I was looking at my wedding ring this morning.  It's been on my hand for twenty-two years, twenty-three at our anniversary in September, and hasn't been off that for more than an hour at a time except for medical reasons a couple of times.

It's not a ring of pure gold.  When we got married, we couldn't afford any such extravagance.  We still can't.  It's simple, non-pretentious, relatively inexpensive fourteen karat gold.  It has alternating diagonal bands of white, yellow and rose gold, separated by grooves.  It used to have very fine grooves running perpendicular to the axis of the ring.  The grooves gave it a textured, sparkly appearance.  After so long, though, that fine texture has smoothed off and been worn down by the scuffs, bumps and general wear that will happen over almost a quarter century.  The sparkly, shiny texture is gone, but it's been replaced by a smoother, warmer tone.  Even the deeper grooves separating the different colors are worn down, so that at the ends they're gone, and the sections just meld together without a visible seam.  Along the edges of those grooves, some of the colored gold has worn off, showing the yellow gold base underneath.  There are a couple of scratches on the palm side of the ring, probably from handling a socket wrench or something like that.  It could use a good cleaning, but the incidental cleaning it gets while I do dishes tonight will have to do.

It's left its mark on me, too.  The finger that it rides on has a groove in the skin, between one knuckle and the next.  I think that I can feel an indentation in the bone there, but I'd need an x-ray to be sure, and I'm not that concerned about it.  I've also got a permanent callous on the palm of my hand just below where the ring sits, where it rubs when I hold something in my left hand.  And during those times when I've had to take it off, my hand just doesn't feel right.  It's sort of like a missing tooth - I know that something's supposed to be there, and it's not, and I keep feeling for it.

During wedding ceremonies, I often talk about how a ring is a symbol for a marriage.  It's a perfect circle, no beginning, no end, and so on.  A better metaphor, though, might be what the ring is made out of.  Most wedding rings are made of gold.  Gold is one of the few metals that can be extracted from the earth in pure form.  It's a lot of work to mine gold, though.  Tons of rock must be dug and crushed, and to find just a few grams of the valuable substance in those tons of dross is laborious, painstaking work.  Once extracted, gold must be heated and shaped into the desired form.  Pure gold, though, is almost useless as jewelry.  It's too soft, and it lacks structural integrity.  A ring of pure gold would soon be worn through, bent, misshapen to the point of unwearability.  So gold is mixed with more practical, but still valuable metals, like copper and silver or nickel.  These other metals give it toughness and strength, while letting it retain it's original beauty.

So it is with marriage.  Idealized love, the pure gold of emotion, may be the reason that you decide to have a wedding.  It takes a lot of work, tons of rubble must be sorted through to find love, and when you finally do, it must heated in fire and be shaped into something that will suit you.  Pure love, though, isn't tough enough to take the abuse that the world hands out.  It needs to be alloyed for a marriage to last.  It's the practical things, less idealized than gold, but more useful, like patience, practicality, toughness - the silver, copper, and nickel of the emotions - that allow a marriage to last and endure through the wear and tear and abrasion of life and time.

My ring isn't as shiny and sparkly as it used to be.  Some of the luster has worn off, and it has some scuffs and scrapes. But the sharp edges have worn off and it's gotten more comfortable over time.   It suits me, and I think I suit it, and I can't imagine my hand without it.

Peace,

 

Chuck

I was looking at my wedding ring this morning.  It's been on my hand for twenty-two years, twenty-three at our anniversary in September, and hasn't been off that for more than an hour at a time except for medical reasons a couple of times.

It's not a ring of pure gold.  When we got married, we couldn't afford any such extravagance.  We still can't.  It's simple, non-pretentious, relatively inexpensive fourteen karat gold.  It has alternating diagonal bands of white, yellow and rose gold, separated by grooves.  It used to have very fine grooves running perpendicular to the axis of the ring.  The grooves gave it a textured, sparkly appearance.  After so long, though, that fine texture has smoothed off and been worn down by the scuffs, bumps and general wear that will happen over almost a quarter century.  The sparkly, shiny texture is gone, but it's been replaced by a smoother, warmer tone.  Even the deeper grooves separating the different colors are worn down, so that at the ends they're gone, and the sections just meld together without a visible seam.  Along the edges of those grooves, some of the colored gold has worn off, showing the yellow gold base underneath.  There are a couple of scratches on the palm side of the ring, probably from handling a socket wrench or something like that.  It could use a good cleaning, but the incidental cleaning it gets while I do dishes tonight will have to do.

It's left its mark on me, too.  The finger that it rides on has a groove in the skin, between one knuckle and the next.  I think that I can feel an indentation in the bone there, but I'd need an x-ray to be sure, and I'm not that concerned about it.  I've also got a permanent callous on the palm of my hand just below where the ring sits, where it rubs when I hold something in my left hand.  And during those times when I've had to take it off, my hand just doesn't feel right.  It's sort of like a missing tooth - I know that something's supposed to be there, and it's not, and I keep feeling for it.

