This film is under-estimated. Depp and Pacino at their best.
Father + son dynamics in a surprising context. A husband juggling family and the weight of the world.
Not for the faint hearted – one of my favourite mafia films.
Great pastor’s study: » A Pastor’s Study Buzzard Blog.
It’s not a movie, but it asks questions about masculinity and is hilarious:
IT Crowd – Series 3 – Episode 2 – “Are We Not Men?”
A great story of the power of one spouse not giving up when everything is thrown at them.
Modern Love – Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear – NYTimes.com.
Big Billy M weighs in on the marriage vow dialogue:
So if you are seriously considering marriage, my first word of advice to you would be to abandon any foolish thoughts about using such self-destructive phrases as “as long as our love lasts”. That is a recipe for disaster, and will pretty well guarantee that your marriage will be very short-lived indeed.
Let’s compare APBA (A Prayer Book for Australia) and the classic BCP. The BCP reflects the best of the western tradition of marriage:
1995 APBA Groom:
I, John in the presence of God,
take you Mary to be my wife;
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love, honour and cherish,
as long as we both shall live.
This is my solemn vow and promise.1662 BCP Groom:
I John. take thee Mary. to my wedded wife,
to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse, for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part,
according to God’s holy ordinance;
and thereto I plight thee my troth.
The big difference is really in the bride’s vows, where BCP also has “obey” as well as to “love and to cherish”. That is not in the APBA, not even as an option. Otherwise an APBA wedding stands in line with BCP quite well.
The marriage vows we use at Holy Trinity Doncaster from the 1996 “A Prayer Book for Australia” (this is not used in Sydney).
If you include the consent and giving of rings, there are three sets of promises:
THE CONSENT
Minister
John, will you have Mary to be your wife,
to live together according to God’s word?
Will you give her the honour
due to her as your wife
and, forsaking all others,
love and protect her,
as long as you both shall live?John I will.
Minister
Mary, will you have John to be your husband,
to live together according to God’s word?
Will you give him the honour
due to him as your husband
and, forsaking all others,
love and protect him,
as long as you both shall live?Mary I will.
THE WEDDING
John I, John in the presence of God,
take you Mary to be my wife;
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love, honour and cherish,
as long as we both shall live.
This is my solemn vow and promise.Mary I, Mary in the presence of God,
take you John to be my husband;
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love, honour and cherish,
as long as we both shall live.
This is my solemn vow and promise.BLESSING OF THE RINGS
Minister Grant, Lord that these rings may be a token and constant sign of the pledge of love and faithfulness which these two persons make to each other; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
John Mary, with this ring I wed you;
with all that I am and all that I have
I honour you;
in the name of God. Amen.Mary John, I receive this ring in token of our marriage.
May God enable us to grow in love together.Mary John, with this ring I wed you,
with all that I am and all that I have
I honour you;
in the name of God. Amen.John Mary, I receive this ring in token of our marriage.
May God enable us to grow in love together.
John I, John in the presence of God,
take you Mary to be my wife;
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love, honour and cherish,
as long as we both shall live.
This is my solemn vow and promise.
Mary I, Mary in the presence of God,
take you John to be my husband;
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love, honour and cherish,
as long as we both shall live.
This is my solemn vow and promise.
The Wall Street journal reports on For Better or for Worse: When Marriage Vows Get Creative.
Sydney Anglicans has some good reflections here: I say ‘I won’t’ until they say ‘I will’
In my marriage preparation ministry at Holy Trinity Doncaster (about 15 or so couples per year) I’ve built most of the material around understanding, cherishing, and daily living out the marriage vows.
They shape the actual wedding service, and the relationship, and my counseling of married couples in crisis.
And no, we do not allow modifications to the vows!
Gran Turino is one of the great ‘manhood’ movies of recent years.
It raises all the right questions – and points you to the cross of Jesus Christ.
All beautifully told.
As expected 1 Corinthians 13 reigns unparalleled in the wedding sermon league, with Colossians 3 (the non-marriage bit!) a close second. But Song of Solomon is making a late run in 2008, being used in three weddings this year. Ephesians 5 only has one run on the board, but a very good one!
I really enjoy preparing couples for marriage. I hope you could any of the couples I have prepared for marriage what the main thing I taught them was, and they would answer: “the significance of your marriage vows and promises”.
Something that I love about my own marriage is that we often speak of our marriage vows, that we will always love each other till death do us part, and as long as we both shall live.
There is something beautiful and wondrous about having a wife who is able to say that to you regularly and mean it. It gives a great sense of security, a great sense of joy. I hope that I am also able to give that to Helen as I tell her regularly that I would die before breaking my promise to her.
We love, as parents, telling our children about our wedding day, talking about the photo they have of the wedding in the kids bedroom. The magical day when we made promises to each other before our families and before God. We have told the story many times, and will continue to.
I love attending weddings with Helen. Every wedding we renew our promises to each other as we hear the couple make their promises.
At Holy Trinity I get to take a lot of weddings. The number one topic I always report to Helen when I get home from a wedding, or even a wedding rehearsal is: How were the promises made? Were they reverent and trembling? Were there tears of serious joy? Did the groomsman act the man through the service? Or was he goofing around?
The promises we made at our wedding day are re-articulated often in our household. It is a beautiful gift to have a wife who tells me regularly that she will never give up those promises.
One of the joys of marriage is the laughter.
For me one of the great joys of life is making my wife laugh.
Thank you, Helen, for laughing at my jokes.
Even more so, my wife is a great listener to my stories. Whereas I am a very impatient listener, Helen is great at listening carefully to my excited thoughts about a book I am reading, or an issue I am struggling with, or the events of a meeting.
