Good Morning, DJ

In May 2005, John began a series of notes to his daughter Deborah Johanna and her fiancé as they were preparing to marry. At that time, he and Barbara had been married thirty years. Ten years later, 2015, and over the three years that followed, John returned to the original notes to reflect further on the experience of married life. Good Morning, DJ shares John's original notes and the reflections of ten-plus years later. John does not offer how-tos or recipes for marital success or even happiness. Rather he shares his questing for vitality and creativity as he and Barbara continue their evolving sojourn.

A conversation between Jesus and some disciples includes this question: "What good is it to acquire all the world has to offer but then lose your soul? And what can you offer in exchange for the soul?" (Mark 8:36-37). And here is foundational wisdom from Proverbs: "Above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life" (4:23). These fundamental life principles apply to married life: How do we safeguard the soul of married life? For what things do we potentially forfeit the soul of a marriage life? And once forfeited, how is soul redeemed and restored? Good Morning, DJ is an evolving meditation, an evolving prayer, on the evolving of married life as unique context for mutual being-becoming toward full humanness. The guiding premise that emerged over the course of writing is: Married life is not fundamentally a problem to be solved; it can be a creative and co-creating work of art, calling forth virtue, bringing beauty to light. Though John does not offer how-tos or recipes for marital success or even happiness, he does suggest key themes or principles that support and sustain married life as context for our emergence, our ongoing essential (Essential), unfolding and enfolding. One such principle is that we are process; emerging, unfolding and enfolding with all that is, within the Mystery of ALL THAT IS. Another is that marital synergy (co-creating) is grounded in and sustained by the spiritual rootedness of the partners, that which connects them to the WHOLE—others, others-than-human and OTHER-than-human. It is hoped that these reflections invite fresh reflecting on, opening into, another facet of relating, bounded on the one hand by intentional presence and on the other by intentional unknowing; and foster greater appreciation for the emergent mystery (Mystery) inhering to married life.

The theme of human emergence surfaced for John in the 1980s while an editor in the Congregational Literature Division of Mennonite Publishing House (Scottdale, PA). The focus of his thinking was a process of Christian formation that affirmed the distinctness and potentially never-ending evolving of persons, ideally manifest as co-creating love. He continued to reflect on human emergence during his studies at Duquesne University’s Institute of Formative Spirituality, culminating when the Institute closed in 1994. Good Morning, DJ extends John’s thinking on human emergence in relation to married life.