Yesterday I attended a wedding of one of my cousin’s sons. It left me full of observations.
1.) “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” James 4:14
I was strongly reminded of how fast life passes. You see, over sixty years ago I was a 4 year old ring-bearer in the marriage of the groom’s Grandmother (my aunt). thirty years ago I officiated the marriage of the groom’s mother (my cousin). Yesterday, I attended the third generation marriage ceremony of the same family line.
Life soon goes by
With the blink of an eye
One generation blooms
While another dies
Another blink of an eye
The sun is rising high
Time is not defied
2.) Individuals come and go but the family goes on forever. I found myself reminiscing about the sanctuaries where these weddings took place over the generations. Grandmother, Mother, and Son all married in different sanctuaries, all having many different family members attending. Many of the family members who attended the grandmother’s wedding are now deceased. Some of the family members who attended the Mother’s wedding are now deceased. Yet despite how the individual family members change out over time the family remains resilient. There will come a time when I am not at one of these family weddings because I am deceased but the family wedding will not be any less a family wedding all because I am not present. Individuals have a time limit but the family moves through time.
When one is born into a family, one is born into a permanent reality. The names and faces change over the generations but the family remains. This is the generational bond that ties the living with the deceased. We are not our own. We belong to our families and no matter how hard one might try one will forever be who they are because of those familial bonds. The family members my change but the music keeps playing.
3.) In God’s providence the very day of this wedding, marking day one of this marriage I learned that another marriage of 53 years ended because of the unexpected and sudden death of one of the spouses. It made an impact on me to think that on the very same day that one lifelong marriage ended another one had taken its place with its beginning. This in turn reminded me of the nature of community. As with family, as noted above, genuine community is bolted together by the older generations passing down to the younger generations a goodly and godly legacy. Again, one generation falls and another rises but the community remains.
4.) On a different note, I had a cousin inform me that he was taking a course at his church on how to communicate Christ to someone who is outside the faith. Of course I was encouraged by his taking this course. Quite encouraged. Along the way in this course he is learning about different shades of Christianity, and as such he asked me, “Now are you a Calvinist or an Arminian?” When I told him I was definitely a Calvinist he said … “I knew it!” I was relieved that he knew it.
5.) Sometimes you will hear professional athletes talking about how “the game slowed down for me.” By that they mean they were able to be better at the game because they understood how it worked. I think sometimes in life I am sensing that “the game of life has slowed down for me.” This wedding kind of confirmed that. It’s hard to explain but one gets to the point where they are both participant and observer of what is happening around them. The participant part is easy to understand. You are there… you’re in the moment … you’re having the conversations. The observer part is where it gets a bit weird. It’s almost as if you are outside of yourself looking at the expanse of the whole as you participate in the whole. You notice things from a big picture perspective. You’re seeing the sociology of it all and how that is driven by theology. You cue in on the differences between the wedding you’re at now and the weddings you were at one and two generations ago. You hear the songs that are being played for the dances and you note what they are communicating. You see the tatted ladies and you say to yourself …. “I never saw that in a wedding from two generations ago.” Then you ask yourself, “What means this?” Same goes for the change in the fashions and styles. You consider the obvious Lesbian Butches present as well those guys who are “light in the loafers.” You think about all the vast change in the culture you have lived in over the last three generations and wonder “how did this happen?” Then you start connecting dots between the culture you are seeing and the reality that culture is merely theology externalized as poured over a particular people. Participant and observer is all happening at the same time and it is as if one has a foot in two worlds simultaneously. You are there yet you are not there. It’s as if one is both looking through the microscope while at the same time being under the microscope.
I’m pretty sure I don’t like this but I’m also pretty sure it’s not going away. I don’t like it because this way of being forbids one from really being fully part of what is going on around you.
