Reflections on a Wedding...

Saturday was the big day! Beth and Marcos exchanged their vows in the midst of roiling thunderstorms in the Pikes Peak area. Debbie and I joined with Bruce and Paula Kuhns, of Colorado Springs, with about 175 family, friends, and church members. All of the planning assumed a warm summer afternoon in the meadow by the pond at Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp. At 2pm, as we gathering for pictures, a loud clap of thunder signaled the beginning of rain. By 4:30pm, the planned start time, we realized that lightening would continue in the area for some time, even if the rain had now slacked off to an occasional sprinkle. So, we moved all our stuff into the chapel at the camp (in less than 20 minutes, mind you), and by 5:10pm, Debbie and I walked our beautiful daughter down the aisle.

With the theme of "...abounding in love, abiding in grace...", the wedding service itself was joyful, reflective, full of laughter and tears. Beth was crying as we walked down the aisle together. Having not had a rehearsal in the chapel, we had to make some stuff up as we went along, but the singing, the prayers, the letters that we parents read to our children, and Jim Brenneman's wonderful homily all set the stage for the vows our children wrote for each other. Following their vows and exchange of rings, they washed one each other's feet remembering the ancient symbol of servanthood created by Jesus. A closing litany, and then a kiss (which I had forgotten to invite them to do after the footwashing), and our daughter was married and we gained a new son.

Of course a wedding is a symbol, a spectacle that acknowledges what has been and anticipates what will be. For Marcos and Bethany Wright Kuhns, this marriage is grounded in the gospel truth that we find who we are in service. As they serve one another, they will also serve the world. Both Marcos and Beth have discovered that service is not a thing we do to those "less fortunate" than us. Service is not charity. Service is knowing that our truest self can never be discovered apart from the other, whether that is a spouse or the whole world. The great lie of the enlightenment world we have inhabited these past 500+ years in the West is that community is a luxury. Personal wholeness, we have been taught, is solely a matter of our individuation into the world. The great opportunity that post-modernity brings us is the capacity to reimagine personhood in the context of community. Weddings have been imagined as the great moment of individuation, when one no longer clings to parents, but now goes out on their own and forms a new household. My postmodern daughter and son-in-law seem to see the project of a marriage at the center of a complex web of relationships and service that provide meaning and sustainability for all of their life. Not so much individuation but identification.

Philosophical musings aside...it was a great day, thunderstorms not withstanding. Even the photographer cried.