{"id":29752,"date":"2017-10-17T05:55:42","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T09:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=29752"},"modified":"2017-10-16T12:22:23","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T16:22:23","slug":"from-sologamy-to-marriage-as-vocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2017\/10\/from-sologamy-to-marriage-as-vocation\/","title":{"rendered":"From &#8220;Sologamy&#8221; to Marriage as Vocation"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2017\/10\/self-love-65693_1280-e1508170764528.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-29754\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29754\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2017\/10\/self-love-65693_1280-e1508170764528.jpg\" alt=\"self-love-65693_1280\" width=\"780\" height=\"704\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jim Priest, a family columnist for the Daily Oklahoman, <a href=\"http:\/\/newsok.com\/family-talk-its-not-always-the-happy-couple\/article\/5567774\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">discussed \u201csologamy,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0 growing practice of marrying oneself.\u00a0 A woman or a man (usually a woman) who has decided to remain single dresses up in wedding garb, invites guests, and has a ceremony, complete with a ring, cake, and reception.<\/p>\n<p>Priest quotes a young woman in a wedding dress who has just\u00a0pledged her love for herself:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI told my relatives and friends that if I had not found my soul mate I would marry myself by my 40th birthday. If tomorrow I find a man to build a future with, I will be happy, but my happiness will not depend on him.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"premium-content\">\nThere is even a sologamy website:\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/imarriedme.com\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">I Married Me<\/a>, which offers sample ceremonies, vows, and a wedding ring.\u00a0 The homepage says,\n<blockquote><p>You Are Reason To Celebrate<\/p>\n<p>A roadmap to positivity, our I Married Me kit has all you need to create your own ceremony, including a self-wedding ring, vows and daily affirmation cards.<\/p>\n<p>A self-wedding is a symbolic ceremony\u2013about reconnecting and staying connected with\u00a0you. Wear the ring to remind you every day to\u00a0<a title=\"Your Stories\" href=\"http:\/\/imarriedme.myshopify.com\/pages\/your-stories\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">LOVE YOURSELF<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The site says that you can marry yourself even if you are already married, as a way to affirm your love for yourself.\u00a0 (But wouldn\u2019t that be polygamy, not sologamy?)<\/p>\n<p>Priest goes on to reflect that marriage is NOT about finding someone to make you happy.\u00a0 Rather, it is forming a union that is bigger than yourself.<\/p>\n<p>He quotes the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was himself single, writing to his niece upon her engagement, while he was imprisoned and waiting execution for being part of a conspiracy to kill Hitler.\u00a0 Bonhoeffer is simply describing marriage as a vocation.<\/p>\n<p>From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Letters-Papers-Prison-Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Readers\/dp\/1506402747\/ref=as_sl_pc_as_ss_li_til?tag=cranach00-20&amp;linkCode=w00&amp;linkId=fd0ccfdb8ab97794b0f769f44a11408d&amp;creativeASIN=1506402747\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Letters and Papers from Prison<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God\u2019s holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal \u2014 it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It is possible to rule by force by simply seizing power.\u00a0 But without a \u201ccrown\u201d\u2013that is, being lawfully entitled to rule\u2013the\u00a0ruler will lack genuine authority.\u00a0 Similarly, a person can enter into a wide range of\u00a0conditions in order to \u201cfind happiness,\u201d including sologamy, but to get married is to enter \u201ca status, an office\u201d; that is, a vocation.<\/p>\n<p>And this vocation is not only inwardly focused, towards the couple or the two selves that make up the couple, it is \u201ca post of responsibility towards the world and mankind.\u201d\u00a0 Since it involves the perpetuation of \u201cthe human race till the end of time,\u201d creating a family that becomes the institution for having and caring for children, it involves the married couple with the outside world, since they\u00a0become responsible for their children\u2019s\u00a0well-being now and in their future.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMarriage is more than something personal\u201d\u2013it is a vocation, which God inhabits and through which He Himself works.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo by geralt, \u201cSelf Love,\u201d via Pixabay, CC0, Creative Commons<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=cranach00-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=1506402747&amp;asins=1506402747&amp;linkId=fd0ccfdb8ab97794b0f769f44a11408d&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Priest, a family columnist for the Daily Oklahoman, discussed \u201csologamy,\u201d\u00a0the\u00a0 growing practice of marrying oneself.\u00a0 A woman or a man (usually a woman) who has decided to remain single dresses up in wedding garb, invites guests, and has a ceremony, complete with a ring, cake, and reception. Priest quotes a young woman in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":29754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,25,48],"tags":[669,810,1381,5821,5822,3450,4359],"class_list":["post-29752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-language","category-vocation","tag-dietrich-bonhoeffer","tag-family-vocations","tag-marriage","tag-marriage-as-vocation","tag-self-love","tag-sologamy","tag-vocation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>From &quot;Sologamy&quot; to Marriage as Vocation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A discussion on &quot;sologamy&quot;--marrying yourself--leads to a quotation from Bonhoeffer on how marriage is more than personal. 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