same-sex marriage (which I have supported since 2004 in the secular world) led to hard-line advocacy of that position in the U.S. Episcopal Church, which in turn threatened schism in the worldwide Anglican Communion. To me Bishop Marc was emblematic of Christians who evinced a lack of understanding for other Christians who held different political positions, and who often had substantial Scriptural support for their arguments.

2007: Sheila and Marc Andrus visit a Peninsula parish

But politics isn't everything. What makes Christians--and Episcopalians--different is that they realize that there are more important things to life than politics. When it comes down to it, sincere Christians believe that there are some things that are more important than mortal life itself.

And never once have I heard Bishop Andrus say that the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven will be denied to those that disagree with him. And so, in this time of change and transition, we thank Bishop Marc for his service and wish him and Sheila all health and happiness in the next stage of their lives.

Unexpected Answer

Having heard horror stories about marriage breakups, I would assume that one of the first things to be cancelled would be an advance medical care directive, where one party can make a life-or-death call on the ex-spouse.

The WSJ advice columnist gives an unexpected answer. [bold added]

Now I’ve discovered that my advance medical directive still has my ex-wife listed as my healthcare proxy. Should the situation arise, she can decide whether to keep me alive or disconnect me from life support. Should I find somebody else to take over this role?--Alec

You should certainly keep your ex-wife as your healthcare proxy, and not simply out of convenience or a desire to avoid giving offense.

The doctor and medical writer Jerome Groopman has observed that it is often better for doctors not to like their patients. Why? Because it is difficult to be objective in making decisions for people we are attached to. We make more judicious decisions regarding people we care about less.

In your case, your ex-wife doesn’t care much about you these days. And because of that, should you sustain a serious injury or illness, the odds are in your favor that she will make more rational decisions on your behalf than she would have done during the days when she loved you deeply. Even if you do end up getting remarried, keep her as your healthcare proxy. There is no substitute for the rational coldness that comes from having your ex-wife make decisions for you.

This being said, don’t tempt her too much: Make sure she is not one of the beneficiaries of your will or life insurance.

It's possible for a person to decide that he or she can no longer live with the spouse, yet still believe that the other has integrity and judgment. If there's some trust remaining--as one might have with an intimate friend--and there's some distance between the divorce and the fateful decision, then one can leave the directive in place.

Nevertheless, there are many things that can go wrong, and my advice would be to change it.

Uneasy is the Head that Wears a Mitre

Justin Welby (WSJ photo)

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

He has his work cut out for him trying to avoid schism in the Communion. [bold added]

But as he prepares to receive Anglican bishops from around the world in England this summer in what is known as the Lambeth Conference, he faces a likely boycott by conservatives, including leaders of African churches that are among the largest and fastest-growing. They refuse to join progressives, led by the U.S. Episcopal Church, who support marriage or blessings for same-sex unions and the ordination of openly gay clergy...

Unlike Pope Francis, who holds ultimate authority over Catholic teaching around the world, the Archbishop of Canterbury has no formal power over the autonomous churches of the Anglican Communion. He relies on dialogue and compromise, which so far have proved inadequate to Anglicanism’s seismic rift...

Archbishop Welby in Kenya, 2013 (WSJ photo)

The bishops of Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda—who represent an estimated 44 million of the world’s 100 million Anglicans, according to the World Christian Database—have said that they won’t attend this year’s conference in England unless Archbishop Welby excludes provinces that allow marriage or blessings of same-sex unions or the ordination of openly gay clergy.

They want him to invite as full members conservative churches that have split off in reaction to liberalizing moves in North America, Brazil, New Zealand and the U.K. Archbishop Welby has declined to disinvite the former or invite the latter except in some cases as observers.

Your humble Episcopalian, a supporter of secular same-sex marriage, sees both sides in the discussion about whether Anglicans should bless these unions. I don't want to get into the theological arguments but will note the irony of a small band of mainly white, highly educated Progressive elites who want to force millions of non-whites to adopt beliefs that are anathema to them. From 2016:

Let's step back from our narrow Eurocentric perspective. The Episcopal Church comprises less than 3% of the Anglican communion. The continent where Anglicanism is growing the fastest---Africa---is home to substantial populations that regard homosexuality not only as evil but as a sin punishable by death.