During wedding ceremonies, I often talk about how a ring is a symbol for a marriage.  It's a perfect circle, no beginning, no end, and so on.  A better metaphor, though, might be what the ring is made out of.  Most wedding rings are made of gold.  Gold is one of the few metals that can be extracted from the earth in pure form.  It's a lot of work to mine gold, though.  Tons of rock must be dug and crushed, and to find just a few grams of the valuable substance in those tons of dross is laborious, painstaking work.  Once extracted, gold must be heated and shaped into the desired form.  Pure gold, though, is almost useless as jewelry.  It's too soft, and it lacks structural integrity.  A ring of pure gold would soon be worn through, bent, misshapen to the point of unwearability.  So gold is mixed with more practical, but still valuable metals, like copper and silver or nickel.  These other metals give it toughness and strength, while letting it retain it's original beauty.

So it is with marriage.  Idealized love, the pure gold of emotion, may be the reason that you decide to have a wedding.  It takes a lot of work, tons of rubble must be sorted through to find love, and when you finally do, it must heated in fire and be shaped into something that will suit you.  Pure love, though, isn't tough enough to take the abuse that the world hands out.  It needs to be alloyed for a marriage to last.  It's the practical things, less idealized than gold, but more useful, like patience, practicality, toughness - the silver, copper, and nickel of the emotions - that allow a marriage to last and endure through the wear and tear and abrasion of life and time.

My ring isn't as shiny and sparkly as it used to be.  Some of the luster has worn off, and it has some scuffs and scrapes. But the sharp edges have worn off and it's gotten more comfortable over time.   It suits me, and I think I suit it, and I can't imagine my hand without it.

Peace,

 

Chuck

The memorial service mentioned in the earlier post went very well.  Paul was a much-loved, well respected man.  There was very little that I actually needed to do during the service.  I provided the structure, and his family and friends provided the thoughts and stories and memories of him.  It was truly a celebration of his life, and that's what his family wanted, and that's what I wanted for him and them.  It's very humbling to be able to facilitate something like that, and I'm honored that they asked me to do it.

When I first started this blog, my intention was to post weekly.  I knew that I'd never be able to keep up on a daily basis, or even a couple of times a week.That didn't last long, and my intentions went to a monthly posting. As you can tell, that didn't work so well, either.  I think of a blog as a conversation between oneself and a group, and those of you who know me know that I don't talk much.  So, my new resolution for my blog is much more relaxed.  I'll post when I think that I have something worth posting.  Might be weeks, might be months.  But I'll try to make it worth the effort of writing it, and reading it.

There's not really much reason for not posting sooner.  I haven't been especially busy.  Winter has laid it's cold hands on us here in Michigan, and the wedding season has quieted down quite a bit.  A few bookings here and there for next summer and fall.  One wedding this month, another in March, and then in June things pick up again.  So winter is the quiet time.  The Solstice is going to be upon us soon, the turning point for the year.

I've known this was coming for a while, of course.  Walking the dog in the early mornings before the sun came up this fall, I could see the constellation of Orion climbing higher and higher into the southern sky every morning.  I think that you can learn a lot from watching nature.  When you see the Hunter traveling farther afield, you know that the year has turned.  It's time for that final burst of activity to prepare for the long cold months.  Animals know this.  Squirrels become frantic in their efforts to locate and stash every acorn they can find, and the persistent devotion that they show in cleaning out a birdfeeder can be both infuriating and inspiring.  Birds begin eating more and more, storing up energy for the lean times.  So do I.  My mother passed on to me a tendency to gain 4 or 5 kilos during the winter, which usually comes off again in the spring.  Somewhere back in the tangled skein of my ancestry, this would undoubtedly have been beneficial for someone living in northern latitudes like Michigan or Germany.  Those ancestors lived in a smaller world than I do, so they were closer to the center of things, and also closer to the edge.  They knew that fall is the time you gather the harvest and the time to hunt, and you feast when the harvest is in.  Fall is the time to celebrate the life stored in that harvest and to get ready for the hunger that might still come.  They knew in their bones that winter is a time to withdraw, to conserve energy, to gather in the longhouses and sit by the fire and tell stories and think long slow thoughts.  A time to sew clothing, to fix tools, to teach the children, to prepare for the new beginnings of spring.  The hungry times of late winter would burn off the fat from the plenty of late fall.

That tendency to put on weight in the fall might have served my ancestors well, but some of the things that we carry within us from the past don't necessarily serve us well in the present.  I might want to sit by the fire in the longhouse and drink mead until spring, but my employer has other ideas.  That extra girth around the belly doesn't really help when my next meal is reasonably secure, and it makes my doctor shake his head and make notes in my file about BMI's and blood pressure.

