A Divine Triangle

 

I had an amazing moment the other morning.  I was riding the Red Line to work before sunrise. Suddenly above Dorchester Bay appeared the nearly full moon.  It was so large and close that it nearly took up the entire train window I was looking out.  As I was lost in the utter beauty of the spectacle, an epiphany hit.  I was involved in a triangle.  The triangle consisted of the moon, the unseen sun shining on it and me.  I had already begun working on this blog about the divine triangle of marriage so the metaphor bowled me over.

My marriage is a divine triangle consisting of God, my wife and myself.  Like the sun shining on the moon, I know that God is present in my marriage, even when I don’t see God.  Sometimes I am very aware of God's presence and my marriage seems very bright.  Sometimes I become forgetful about God's presence and my marriage seems shadowy.  God, in fact, is the glue that holds my marriage together.

I don’t want to use this space to try and analyze God.  God is beyond comprehension.  But for the sake of clarity as this essay moves forward God, to me, is the omniscient, omnipotent, compassionate master of the universe.  Being omnipotent, God can exist with form or without form, straight up energy – woooo – or human body, woah.  I know people fight wars over this question of God in a body and what body, etc. 

Whether you believe God inhabits a body and what that body looks like is not important to me now.  However, I suggest if you believe that God incarnated in a human body, as Christians, many Hindus and others believe, seeing that embodiment of God as a partner in your relationships, especially your primary relationship can be, well, a Godsend.  And if you believe God is too magnificent to fully incarnate in a single human body, as many Jews and Muslims believe, you can imagine the nonphysical force of God as a connecting energy in your relationship.

The belief that God is a partner in the divine triangle of my marriage has saved this relationship more times than I can count.

In fact, my wife and I recently went through a period of high marital discord.  The actual reason is less important than we both felt misunderstand, hurt and angry.  At times like this God is a savior in my marriage.  I am reminded that I fight with my wife from a place of ego and she fights with me from a place of ego and God is beyond that.  And I realize there is a yearning in my soul for an egoless love that my wife, best human friend I have, cannot come close to. 

I realize I sometimes expect things from my spouse that I can only get from God.  And the marital discord encourages me to refocus on my primary relationship with God.  Then, as my closeness to God deepens, ironically, so does my closeness to my wife because they, these two other points of my marital triangle are not so separate and distinct from one another and from me.  In reality, we are all connected.  We are all one.  When I forget that, the omniscient, omnipotent, compassionate master of the universe can remind me that God’s presence blesses my marriage.

Sometimes it's hard to remember my marriage is a blessing.  With egos clashing all over the house, sometimes it's hard to remember that God is a partner in this play.  At other times, though, an epiphany hits me so hard and it's so obvious that God is present, I well up with gratitude.  In the times when life, including my marriage, becomes shadowy and murky, I invoke the remembrance of God so I don’t forget the sun is always shining somewhere.