Missing Link / Bus Deal / Tenets / Marriage Song / Hispanic News / inside & Outside Marriage - 3/23/08

Sun Mar 23 17:14:47 EDT 2008

- WHOOPS, I LEFT OFF THE LINK
- $29 BUS FROM LOS ANGELES TO SAN FRANCISCO
- FAITH'S TENETS SHAPE CATHOLIC VIEWS OF MARRIAGE
- WORTH FIGHTING FOR: MARRIAGE SONG
- BAD NEWS FROM CALIFORNIA
- WHAT GOES ON INSIDE AND OUTSIDE MARRIAGES?

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- WHOOPS, I LEFT OFF THE LINK
5  THINGS SUPER-HAPPY COUPLES DO EVERY DAY
(A long article with some original  ideas....)

5 Things Super-Happy Couples Do Every Day
WebMD Feature  from "Redbook" Magazine
By Ty Wenger

Lord knows this is not the sort  of thing guys brag about. But my wife and I
have a ridiculously happy  marriage. Really, it's almost disgusting.

We paw each other in public.  We goof around like a pair of simpletons. We
basically act like giddy  newlyweds in the middle of happy hour. Sometimes
we'll do something so  revolting, like sitting on the couch and drawing
smiley faces on the  bottoms of each other's feet, that we're forced to make
hacking, gagging  noises to maintain our dignity. Actually, this happened
just last  week.

See, I told you it was disgusting. . . ..

D -  Sound just like us, actually.... but my question...  the above is the
entirety of what I got... was there an article/ link to go to? Other than
buying Redbook?
Thanks! 

HERE'S the link: 
http://tinyurl.com/yp2hld 

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- $29 BUS FROM LOS ANGELES TO SAN FRANCISCO

I'll post this info on the website under conference travel, but want to
alert the list that there is a $29 bus from Los Angeles to San Francisco
highly recommended by La Grande & Sonja Mason. No need to get to and from
the airports, go through security, etc...
For schedule and to make reservations go to http://www.megabus.com/us/

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- FAITH'S TENETS SHAPE CATHOLIC VIEWS OF MARRIAGE

Tenets shape Catholics' marriage views, survey finds
The Associated Press
March 22, 2008 

WASHINGTON -- Most Roman Catholics say church teachings shape their views of
marriage, yet they also get some tenets wrong and are largely accepting of
divorce, according to a recent survey of 1,000 adult Catholics by the Center
for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

70 percent of married U.S. Catholics were either wed in a Catholic church or
have had their marriages blessed by the church.

55 percent said their opinions about marriage have been at least "somewhat"
informed by church teaching.

50 percent or more accurately described church teachings about the sacrament
of marriage, including that the church does not consider a civil marriage
after divorce to be sacramentally valid.

76 percent of adult Catholics also said divorce is acceptable in some cases.

On the whole, Catholics were comparable to the U.S. population in marriage
demographics, including marriage age and frequency of divorce, the study
found.

Wrong answer: The survey found that six in 10 Catholics have heard that a
non-Catholic spouse must promise to have the couple's children raised
Catholic, which has not been the case since a change in canon law in 1983.

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- WORTH FIGHTING FOR: MARRIAGE SONG

Another marriage song. You can listen at:
http://www.warrenbarfield.com
OR
http://www.myspace.com/warrenbarfield

I like this grab from the lyrics:

> It¹s a house we enter in
> And then commit to never leave
>  
> Lock the door behind you
> Throw away the key . . .

> If we try to leave, may God send His angels to guard the door
> No, love is not a fight but it¹s something worth fighting for

Hi Diane, my name is John Clore, publicist for Warren Barfield. A song on
his new album (Worth Fighting For, which releases May 20, 2008 on Essential
Records - his third album), called "Love Is Not A Fight" is a powerful song
about marriage and relationships. Below is the story behind the song, along
with the lyrics. 

Warren Barfield describes the story behind ³Love Is Not A Fight²:

³My wife is my best friend, who I love dearly, and she loves me. But isn't
it fascinating that two people who love each other so much can cut one
another so deeply? When you let issues build up in a marriage, the smallest
thing can trigger a war, and pretty soon you can lose sight of your love and
commitment to one another. We had a night where something as trivial as
spilled pretzels forced into the open things we had left unsaid. Once
everything had calmed down, I wrote this song. In that moment, I fully
realized my duty, as my wife¹s husband, was to wrap my arms around her. To
love her more than my pride, more than my desire to be Œright,¹ and to find
a way to move through life¹s good and bad times together. That will be a
struggle at times, but love is worth the fight.²

Lyrics to ³Love Is Not A Fight²

Love is not a place
To come and go as we please
It¹s a house we enter in
And then commit to never leave

Lock the door behind you
Throw away the key
We¹ll work it out together
Let it bring us to our knees

Love is a shelter in the raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
If we try to leave, may God send His angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it¹s something worth fighting for

To some, love is a word
That they can fall into
But when they¹re falling out
Keeping that word is hard to do

Love will come to save us
If we¹ll only call
He will ask nothing of us
But demand we give our all

I will fight for you
Would you fight for me?
It¹s worth fighting for

John Clore
Publicist - Essential Records
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- BAD NEWS FROM CALIFORNIA
Mar 19th 2008 | FRESNO
The Economist 
The vaunted Latino family is coming to resemble the black family

EVERY Sunday Elias Loera stands behind a pulpit made from motorcycle parts
and preaches family values to the people of Fresno. He rails against sinful
living and neglectful fathers, yet is careful not to offend. Mr Loera
reckons more than half of the women in his almost entirely Hispanic
congregation are single mothers. He tries to avoid speaking of ³father God²,
so dismal are many people's experiences with fathers in this struggling
Californian city.

Whether Cuban, Mexican or Puerto Rican, most Latinos revere la familia. But
the Hispanic family is changing. In the past ten years the birth rate among
unmarried Latinas has risen from 89 to 100 per 1,000. . . .  Late last year
came a significant but little-noticed announcement: probably for the first
time, half of all Hispanic children in America were born out of wedlock.

The Latino family is not in such a dire state as the black family, where 71%
of children are born to single mothers. Yet the gap appears to be closing.

For the full article and chart:
http://tinyurl.com/35q2cv

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- WHAT GOES ON INSIDE AND OUTSIDE MARRIAGES?

Sex Lives Fear of Not, Er, Flying
New York Times 
MARCH 23, 2008 

(Spitzer et al and then the Diane Sawyer show on prostitution in America on
Fri night - 85,000 prostitutes arrested in a year. It does make you wonder.
-d) 

They¹ve underscored our flimsy grasp of what goes on inside marriages and
outside of them, making us feel like sheltered boobs. Who really suspected
so much ...for article:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/weekinreview/23bruni.html>

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