Until Death Seperate Us
The weather was superb: cool, lush, autumn air welcoming the sounds of the solo trumpet echoing through the Arboretum. Pam Eason and Jim Cowles took the stroll into matrimony yesterday afternoon, graciously reminding all of us how joyful it is to find love. Happiness draped around them, falling over the rest of us as well, and I'm sure everyone there who'd been through a wedding ceremony as bride or groom reflected again on their own journey and experience, for good and ill. The words "till death seperate us" (or the close equivalent...I forget the exact words) are like cathedral bells banging away at close range, a gargantuan clang created mostly by the transient nature of our time.
What can such words mean in a world of consumerism, easy discardablility, and action based on what we feel from day to day?
I suppose in any time of history, "till death do us part" is a strange notion to the young. (That's you, Pam and Jim--young!) That strange, far away day, we think, when death comes to make its mark, to seperate us, indeed. For that matter, not only is death a far away world, but so is commitment. Commitment is like a new friend we've just met, a bit of a celebrity coming to live with us--we've heard about him, and he's got that mysterious combination of charisma, toughness, and loads of promise--but when he show's up on that day, there's a glint in his eye that excites us--and scares us, too.
What have we gotten ourselves into?
I read Shakespeare's 116th sonnet during the ceremony. What a privilege to say these words. I leave the sonnet with you, as I did with Pam and Jim and their guests. Let's ponder it, we lost ships, and fix our eyes on that star again, perhaps making the connections between Love, I AM, and Revelation 22:16. I'm not trying to do formal analysis of Shakespeare here, just asking again: with all due respect to the Bard, does humanity really have the power to "bear it out even to the edge of doom?" (Current divorce rates may suggest otherwise.)
Or do we draw that power from elsewhere, from the one whose very name defines the mysteries of love?
What have we got ourselves into? Perhaps--and this is my faith--what we've got ourselves into...is a path to the very heart of God.
"Into the woods its time to go..."
Sonnet 116
by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
7:58:53 AM 
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