I Take You

When I was a freshly-minted, just out of seminary pastor, my mentor sat down with me to go over what he felt was a modernized wedding ceremony.  Let me say this clearly: it was the 1980s and there was a lot of discussion everywhere about hidden and explicit patriarchy.  We never used the changes without talking to the bride and groom about it first and if they were dead set on a "traditional" service we did it.  I talked about discarding "Dearly Beloved" in my last post.  We encouraged them to have both families give their blessing to the marriage rather than having the bride's father "give her away" like a possession.  And in the vows we encouraged them to replace "I take you to be my husband/wife" with "I give myself to you to be your wife/husband."

The reasoning behind it was sound.  The idea is that you are not taking the other person as a possession, but giving yourself to them in relationship.  It reflects the self-giving love that promises itself unconditionally.  That's important in marriage because, let's face it, we all have times when it's only our partner's commitment to the relationship that keeps it together.  That time may last only a second or two or it may last a year or two, but every marriage has them.  And most brides and grooms agreed with us on that.  My husband and I used that form when we married.

But recently I came across a poem that made me rethink this.  It is called "The Wedding Vow" by Sharon Olds and because I do not have rights to it, I refer you to it below for the entire poem.  It's also found by Googling Sharon Olds poems.  Please look it up and read it.  It ends:

... And then it was time

to speak -he was offering me, no matter

what, his life. That is all I had to

do, that evening, to accept the gift

I had longed for, - to say I had accepted it,

as if being asked if I breathe. Do I take?

I do. I take as he takes - we have been

practicing this. Do you bear this pleasure? I do. *

In marriage we do not just give ourselves.  We have to accept the gift of the other person, to accept them, to welcome them into our lives, our beings, and, yes, to take them as they are .  It is a powerful thing to recognize that another is publicly offering their life to us, and to acknowledge publicly that this one is our dearly beloved.  For better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health; to forge between us something that cannot exist without both of us.  

On June 3 my dearly beloved and I will celebrate 36 years of holding each other's hearts and lives in our hands.  How grateful I am for him!  What amazing, gracious love he has offered me.  How glad I am that I was smart enough to accept it, to receive it, to bear it  as we have shared the journey through life together.

*"The Wedding Vow" by Sharon Olds from The UnsweptRoom. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Dearly Beloved

When I was a newly-minted, fresh out of seminary pastor, and about to do my first wedding with my mentor, he went over some of the changes he had made to the traditional service over his time in ministry.  The first one was that he had changed the greeting from "Dearly Beloved" to "Friends in Christ".  "Nobody uses that kind of language anymore," he argued.  "My wife and I don't ever call each other 'Beloved'."  He was younger then than I am now.  And while I adapted his changed greeting for a long time, I have come to believe that this was one of the few things he was wrong about.  For "beloved" is an important term, a useful styling, an expression of a relationship that goes far beyond friendship.

Beloved - the people whose presence brings you to tears of joy. 
Beloved - the people you seldom see, but who hold your heart in theirs.
Beloved - the people you might not hear from but once a year, yet you are so glad to get that Christmas letter.
Beloved - the people with whom you worship, sing, cook, pray, eat on a regular basis.

These are more than friends.  They are sometimes closer than family.   Blood is thicker than water, but love is thicker than blood.  There is a bond of love forged hard as steel - you forgive their foibles even if you can't laugh at them. You trust them with your heart, your hopes, your pain, your fears. 

Sometimes we call someone a friend when they're actually more of an acquaintance than a friend.  But a true friend is beloved.  They are there for the long haul and you are there for them.  When you think of them you feel that "ping" in your heart.  What matters to them matters to you, even when it doesn't matter to you.  They are those friendships that exist out of time - the ones where even if you haven't seen, talked with, or written to each other for years, when you get together you know each other as if you had been together just yesterday.  You listen deeply to each other.

They are your dearly beloved.

One can only hope that your life partner falls into that group.  It makes life a whole lot easier if they do, at least I suppose so, because I cannot imagine being married to someone I did not love dearly. 
More on that next time.