Away We Go…to pre-marital counseling

Just watched Away We Go, a film starring Jim from the Office (John Krasinski) and Maya Rudolph.  Marie and I thought this was an excellent film.  It is definitely more my style and less Marie’s, but she was glad we got it and watched it finally.  There was a good balance of humor and seriousness that allowed it to speak powerfully but not leave us feeling overwhelmed by the story.

It is a journey story and those kinds of stories always lend themselves to discussions of faith and meaning.  In this case though all I could think of was sitting in a room with a couple thinking of making the ultimate commitment to get married.  In the film, marriage is a topic of interest because as a couple that is six month’s pregnant, one wants to get married while the other does not.  Both individuals are quite committed to their position, but instead of leading to a paralyzing ambivalence, they go on a journey to find themselves and a community in which to most healthily raise their little girl.

My thoughts are that as a pastor, if I ever/when I get to engage with a couple entering the process for themselves of covenanting together, I will likely make watching this film and having a conversation about it a required assignment.   There are many important themes in the film that Marie and I have found to re-occuring in our own life together, which would have been nice to explore earlier in our marriage.

1. Individual identity (self-differentiation in relationship)
2. Community (it takes a village to raise a child)
3. Shared values (sharing language, ideals, hopes, dreams)
4. Finding Home (the aggregate of the 3 previous items)

As someone who does not feel called to ‘marry’ people, but is very interested in fostering healthy relationships, I find this film very helpful for starting these very important conversations.  Break-ups, divorce, bearing children, adopting, foster care are all important decisions as are determining where you want to live (urban, sub-urban, rural), how close you want to be to family, and what kind of social, political, and religious norms you want to live by.  This film raises all of those issues as well as more than I can encapsulate in this post.

The goal, as it is in the film, is to find home.  I am reminded of a great book by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian Walsh, Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement.  In places like the US, Canada, and most of Europe, a feeling of displacement has become a burdensome yoke that we have in some cases created and in others have been thrust into.  This kind of cultural displacement wreaks havoc on individuality and relationships and raising children in a world of displacement is proving to be difficult for many.  Thus finding home is the journey of my generation and will be for generations to follow.  Home used to be a given, but that is no longer the case.  Nomadic people in the world today and in ages past have understood this journey, but usually are in community when making it.  Our nomadic search is often done alone or with one other person.  This search for meaning puts enormous weight and strain on our relationships.

It seems to me that one of the primary concerns of those who counsel those in relationships is to walk along the journey to discovering home.  To be at home within ourselves and to find a place in the world to be at home.

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