THE WEDDING

Last Saturday I was honored and privileged to walk my daughter Tracy down the aisle at Trinity Cathedral, to “give her away”, and then witness and bless her marriage to Da’Mon Brooks. It is a memory that I will cherish for the rest of my life, as all fathers do when they give their daughter in marriage to someone who they believe will never be worthy enough, fathers being fathers, but trust that he will love and cherish her until they are parted by death.

As parents that’s all we can ask of the one who becomes the spouse of our child who will always remain our child even as she is a grown woman. That is all we can ask of our child as well; in this instance, for Tracy to love and cherish Da’Mon until they are parted by death, no matter what life brings. Neither they nor we know what life will bring. What we do know is that there will be ups and downs, good times and bad, successes and failures – the whole gamut that is a part of life and marriage.

As a priest I had the additional privilege of bestowing the church’s blessing on Tracy and Da’Mon. That is an awesome privilege but one tempered with the knowledge that the church that bestowed that blessing was the group of family and friends who gathered to celebrate their becoming husband and wife. We all witnessed and blessed. We all gave Tracy to Da’Mon and Da’Mon to Tracy.

Marriage is never just between two people. For any marriage to endure, for any love to last until death, the love and support and blessing of others are an absolute must. Yes, marriage begins with the realization of the man and the woman that life is not meant to be lived alone. In fact, as the parable in Genesis reminds us, God even says as much: “It is not good for wo/man to be alone.” And it is not.

And then when the man and the woman find that person each wants to share the rest of his or her life with, love between the two begins to grow until, united in marriage and growing through all the ups and downs married life brings, the two eventually become one. That oneness does not come all at once, overnight or even in a short time, even as much as each wishes it could and would.

The walk down the aisle, the exchange of consent and vows, the giving of rings, the blessing bestowed are just the beginning. Becoming one in love takes time, hard work and patience. And it takes the love and support of family and friends – their church, if you will – who will be there to hold up, lift up, stand up for when needed; who will be there to laugh with, cry with, celebrate with when needed.

Each wedding is a reminder to all married couples present, as one of the prayers in the ceremony makes abundantly clear, of the vows they made perhaps decades ago, and asks that, having witnessed the vows just made, they “may find their [own] lives strengthened and their loyalties confirmed.” Weddings are a reminder of just how much we need one another in this life and in this world, of the truth not only that it is not good for us to be alone, but that we cannot go it alone either.