Our Marriage Encounter Weekend

http://www.presby-me.org/info_otherexpressions.htm

Above is a link to information about Marriage Encounter organizations associated with a variety of faiths. Any one of them welcome any couple that wants to attend. You do not have to be a member of the sponsoring faith. We chose to attend this particular weekend because it was geographically close and on a date that was good for us. However, we are not a member of the faith that sponsored the event. This did not affect the value of the weekend for us and we met many wonderful couples during the 2 1/2 days we were with them. In addition we had the privilege of meeting Father Bill. He fully participated and provided input to us all. At the completion of our weekend Father Bill conducted a service where we all renewed our marriage vows. It was beautiful.

You may wonder what Marriage Encounter is all about. We would like to try and share the general idea. First - it is important to understand that this experience is only for successful marriages. Second - The weekend is a very private experience between only a husband and wife.

Marriage Encounter is an opportunity for married partners to work on their "coupleness." The end result is a renewing of the passion in a marriage with the goal being to have a fully intimate and responsible relationship. Many marriages result in a situation of what is described as a "married/single lifestyle." The coupleness is lost somewhere along the way. To bring the coupleness back we learned and practiced listening with our heart - not just our head. We had exercises to help us communicate openly, to examine ourselves to identify what we perceive as our own failings and inadequacies then share them with our partner. Most importantly, each couple made a commitment to set aside a scheduled time for each other each day for dedicated sharing and togetherness. We learned the value of saying we are sorry to our partner when we have hurt them followed by asking for forgiveness.

How did we learn all of these new skills? The approach is really "cool." It is called "dialog." I guess I should share the setting. We had no TV, no radio, took off our watches, turned off our cell phones, had no books to read and no telephone or clock in our room. When we were all assembled together a question was presented to the group. All of us each have our own workbook. We talked about ways to express our feelings, rules for fighting fair, and other skills. The lead couple presents the question and then shares with us how they had responded at a past weekend to that particular question. After their presentation the wives stay in the meeting room and the husbands each go to their own bedroom. Then we all write our response. The writing is in the form of a love letter to our other half. We are to express our feelings in the best way we can. We write for 10 minutes. Then the wives went up and joined our husbands. We exchange notebooks and read what each other has written. We read the writing TWICE. The first reading is for our heads and the second reading is for our hearts. Then we talked about our responses to what we had read for 10 to 15 minutes. Nobody heard what we said and nobody read what we wrote but us.

What kind of questions? Here are a few --
What is my spouse's most endearing quality?
What do I appreciate most about you? What are my feelings as I write this to you?
What do I appreciate most about us?
What do I like most about myself?
What do I like least about myself?

As you can probably tell, the list can go on and on.

Bottom line: We had a great time.
Below are some photos along with more information about our activities.


John and I attended a Marriage Encounter many years ago. At that time the weekend was conducted at a hotel. That was in the early 1980's in Atlanta, Georgia. This weekend we were in upstate New York. The event was held at a retreat facility for the sponsoring faith, the Roman Catholic Church. This photo is of artwork above and behind the altar area. We learned that each figure represents a different month of the year.


The building was huge! It is completely made of stone. I think it is granite. The design appears to be gothic. There is a chapel (shown in some of the photos), kitchen, dining room, conference rooms, bedrooms for guests (a whole floor or more) as well as resident floors for retired and active religious personnel.


The exterior of the building reminds us of a castle. We understand that it was built around 1901. The grounds are beautiful and serene. On our drive into the grounds we saw deer on the driveway. They felt safe enough to only move once the car came to close to them.


The main portion of our trip was by train from Grand Central Station. The train traveled along the Hudson River the majority of the trip. The scenery was serene and gorgeous.


During an early part of our time on the train we spotted Yankee Stadium so just had to snap this photo of "The House That Ruth Built."


I took this photo to help show the detail of the artwork above and behind the altar. These two angels represent the months of May and June. John is a May baby and my b'day is in June. (a little bit of self indulgence on my part in selecting these two out of twelve).


Here is John in our room. The rooms were large, comfortable and well lit. We had a wonderful view of the grounds and the Hudson River. John is at the desk writing a response to one of the questions given to us over the weekend.





This is a photo of the view from our bedroom window.