768.
090603 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
Weddings celebrate love
I like weddings. Presiding over my first
one forty years ago, I was probably as nervous as the bride and groom,
but I’ve long since come to relax and savor the proceedings.
After all these years, I
sometimes find myself performing the weddings of the offspring of those
I had married years ago, a thrill I could not have imagined when I was
a young minister.
But the fun still starts
when I meet with a couple to plan their ceremony. It’s interesting to hear
how the couple met.
What I most like to ask is,
“Would you name one or two things that you really like about your future
spouse? Speak your answer directly to your beloved.” You can imagine what
hilarious as well as tender things I have heard.
I recently met a young man
and woman who had thought, after their failed first marriages, that they
would never find someone who would fit both them and their children. I
was glad they brought the young ones along to the planning session because
the good time the kids were having with each other reinforced what a superb
match the parents are for each other, and I said so.
A couple I married last month
wanted humor within a reverent ceremony. They decided their wide circle
of friends should be acknowledged with my opening the wedding ceremony
by explicitly welcoming those “from KState — and KU — also honoring Mizzou.”
Both bride and groom played
a lot of sports and were particularly known for soccer, so the wedding
rings were presented to them on a soccer ball, a touch that rang true with
the wedding guests.
Whether the wedding is traditional
or unusual, simple or elaborate, whether there are two witnesses or hundreds,
whether it is a religious ceremony blessing a same-sex couple or
also a legal contract between a man and a woman, whether the couple is
young or old, whatever the complications of their or their families’ spiritual
allegiances or none, whatever the social standing, my job is to keep the
focus on the love being celebrated.
That’s one reason that I
like meeting the families and friends as they tell their stories and share
their hopes for the couple.
For a wedding is never just
between two people, even if some of the relationships are strained. Weddings
and holy unions, like other forms of commitment, are strong fibers from
which society is woven.
At receptions, I especially
like the exuberant three- and six- and ten-year-olds dancing with their
grandparents. I see generations created and supported as love is transmitted
with a joy I call holy. With all the bad news, it makes me believe there
is a future.
717. 08052814 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
Happy couples can start new traditions
Weddings belong to the happy couple and
their guests, not to me, the officiant. I yield to their considered wishes,
but I offer my professional advice as we plan the ceremony.
* For example, it does not
make sense for a couple who have been living together for some time to
appear at the ceremony from separate entrances, at separate times, with
separate escorts.
Still, even older couples
sometimes want the bride to be escorted down the aisle by her father, and
it is important to honor that expectation.
A wonderful variation, especially
for a young couple, is for both of them to be escorted by their parents.
* “Giving the bride away” treats
her like property. I prefer to ask, “Who presents this woman to be married
to this man and blesses their love?” to which her family responds, “We
do.”
Then I ask, “Who presents this
man to be married to this woman and blesses their love?” to which the groom’s
family responds.
This avoids the sexism of
archaic language and is easy to adapt for same-sex couples.
* The exchanging of vows is the
pivot of the ceremony. The couple can speak their vows directly to one
another, without the “repeat after me” interference from the minister.
I suggest they compose their vows from various examples and from what is
in their hearts, write them on parchment paper and read them in front of
their guests. This gives the guests something to see as well as hear and
it dramatizes the commitment. Some couples like to frame their vows
for their home or include them in their book of wedding memories.
* A few couples still insist
on my saying, “You may kiss the bride.” The state has given me the right
to solemnize marriages, but I am uncomfortable giving one partner permission
to kiss the other. I’ll tell the couple an embrace is expected
after I pronounce them hitched, and they’ll probably feel like kissing
then. But they don’t need me verbalizing permission.
* Sometimes couples want to acknowledge
someone who cannot be present — an ailing aunt or a deceased grandfather.
This can be done with a note in a printed program, if any, or by the officiant
saying something like, “This day we remember . . . .”
* In a planning session recently
a couple told me that while their wedding day would be so very happy for
them, they wanted their ceremony to recognize that not everyone is happy,
that there is much sorrow and suffering across the planet.
This couple’s marriage, I am sure,
will better the world.
