By Deacon Roger Carr-Jones, Marriage and Family Life Coordinator
For me, a great pleasure of the summer is to spend time searching along the seashore for small fragments of sea-glass. It is a very simple pastime, which connects me to the beauty of the shoreline and the joy of holding a piece of magic in my hand. Searching for sea-glass requires patience and is a reminder of how the action of the sea effects a transformational change on something discarded. This has made me reflect on the ways in which couples who find their married love disintegrating and broken after the holidays, can be helped to create something new.
Sea-glass has its own beauty. Glass that was shattered and broken becomes something different and a valued treasure. Sea-glass is a symbol of restoration and resilience, of transformation and renewal, and of healing. If we are willing to risk, we can transform the discarded aspects of marital love by allowing the action of the ocean of God’s love to create something new. Each piece of sea-glass, like a fractured couple relationship, has its own unique beauty, as it moves from being an item of waste to a special and valued treasure, one which is reshaped and polished into something more precious and purposeful.
My wife recently discovered a local jewellery maker who specializes in creating costume jewellery out of sea-glass, further transforming the discarded and unwanted into something of beauty and value. This is the service to couples that movements, such as Retrouvaille and Marriage Care provide.
After the pandemic, Pope Francis spoke of marriage as a vocation, that calls us to steer a tiny boat – wave-tossed yet sturdy, thanks to the reality of the sacrament – across a sometimes-stormy sea. He then went on to say, ‘How often do you want to say, or better, cry out, like the apostles, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mk 4:38). We need to be conscious that Jesus is always with us in the boat of married life and ready to dive in when we fall overboard. We, though, can experience a pandemic of negativity when we are hurt or disillusioned. Jesus is always concerned for us despite our imperfections and mistakes.
So, rather than thinking that we will drown, in abandoning ourselves into His hands we can do what is impossible. We need, despite the challenges, to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, so that we can view our marital difficulties from a different perspective. When we are willing to trust Jesus, a fractured relationship can change into something different, so that a new form of beauty emerges from the brokenness and hardship into something new and desirable. Just as the smoothing process of the waters softens the glass, we can heal the wounds, physical, emotional or spiritual, in our relationship.
Searching for sea-glass requires being at the spot where the play of the water and the sand creates a liminal space. The word liminal comes from the Latin word Limen meaning a threshold. Just like being on the beach there is that moment in our relationship where we are in a place that is neither sea nor sand. It is the place where as a couple, we can leave behind misunderstandings and disillusionments to find a new reality, one not yet structured, but filled with promise and hope.