Holy Matrimony

People seem to lose track of what holy matrimony means. It is about change. It’s not easy to grow old and overcome obstacles together but it brings depth to the individuals and the marriage, a holiness if you will. To drift from that journey is to get lost amongst the weeds.

To me Shakespeare described holy matrimony best in his 116th Sonnet:

    Let me not to the marriage of true minds

    Admit impediments. Love is not love

    Which alters when it alteration finds,

    Or bends with the remover to remove.

    O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

    That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

    It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

    Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

    Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

    Within his  bending sickle’s compass come;

    Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

    But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

    If this be error and upon me prov’d,

    I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

H. Robert Rubin, memoirist and author of Look Backward Angel and How Did I Get Through This?  both available on Amazon

Food for Thought on Good Friday

“Skeptics believe that any exclusive claims to a superior knowledge of spiritual reality cannot be true. But this objection is itself a religious belief. It assumes God is unknowable, or that God is loving but not wrathful, or that God is an impersonal force rather than a person who speaks in Scripture. All of these are unprovable faith assumptions.” Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (p. 12). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Even atheists assume based essentially on faith that there is no higher power.

H. Robert Rubin, memoirist and author of Look Backward Angel, an e-book on Amazon and How Did I Get Through This? to be published on Amazon in 2018

Pilgrimage

I believe the Lord wants us on a path where we are less likely to say or do the wrong thing, as we deepen our faith, reaching for the Holy Spirit in times of provocation and always remembering we are children of God and saints in His eyes. I have been healing my soul with the guidance of the Holy Spirit since the age of 40,  about 32 years ago. Part of my journey is available in my first book of memoirs, Look Backward Angel, an e-book on Amazon:

Other thoughts are available on this blog and in How Did I Get Through This?  published on Amazon in 2018. Please see my free sample/preview which is the first few pages of Look Backward Angel above. I believe you will find it feeds your soul.

God bless you and keep you.

H. Rubin

Two Peaceful Weeks Just Five Years Ago

I penned this in the spring of 2017, long before I had heard the word pandemic with any frequency. It addresses peace in sport, a relief and respite for many of us.

For years I’ve watched two tournaments that end and start a week apart every spring. The environment in each case calms my soul, whoever is victorious.

The second one on the calendar, the Monte-Carlo Masters, was first a tennis championship in 1897. Its center court provides a view of the magnificent Mediterranean. On either side of the court, one appreciates seating with European taste sprinkled with cabanas. The calm I’ve always felt by gentle bodies of water comes home to me that week. “He leadeth me beside the still water:” Psalm 23, 2a. It’s even a gentle, clay surface upon which the players compete.

The first one each year, the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, has a particular place in my heart because I lived in that somewhat pastoral town in the mid-70s. I remember the traffic as a non-issue. I’d go to work on my bike rolling down a pleasant hill.

When I first lived there, I lived in apartments next to the Masters course, a green pasture with beautiful pines, flowers, ponds, creeks and bridges. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,” Psalm 23, 2b. They have studded the pasture with large, lovely, golf greens that in contrast challenge every golfer with the most pressure-filled, prestigious of the major tournaments. It’s the Wimbledon of golf, though it started later, 1934.

Sergio Garcia had played in over 70 major golf tournaments without a victory, despite his fine game. Then in 2017, at 37, to the surprise of many, he found peace in that elegant pasture and came home victorious.

I had watched him for many years, now, showing a touch of white on the whiskers of his chin. Those were frustrating times for Sergio. I had seen the frustration across his brow many times. The victory broadened the smile across his face.

How his fellow golfers felt about Sergio’s victory was best expressed by his good friend and primary competitor that day, Justin Rose, winner of a major in 2013. “If I was going to lose, I’m glad I lost to Sergio. “

H. Robert Rubin, a best-selling Amazon writer and author of Look Backward Angel, How Did I Get Through This? Please Save the Third Dance for Me (memoirs) and The Bloom is on the Rose (novelette), all available on Amazon.