306. 000712 THE
STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
Life meanders by design, and so
we meet
DES MOINES—The chairs have been set up,
it seems, for a lecture, but that’s not the occasion. If I were showing
overheads or using a flipchart, the arrangement might make sense, but I’m
about to preside at a wedding, here under the dome at the Botanical Center.
Except for the positioning
of the chairs, I don’t see any straight lines. Everything is organic. The
Japanese koi do not swim directly. The finches do not rise and swoop according
to compass alignment. The orchids and spider lilies are shaped by inner
design, not forced rectilinear pattern. The fig tree and the coconut palm
have bumps and bends, suggesting not so much a ruler as the moving sun
and the changing wind.
So I quickly put the chairs
in meander mode. It seems so natural that no one notices as guests take
their seats. The people now are participants in this lush environment,
not intruders from a land of rigid pews.
The groom and bride did not
find each other by orthogonals or lime lines. Life is often haphazard and
unexpected, beauty growing out of chance circumstance more than blueprint.
The love we celebrate spills over boundaries, uniting two families as well
as two persons, an enriched ecology, not a new wing to a building.
It is an unexpected splendor.
Who could have predicted it? The spirit, Jesus said, is like the wind:
you don’t know whence it comes and goes.
Yes, we need straight lines,
rules and plans, in their place; but on this occasion, in this space, to
celebrate the spirit and ways of love, subverting the rows and files of
chairs seems a better way to match this garden glory.
140. 970430 THE
STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
Multifaith weddings shouldn’t offend
If the one you are planning to marry has
a religious background different from yours, how can you best design your
wedding?
One way to is to include
only themes and practices common to both faiths. Offending no one is the
goal.
A second approach instead
assumes that different faiths are enriching. The goal becomes embracing
the two traditions as living spiritual inheritances, not as dead weights.
How can you create such a
marriage or holy union ceremony?
1. Rather than downplaying
religious differences, joyfully recognize them with clergy or representatives
of both traditions, or with a single officiant familiar with both faiths.
2. Respectfully incorporate
language, liturgy and music from both traditions.
For examples, wine is used
in both Jewish and Christian practices, and a creative ritual reformulation
can powerfully express reverence for both faiths. Or light, a Christian
symbol of the Spirit, can be evoked in the Hindu ceremony’s use of fire.
An American Indian chant sung in the native tongue and an English hymn
can engender a warm sense of heritages joined.
3. Choose the locations
for ceremony and reception with sensitivity.
4. Rethink routines
to make the ceremony fresh. Replace the patriarchal “giving the bride away”
with a time for both families to present blessings to both partners. In
return, the couples may wish to honor their families with flowers or by
lighting a “unity candle” from candles lit earlier by each of the families.
42. 950614 THE
STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
Love and marriage and weddings
How many weddings will you attend or hear
about this month?
Each ceremony is an opportunity
for us to place into a larger, spiritual context the love and commitment
of two people finding each other.
In some Christian weddings the happy couple’s
bond signifies “the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church.”
The erotic poetry of the
Song of Solomon becomes an allegory pairing God and his people. Every marriage
is a new fulfillment of the model of Adam and Eve.
Plato gives an ancient Greek
version of the idea of “soul-mates.” His “Symposium” specifies that originally
all humans had two heads, four arms, and so forth, until the gods split
them, some into two men, some into two women, some into one man and one
woman. Ever since humans have searched for their other halves. Finding
one’s other self gives the sense of being compete lovers often enjoy.
Sufi theologians have often
understood God as a lover and our task to see God’s love everywhere. The
mystical jihad, holy struggle, is to find divine beauty in everyone, in
every place, and to disregard lesser thoughts about others, in order to
love as God loves. Connie Rahima Sweeney, a Kansas City Sufi leader, says
the lover imitates “Ya Ghaffar,” God’s forgiving nature, and “Ya Ghaffur,”
which does not even notice the faults of the other.
Linda Prugh of the Vedanta
Society of Kansas City cites Swami Vivekananda’s advice that if you can’t
see God in everyone, start with your spouse: “As long as you can both see
the ideal in one another, your worship and happiness will grow.”
