Disruptive moments

Disruptive is the trendy word now for  the past two plus years. Thinking outside the box was always disruptive. Breakthrough initiatives as well.

But real live disruption in a wedding can have less than optimal consequences. Weddings, like any performances are live and happening in real time. And unlike professional performances in the arts, they are a one off. You don't perform the wedding for a six night run. It's one and done.

Example of a disruptive moment I have experienced: The clouds open up and heavy rain pours down on the outdoor ceremony right before the ring exchange. We all run into the barn set up for the reception and finish the ceremony on the dance floor. Not optimal.

But sometimes disruptive can interfere with the planned timing, but become the centerpiece of what is true and unspoken about the heart of what the guests are witnessing.

Example of this: the couple asked me to place the ring warming later (passing around the couples' rings during the ceremony is usually early enough so that they end up ready for the ring exchange when we need them). The ring warming request is to ask the guests to hold the rings for a moment, make a wish for the couple or say a prayer and pass them to the next guest. To keep the rings safe, this couple found a tiny wooden box and carved their names in it.

When it came time for the rings to be available to exchange, the guests were only halfway through the passing. This created a big PAUSE in the flow of this ceremony. Hmmm, what do we do now?

The groom looked over to me and asked: Has this ever happened to you before? (No).Then: Don't stop it; we can wait. I liked that he agreed with what I instinctively wanted to do: wait.

All three of us, the bride, groom and I looked out among the guests. They held the box with silent awe and took seriously their instruction. For so many I could see that they thought about what could happen to this couple through a lifelong marriage. I saw such tenderness, I almost cried right there.

I spontaneously added one more suggestion: you might remember all marriages, all of which could use your best intentions. We all need this help.

When the rings returned, we went ahead, but the quality of the ring exchange was different. When I said these words, they were completely authentic: These rings coming back to us now are worth so much more than their precious metals or gems. With your having held them, these rings are priceless.

That was disruption coming from the heart, not contrived and with no room for development. I don't believe I can replicate this organically for anyone else, but I can examine it. When your guests let something become their own on your behalf, you have a memory for when the going gets tough. You have 125 people standing behind your success. That's disruption worth remembering.

CHEESY WEDDINGS

I had a request for a wedding recently with a specific  request: please no cheese.
What constitutes cheese? It surely is in the taste of the beholder. Admittedly there are a few rituals that officiants repeat so many times that we may feel like ENOUGH already. There are readings I include that are exactly what I had for my wedding 36 years ago. How many Pachelbel's Canons are too many? How many times do the cynical guests wiggle around when we say: love is patient; love is kind?

But individual taste dictates much of our ceremony design, and we then must be our best  at that which is no longer exciting for us, but must be recreated freshly to serve the needs of the ceremony.

Is cheese the trendy? Is cheese the soupy sentimental? 

Don't pretend religion

I had a couple awhile back who confided to me how strong their religious upbringing had been, and how these strongly held beliefs were still alive and well with the bride's mother and with both the groom's parents.

Neither of these two currently practice the faith of their upbringing, but they wished to both respect and honor their families. This would be best done by their being authentically themselves, rather than all of us approximating a "church" wedding, with customs that might be familiar or comfortable for the elders, but hypocritical for the couple.

This brings me to the love story, the signature of my work as a wedding celebrant. I see it as the context of the ceremony, but not the centerpiece. The centerpiece is the vows. Religion has become a taboo divisive subject in our country over the past two decades and when a generation today under forty is not willing to become hypocrites on one of the most important days of their lives, they don't have to turn to the bland or to the mock religious to hide who they are. A love story that opens up the heart of how and why this commitment came to be reveals a universal identity. No one of us has the same details, but almost every one of us has a story.

All religions lead us back to love. We are hungry for the real thing and it becomes a spiritual lift to remind ourselves that two people can be so selfless as to take each other on for the long haul. If that's not what God wants of us, I don't know what else there is.

Spiritual versus religious

Almost every couple I interview will tell me they are spiritual, but not religious. This statement has deep meaning for me, but I don't question further, as this is good enough for me to move ahead in our interview.

In an either/ or discourse community, this is heard as people who may have left religion, or religious practice, but think they are still good people. I hear something altogether different, and it may not be accurate about them, but it represents my world view.

Religion is an established set of rules, rituals and customs organized by human beings to honor God as they understand God to be. We can choose to participate or not in this activity. Spirituality is not so easy. Spirit means breath and as living human beings, we cannot escape our breath except when we die. We cannot choose to breathe. In short, we are doomed to be spiritual until we die. So what are we saying about ourselves as spiritual but not religious?

In many cases, at least among those wonderful couples I've interviewed (and most of whom I've married), their spirituality is their commitment to compassion, forgiveness, an idea or even a practice of service, an understanding of the need for humility, a generosity of spirit, of self, that looks to a place of peace, and that knows the only worthy test of their lives is in how wide and how well they love.

The only real difference between the spiritual and the religious person is that the one has no label and the other does. One has integrated a set of practices and the other prefers to be reminded. Both are called to the same end.

To deny our spirituality is to deny our humanity. Neither the spiritual nor the religious owns spirituality. It's the conscious knowledge and practice of choosing the highest good, the road less traveled, that puts us together in the same circle.