What would their reaction be to an Anglican church that performed same-sex weddings as a sacrament, that is, the equal in importance to Baptism and Holy Communion, in their community?

To put other Anglicans’ lives at risk to proclaim a value that is recognized by a minority of the world’s population is the height of arrogance. (Interestingly, the Episcopal Church decries this “Imperialist” behavior when Western society promulgates capitalism or traditional Christianity or democracy in the Third World.)

Pope Francis: His Own Man

(Politico photo)

Pope Francis has inveighed so often against capitalism and Western values that the Catholic Church appeared to be another institution conquered by the Gramscian Marxists' long march through history.

Not so fast.[bold added]

Pope Francis is a complicated man who doesn’t fit neatly into American left-right political paradigms. He made a fair number of decisions early in his papacy that exasperated conservative American Catholics, so he got tagged in the public mind as a liberal. Many progressive American priests cheered his reforms, but some went a step further. They began to portray their own revisionist agendas as the pope’s. Some even came to believe it.

Pope Francis hasn’t done all the things those progressives hoped he would. He was widely expected to allow married men to become priests in the Amazon region. Instead he called celibacy a “gift.” He was “supposed to” move forward on the ordination of women as deacons. Instead he has shut down the idea at least twice. While some progressives expected him to change Catholic teaching on sexual morality, he instead forbade priests to offer liturgical blessings to same-sex couples.

The "left-right political paradigm" is far too simplistic: for example, there are many Republicans who support gay marriage and many Democrats who support law enforcement.

It's good to see that the Pope--who ignores the existential threat of Marxism to the Catholic Church--is his own man.

The New Wisdom is the Old Wisdom

Portrait of a Young Married
Couple - Jordaens, 1620

When the baby boomers became adults, the conventional wisdom--influenced by women's liberation--was revised: generally, women should wait until 30 before getting married.

The conventional wisdom is that they should get launched professionally in their 20s and wait until 30 or after to marry. Then they can establish themselves as independent adults before finding and pairing with an equally successful partner. This strategy is also supposed to maximize their odds of a lasting bond because the conventional wisdom also holds that early marriage increases the risk of divorce...

When it comes to divorce, the research has generally backed up the belief that it’s best to wait until around 30 to tie the knot. The sociologist Nicholas Wolfinger of the University of Utah found that women who got married “too early” (mid-20s or earlier) were more likely to break up than their peers who married close to age 30.

However, marrying young did not result in breakup for one group of women: [bold added]

there is an interesting exception to the idea that waiting until 30 is best. In analyzing reports of marriage and divorce from more than 50,000 women in the U.S. government’s National Survey of Family Growth (NFSG), we found that there is a group of women for whom marriage before 30 is not risky: women who married directly, without ever cohabiting prior to marriage. In fact, women who married between 22 and 30, without first living together, had some of the lowest rates of divorce in the NSFG.

The authors have found a compelling correlation between marrying young (without prior cohabitation) and marriage longevity. However, correlation is not always causation, as noted by philosopher David Hume nearly 300 years ago. More likely, both marrying young and marriage longevity are themselves the result of an underlying factor--namely the religiosity of the bride.

Pack this knowledge away in your life-navigation toolkit, dear reader. There's a lot of wisdom in there--e.g., if you get married stay married, happiness is over-rated, pay off your credit cards--but the important thing to remember is that all the advice is couched in probabilities. (For example, if you are vaccinated, you can still get COVID-19, and among the un-vaccinated some will escape the virus completely.)

There are no guarantees, just probabilities. In marriage and in life gather all the information you can, use your best judgment, then carry on.

Pride and Prejudice: Getting Unstuck

In June I described why I found the novel Pride and Prejudice to be heavy going:

I find English manners in the 19th century to be stupefying, when women can only meet the male object of their desire by being properly introduced through a mutual acquaintance, they spend chapters discussing how they can manipulate the mutual acquaintance, woman and man have the meeting where a few words are spoken, then the women discuss for chapters what the words meant. Arrggh.

