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.