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740.
081119 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
The History of Marriage
Last Saturday several hundred people
gathered near the Plaza to protest the vote in California against gay marriage.
Sometimes people say
that marriage has always been between one man and one woman who love each
other.
But there are
many contrary examples. Consider Solomon with his 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Are we talking political alliances, procreation, property rights, honored
servants, companionship, sexual opportunities — or love?
Producing offspring
was very important to early societies. In the Bible, Onan’s father forced
him to have sex with his dead brother’s wife to perpetuate the family line.
This custom, the “levirate” marriage, continued into Jesus’ time.
Love is fickle, and
what society needed was stability. Marriage did not originate in love between
partners but as a compact between families or groups.
This is why in the
Bible, most marriages were arranged by the parents, sometimes when the
children were infants, though Isaac was 40 years old when Rebecca was selected
for him.
Women were like property.
But David did not buy King Saul’s daughter; instead he proved his worthiness
by presenting Saul with the foreskins of 200 Philistines.
In the Christian era,
Paul prohibited bishops from having more than one wife (1 Tim. 3:2), but
Christians experimented with marriage in many forms.
Marriage was not declared
a sacrament within the Roman Catholic Church until 1215. Before then, weddings
were often held outside the church because they were less about love than
about social stability.
The late Yale historian
John Boswell documented Christian practices through the 18th Century of
church unions of men in love. Male couples pledged fidelity for life, joined
right hands before the altar, shared a cup of wine, heard biblical passages
(such as Psalm 133), and received the priest’s blessing.
In America, the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) of Utah practiced polygamy
until it was outlawed, and some break-away groups still favor it in practice.
The 19th Century experiment
in Oneida, N.Y., led by John Humphrey Noyes, prohibited monogamy. The community
practiced complex marriage: every man was the husband of every woman, and
every woman was the wife of every man. Exclusive relationships were forbidden
because members of the “body of Christ” should love each and all.
Laws against blacks
and whites marrying continued in the US until 1967.
Increasing numbers
of clergy in the US and in Kansas City now perform same-sex ceremonies,
and same-sex couples are asking for legal, as well as religious, recognition
of their love and commitment.
649. 070214 THE
STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
Love and be known
In his book, Myths to Live By, Joseph Campbell
discusses three kinds of love, eros, agape and amor.
Elsewhere he describes eros as “the zeal
of the organs for each other,” the biological urge for physical intimacy.
In India, the god Kama, like Cupid in the West, is armed with arrows to
afflict one with yearning for satisfaction of such attraction.
Agape is not merely love
for one’s friends and one’s neighbor as oneself, but a kind of affection
which overcomes ordinary human divisions such as by nation, race and religion
to embrace not only humanity at large but also one’s fiercest enemies.
Here he cites Jesus who said, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you, and persecute you.”
These first two types of
love are impersonal, but amor discriminates. Of the three, amor is perhaps
closest to the love we associate with Valentine’s Day because it grows
out of an intensely personal and unique relationship. It is love not just
for any person but for a particular person, a “significant other.”
Campbell notes that amor
is Roma spelled backwards in order to contrast the earlier church-sanctioned
marriages of the Middle Ages, impersonal unions arranged for political,
property or family reasons, with the later ideal from Islam introduced
by the troubadours, that love is a divine passion between two people who,
smitten with an attraction between their souls, deliberately choose each
other.
Because such love reverses,
violates, the social order, Campbell characterizes it as the triumph of
libido over credo, the “impulse to life” over the beliefs which supported
the social order.
While Campbell’s historical
characterizations may be offensive, many scholars agree that the introduction
of romantic love was a turning point in Western civilization.
One could even argue that
the emphasis on personal relationship ultimately led to the Protestant
Reformation with its teaching of the “priesthood of all believers.”
And in fact, the Puritans
came to call marriage “the little church within the Church.”
Thus amor is just as spiritual
as agape. And others have taught that eros is also inherently a spiritual
energy.
