Free Good Counsel by Eileen Wilks Page A

same thing that binds a clan, but an important commonality. You’ve got priests instead of a Rho, but the role of the priest as head of the community has some correspondence to the role of the Rho. Your hierarchy is more elaborate than ours, but . . . ” A smile flickered at the edges of his mouth. “I understand the need for hierarchy.”
    “And you consider the support of the community important to a marriage.”
    He shrugged gracefully. “That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
    “Not to everyone.” Abe studied then man across from him. He certainly understood what Cynna saw here. He was himself thoroughly hetero, but Cullen Seabourne’s beauty was a fascination so strong, so inherently sensual, it made him uncomfortable.
    Yet Cynna hadn’t spoken of fascination or beauty in their counselling session yesterday. She’d mentioned Seabourne’s looks with a chuckle, a roll of her eyes, but her eyes turned soft when she spoke of their friendship. “I wonder what marriage means to you . . . what you expect to receive from it. What you expect to put into it.”
    “I get Cynna,” he said flatly. “I put into it myself.”
    “All of yourself?”
    “Not perfectly, not all the time. It’s a practice, isn’t it?”
    He was startled. “Do you mean that in the Buddhist sense?”
    “More or less. Not that I’m Buddhist—they wouldn’t claim me, anyway—but their idea of a practice works for me.”
    “How would you define the, ah, the practice of marriage?”
    “It’s a commitment. You don’t do it perfectly, but you don’t have to. When you commit to something—sitting meditation or mindful dishwashing or monogamy, whatever—you practice it whether you’re in then mood or not. It’s through the dailiness of the commitment that you get what the practice offers. That’s why community is important. Once you involve your community, make it witness to your commitment, they become part of it.”
    “The community serves as a reminder or reinforcement?”
    “Sure. An ongoing witness to the commitment.”
    Cullen Seabourne was far more sophisticated in his personal theology than Abe had expected.
    He steepled his fingers and asked God for some help. “And you believe you can offer Cynna sexual fidelity? That’s contrary to your personal beliefs, isn’t it?”
    “It used to be. It isn’t anymore.”
    Abe waited, knowing that most people were too uncomfortable with silence to let it linger, and would rush to fill it with explanations, denials, or defensiveness. But apparently Cullen Seabourne wasn’t most people. In the end it was Abe who broke the silence. “You don’t care to explain that change in your beliefs?”
    “Some of it’s personal. Some of it isn’t, and involves matters I’m not free to discuss with you.”
    A polite way of telling him, “none of your business.” Still . . . “You are asking yourself to change in a fundamental way. You’re an unusually attractive man. Sexual variety must have been a constant and important part of your life. Or do expect your love to eliminate temptation?”
    Cullen’s smile this time was both private and amused. “I expect to be able to tell the difference between a hard-on and love.”
    Crude, but well-put. Also the first time he’d spoken of love. “You will be faithful because Cynna needs you to be?”
    He nodded. “She does.”
    “It’s difficult to make a major change purely to benefit someone else. What will you get out of being faithful?”
    “Other than Cynna’s well-being? I don’t know yet. That’s why it’s a practice. When you start a new practice, you don’t know what the results will be. The outcomes you see at the start are pretty limited compared to what’s really possible.” He thought about that and added, “I’ve already started on that part of the practice, by the way.”
    Abe smiled slowly. “An unconventional approach, but one the Church can support. I see no obstacles to performing your marriage ceremony.”
    It was