Into This Holy Estate: A Story of Staying

Marriage can still make news--a celebrity wedding a noisy divorce a new law allowing same-sex marriage--but its hardly the preferred option. Cohabitation is enough for many. And constancy? Staying? Do you hear about that much? We all move fly uproot take vacations tour. In fact staying is strange! What might it feel like or look like? A renewable resource? Sustainable energy a school of resilience? Is there anything to this business of vows--this long history of enactment consecration and sacrament? What about the words we say when we do it? What about the terrain we set down roots into afterwards? Is there a parallel there--or something closer? This book is a story of a marriage lived out under the pronouncements of an ancient text (whose archaic language makes the occasional cameo appearance or comic turn) and under the aegis and blessing of a great river named after a saint. The story passes mostly in a garden and annotates the way love will flow through a marriage / on its way to its destination. Mia Andersons poetry always goes straight to the heart of things with an almost shocking realism and humor. What better qualities to express the paradoxes pains joys and endurances of a long and loving marriage--an ascetical endeavor now all-too rarely experienced in the contemporary West let alone reflected upon with such poignant wisdom and insight. Evocations from the marriage service of the Book of Common Prayer accompany the reader in this journey through the many dimensions of marriages great mystery. A wonderful collection. --Sarah Coakley Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity University of Cambridge Mia Anderson is author of six books of poetry including The Sunrise Liturgy (2012) and Light Takes (2014) which contains the 2013 Montreal International Poetry Prize-winning poem The Antenna. A retired theatre actor Anglican priest and shepherd shes also a committed organic grower--and still married.