There's a cardinal that lives in our yard.  This spring he began attacking his reflection in the car mirrors, or the picture windows on our house.  This instinct can be a useful thing for a bird during the right season.  He sees what appears to be a competitor for breeding partners or nesting territories, and if he can drive that competitor away, his lineage is more secure.  Unfortunately, this avian obsessive hasn't gotten out of this mode of behavior.  He still attacks his reflection.  At the time when he needs it the most, the hungry time, he expends precious energy trying to drive off a phantom of his own perception. 

How many of us do that?  At a time when we should be resting, we go chasing after phantoms and reflections.  We use up our time and our energy doing things that don't need to be done, because the things that we're chasing aren't really there in the first place.  We carry patterns of behavior that might have served us at one time, but don't any more.  Winter is a time to rest, to stop chasing reflections, to burn off the fat.  It's a time to prepare for the new beginnings.

I wish you all a restful, reflective, productive holiday season.  May the serenity of a snow-covered field be with you as you prepare for the new year.

Peace.

Today, I officiated my first memorial service. 

To this point, all of the services that I've done have been weddings.  A wedding is a happy occasion.  Everyone is eager, excited, and for the most part full of good feelings.  If you can keep that mood going in your ceremony, all goes well, even if you screw up.  And you will.  But you laugh, hope everyone laughs with you, and keep going.  I think that you'd have to screw up pretty badly to do a wedding badly.

A memorial is a different thing entirely.  Paul was a man who was very much loved and respected, by everyone who knew him.  A teacher, a mentor, a husband and father.  I wanted very much to do this well, but at a memorial you don't have the buffer of happy feelings.  You have memories of someone who touched many, many lives, and now lives on only in their memories.  Memorial services are ways for people to connect with those memories and feeling, and share them.  The sharing somehow eases the pain of loss, by dilutes it with other memories.  When you know that other people are sharing your feelings, it is easier for you to feel them.

This was one of the most difficult things that I've done as a clergy person, but I'm glad that I did it.  Weddings are a transition into a new life.  Death is another transition entirely, but the transition is for the people who are left behind.  Rather than joining two lives together, death is separating one life from many, many other lives.   It's as much a part of life as birth is, and it needs to be respected, and acknowledged.  The best way, I think, to do that, is to keep the memory of the one who's passed fresh, and the best way for that is to share those memories.  Too often in our clean, sterile, technological culture, death is seen as something to be avoided, and hidden away, and hidden from.  We've lost the intimacy with death that our ancestors and other cultures who live and lived closer to the bone have.  Sharing the memories, and speaking of the life of the person who's died is the best way to keep them with us.  The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote "Let us not be gripped by the fear of death.  If another day be added to our lives, let us joyfully receive it, but let us not anxiously depend on our tomorrows.  Though we grieve the deaths of our loved ones, we accept them and hold on to our memories as precious gifts."  Paul's greatest legacy was the gift of love that he shared with everyone around him.  That love will remain as long as his memory does.  This is a lesson that I should know, but it's too easy to forget in the rumble and noise of life.

So live well, and love the people who share your life.  They are precious gifts, and the gift of tomorrows will not always come.  Life is too short for anger, and resentment, and scorekeeping.  Memories are all that you will leave, so leave good ones.  And when you remember someone, remember them with love, too.

Peace,

In my last post, I wrote about faith.  It was my intention this time to write about hope, but I realized that faith and hope are as closely linked as cause and effect.  I have faith in the redeeming capacity of love, and I have hope that we are all capable of love.  But are they really separated enough to try to differentiate them?  Marriages are based on faith in each other, and hope for the future, but they are almost inextricably linked.  How do you talk about one without talking about the other?

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a woman who wanted someone to perform her wedding.  It was a very short timeline, just a few days between the initial contact and the wedding date.  She and her fiance had made plans for a big family ceremony in the fall, on her parent's pumpkin farm, but on the spur of the moment chose another day for a small, intimate wedding with just a couple of close friends.  The reason for the change in plans was because the wedding date that they had chosen was the birthday of the bride's daughter.  She sent me a picture of her daughter, who had died eleven years ago, and would have been thirteen years old on her mother's wedding day.

I can't imagine the pain of losing a child.  The very thought of it is like a black hole yawning in front of me, swallowing everything that comes near it.  Yet, out of that pain, out of that empty abyss, she created a new life.

She told me that it was the memory of her daughter that had given her the strength to continue her life and bring something good from the tragedy of having a child taken from you.  Her grief inspired her to start a non-profit organization that provides support services to children and families who have suffered the loss of a family member.  It was the death of her daughter that gave her the realization that she could live a life based on love, and not fear.  And it was for that reason that she chose her daughter's birthday to marry the man that she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with. 

I can't think of any better testament to hope than that.