Whatever species of love
may be named, it offers the opportunity to know and be known, from the
kind of knowledge Adam had with Eve which enabled her to conceive, to the
ineffable knowledge given to the mystics in their ecstasies with God, to
the “knitting” of David and Jonathan’s souls, to the enduring companionship
of wedded love.
215. 981007 THE
STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
Multifaith marriages walk in agreement
MINNEAPOLIS—The last time I wrote about
interfaith weddings, several colleagues in the ministry called. While some
thanked me for supporting their practice of uniting couples of different
faiths, others complained.
One called my approach “eclectic
tripe.”
I am remembering this because
I have just conducted another interfaith wedding, and the guests—from Muslim,
Jewish and Christian backgrounds—expressed deep appreciation for the ways
in which their faiths were acknowledged in the ceremony.
In the months we worked together
in designing the rite, the bride and groom were extraordinarily thoughtful
in planning every word and gesture.
Although their religious
backgrounds are different, the respect they gave each other and their families
is, to me, a powerful answer to the colleague who asked, “How can two walk
together except they be agreed?”
Last summer another couple
used Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan and American Indian sources
for their ceremony. With guests from around the world, they wanted to express
reverence for many ways the sacred is manifested.
In my experience, two can
walk together with mutual respect and shared values. They do not need to
agree on identical faith labels.
The wedding here was a holy
moment, enriched by several traditions and larger than any label.
While I respect my colleagues
who decline to perform interfaith marriages, I hope they will also respect
those of us who honor couples whose love and commitment embraces different
faiths.
139. 970423 THE
STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE:
Interfaith unions can be problematic
for parents
Nowadays it is common for couples celebrating
their love in a wedding or holy union commitment to come from different
religious heritages.
Some traditions discourage
mixed marriages because such unions are not likely to produce children
to perpetuate their faiths.
They also question whether
two people of different backgrounds share enough values to live together
successfully.
Others say that religious
labels are not as important as they used to be.
Religion is more a discovery
of what is meaningful in life, and two people who love each other can have
a deeply shared spiritual orientation, regardless of different institutional
affiliations, or none.
Most families want to share
the couple’s joy in the ceremony. But not all.
Parents who refuse to attend
an interfaith wedding will almost certainly drive their children away from
their faith, rather than cause them to return to it. Parents risk a bitterness
that can harden into permanent damage to family relationships.
A similar risk arises for
family members who will not attend ceremonies for racially mixed or same-sex
couples because they feel doing so would compromise their principles.
Parents need to consider
whether loving their children unconditionally is a better expression of
their family values, or if taking a stand against their children’s choices
is a better witness to their faith.
If the couple does come from
different faiths, how can they plan their ceremony.
Next week I’ll offer some
suggestions.
37. 950510 THE
STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: Weddings signify a spiritual union
For most of us today, a wedding celebrates
the love between two people. But love has not always been the main object
of the ceremony. In the past, weddings have been used to arrange political
alliances, settle property rights, or sanction sexual relationships.
In most traditions now, the wedding is
a spiritual initiation.
SUFI. Allaudin Ottinger,
a Kansas City Sufi leader, performs ceremonies using vows from Pir Inayat
Khan, including the question, “Will you consider this woman (man) to be
your husband (wife) the most sacred trust given to you by God?”
Ottinger says that a wedding celebrates
the partners’ recognition of the divine in each other. Marriage, which
is “a union greater than the sum of its parts,” includes “daily tests”
through which the spouses polish each other, like gems.
CHRISTIAN. The Rev. Celena
Duncan, pastor the Metropolitan Community Church of Johnson County, says
that a holy union ceremony for those of the same gender is spiritually
no different than a Christian heterosexual wedding. In both cases, a couple
comes before God to ask a blessing on their relationship. Both are serious
commitments, “with deep meaning and dignity.”
The ceremony reminds the couple to put
God at the center of their partnership and as they interact with others
in all activities.
JEWISH. Rabbi Mark Levin
of Congregation Beth Torah says that the Jewish wedding ceremony is called
Kiddushin, Hebrew meaning “to make holy.” The consecrated partners become
separate from others and are special to each other. When the ceremony is
completed, the couple spends a short time by themselves before joining
the guests at the reception.
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