I love the expression of unity we share in recounting the day’s details of an evangelistic encounter or a difficult pastoral issue. My ministry is her ministry also. The struggles are shared and the joys are shared. Helen is a great sharer with me.
I have a beautifully loyal wife. She respects and upholds me in private and in public, when we are together and when she is apart from me. My wife and I achieve great things, we are a great team. I can count on her loyalty as I take initiatives, leads and risks for her benefit and for the good of our family. We regularly touch base and ponder difficult decisions together, but at the end of the day, we get much done because I don’t call the marriage committee for every decision, but simply take the lead and try to take the course that is most sacrificial to myself and best for my wife and family and our gospel mission. I am never afraid to take leadership and show initiative, I know my beautiful wife will be standing right by me. Together we are running a home school/theological college/Christian family and pastoring in an exciting local church.
I love the local church, but I dearly desire for local churches to look at my beautiful wife and show the same loyalty, fidelity, trust and submission to the Lord Jesus that Helen shows to me. The church is often a very ugly and disloyal bride to her Lord Jesus Christ. The local church is a glorious thing. But the glory is diminished when the local church and her leaders fail to show true and godly fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And my prayer is that I might daily lay down my life for Helen, giving myself up for her, to make her holy, through the Word to make her radiant. That too will be a message to the local church, of the great care that the Lord Jesus has for his church. May marriage be a constant sign to the local church that her beauty is established through trust and submission to the exalted Lord Jesus Christ.
I have a beautiful wife for so many reasons. Here is one small but symbolic example. In our household chocolate is a very important treasure. Often I have wolfed down my weeks quota whereas Helen is pacing her share out nicely. She will still share her chocolate with me. That is true love.
Just at the age when people start giving up on their marriage promises in droves, is the age at which there are marked health benefits for sticking to your marriage. If you are struggling in your marriage – do everything you can to fight for the relationship and not give up.
New data analysis released by Mrs Elliot showed married male and female Australians live longer than life-long single people.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data on age-specific death rates in Australia per thousand per age group clearly shows that married people have lower death rates than non-married people in almost all age groups, for both men and women. (The data compares the rate of death per 1,000 for single people versus married ones.)
Data analysed by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing shows the difference between single and married starts in the 40s and grows sharply in the 60s.
The real spike appears in the 70-84 group with the death rate for single people almost double than married men and women.
Department of Health & Ageing -Marriage Increases Life Expectancy
Foreboding comments, but I think it’s much worse than they report. The divorced baby boomers of the 70s/80s are going to have very lonely and sad elderly years. Their divorced children are themselves too busy and have too many of their own problems to care for them. The baby-boomer dysfunctional legacy will affect many generations to come.
Divorcees agreed more strongly with statements such as “I don’t have anyone I can confide in” and “I have no one to lean on in times of trouble” than married or remarried people. They also felt less satisfied with their home, financial situation and neighbourhood.
Some uncommon common sense in this article.
“Take a good, unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women. Kay made a monstrous mistake marrying Michael Corleone! Is there a history of divorce in the family? An atmosphere of racism, sexism or prejudice in his home?
“Are his goals and deepest beliefs worthy and similar to yours? I remember counselling a pious Catholic woman that it might not be prudent to marry a pious Muslim, whose attitude about women was very different. Love trumped prudence; the annulment process was instigated by her six months later.
Two Muslim leaders come forward this week to claim both a market and a call for legality for Muslim polygamous marriages.
They have a good case in that our society permits plural sexual relationships, so why not this? The answer of course is that the Christian ideal of one man and one woman for life that has held sway in Western culture for such a long time, should remain our ideal, to the majority benefit of society.
The more permissive immoral structures we now have are causing untold damage to men, women and children. Polygamy will only increase that. Modern western sexual autonomy is a complete disaster. Islamic polygamy is just as immoral. We want a tightening of our legal structures to preserve marriage as represented in the proven Western tradition.
Theologically speaking, marriage is a spiritual metaphor of the exclusive relationship between Christ and his Church. It can only be captured truly by a lifelong exclusive committed covenant between a man and a woman. Two people of the same gender cannot image the complementarity between Christ and the Church. Polygamy cannot represent it because it is not an exclusive relationship.
The Christian marriage model is designed to curb the selfish and sinful tendencies of men and women. Both Western sexual autonomy and Islamic polygamy only serve to magnify sinful human tendencies, especially among men.
The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Sheikh Chami as saying that he was asked almost weekly to conduct polygamous religious ceremonies, but had declined to perform such ceremonies.
He also claimed that there were other sheikhs without any qualifications, without any place, who conducted such marriages.
Islamic Friendship Association of Australia president Keysar Trad said recognising polygamous unions would help protect the rights of women in the relationship.
“This idea of plural sexual relationships, it is not so much frowned upon by society as long as these people don’t say we want a polygamous relationship,” he said.
‘Polygamy all about wanting sex with more women legally’
Sheik Chami said yesterday there was nothing wrong with having a number of marriages. “You allow the lesbians, you allow the gays – why not these people? What’s wrong with it?” he said.
Happy to see Ephesians 5 given a guernsey but too much sentimental goo in these suggestions. Also, oaths in the Bible are serious things, lets be careful to not over-promise.
With deepest joy I receive you into my life that together we may be one. As is Christ to His body, the church, so I will be to you a loving and faithful husband. Always will I perform my headship over you even as Christ does over me, knowing that His Lordship is one of the holiest desires for my life. I promise you my deepest love, my fullest devotion, my tenderest care.
______, I love you. Today is a very special day. Long ago you were just a dream and a prayer. This day like a dream come true the Lord Himself has answered that prayer
I love you and I know you love me. I am confident that God has chosen you to be my husband.