Though Jane Austen's prose wasn't difficult, the various story lines moved at a glacial pace. Finally I got unstuck by watching the 2005 movie, which by necessity had to dispense with wordy nuance and even some minor characters in order to do justice to the major plot lines within the two-hour running time.

One example: a pivotal point in the book, about halfway through, is the letter that Mr. Darcy writes to Elizabeth Bennett. One chapter is a recitation of the text of the letter, and the next chapter is devoted to Elizabeth's thoughts about it. Just one minute of the film is spent on both, as the letter is reduced to a few bullet points while the actress Keira Knightley's facial expressions communicate her reaction to each revelation.

Once I knew where the novel was going, I resumed reading. With the impetus of finding-out-what-happens removed, I could better appreciate the descriptions of early 19th century England, the obsession with class and wealth in a world where learned but unmarried women had few property rights and could easily fall into a life of desperate poverty, and the interior monologues of the Bennett women (Jane Austen's narrator wasn't privy to the thoughts of the male characters).

The younger me would have refused to see the movie or read the Cliff's Notes version in order experience the novel as the writer intended. The older me is more interested in finishing things, and not necessarily in the best way possible. When the clock is running out, you use the tools at your disposal to get unstuck.

Quiet Heartbreaks

With many thousands of people suffering from COVID-19 and millions on the front lines battling the virus every day, it seems crass and unfeeling to complain about the difficulties of those of us who merely have to stay home. Nevertheless, give a thought to quiet heartbreaks. In life we don't get a lot of those big celebrations, n'est-ce pas?

Many long-anticipated milestones will now never happen—or will pass by unobserved—as celebrations and events get canceled. Beneath the world-wide upheaval of lockdowns, quarantines and shortages, thousands of people are also privately mourning the loss of life’s special moments.

"Big" birthdays, hospital vigils, sports championships, graduations---the highs and lows of life when the human connection is most important--are gone.

I've been looking forward to my 50th class reunion in Hawaii this June. There's been no official announcement, but cancellation is 99% likely; some have already sent in regrets due to the uncertainty. Though the reunion is likely to be deferred to 2021 or perhaps this fall, attendance will surely suffer. Given the number of people who live on the Mainland, and trying not to be too morbid, some of us will miss a chance to see others for the last time.

In the meantime memories of our 40th reunion will have to suffice.

Give a thought to all the hard work by celebration planners, too.

In a Rut, with Gratitude

For our anniversary I bought candy and flowers and reserved dinner at a nice restaurant. It sounds boring, but other gifts and experiences had been attempted with a marked lack of success. She seemed happy with the evening.

In fact I've come to appreciate boring. There are enough changes that arrive unbidden. It's nice to be in a rut, to have some aspects of life that are routine and reliable and for which the actions taken produce the same result (see, I'm not insane).

The goal of life just may be--not to complete a to-do list of successes or even to find happiness--but to accept how it all turned out.

Signaling Virtue from Nob Hill

This WSJ writer says what I've been thinking about the Episcopal Church: [bold]

Anglicans worship in Nigeria (nairaland photo)

the vast majority of Christians suffering today aren’t white wealthy Westerners. Most are from the relatively poor global South: Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America. To their already unsupportable lot of grinding poverty, they must add the risk of being assaulted by governments, religious vigilantes, gangs and others....

I would respectfully suggest to the bishops of the Anglican persuasion—and quite a few of their Catholic brethren too—that however serious and acute you might think the threat of climate change or workplace discrimination, the larger and more immediate threat to Christians in many parts of the world is that they might not get through their next church service without someone dispatching them to eternity to shouts of “Allahu akbar.”

Two years ago the Bishop of California took umbrage at the fact that the Anglican Communion sided with the 57 million African Anglicans who oppose same-sex marriage versus the 2-million-member Episcopal Church, which supports it.

The fact that association with the Episcopal Church might endanger our brothers and sisters in Africa, which has more than 400 million Muslims, is of little importance to those who would rather signal their virtue from Nob Hill.

Your humble blogger, who has long supported the legalization of gay marriage, wishes that his church leaders would stifle their self-righteous proclamations, go about their business and give thanks that we live in these blessed United States.