"There is no them
there is just us"
Dr. Bob Utley
*************************************
A Friend on the Road
Sitting back at St. Vincent's de Paul Church in Chicago, I took in the music around me as in the opening hymn of the service I received the line, "Love is the trust of a friend on the road" (Love is the Touch, Alison Robertson and Lori True). Looking back down the aisle, I watched as one of my best friends walked down a road that led to an altar where her groom stood, ready to continue the way beside her. On this mid October day, as the weather was ripe for travel, I celebrated the wedding of true sister in spirit as the beautiful couple knit together a community around the message of love, simplicity, and interdependency. It was a day that marked as sacramental the truth that existence implicates us in the lives of one another and offers signs to admit our dependency on the caritas of others and our responsibility to those who turn to us for care.
The message of collective strength was evident in the details of the Mass, evidencing the experience of a couple trained in ministry and bride who counts St Thomas Aquinas among her ex-boyfriends. While Megan and Matt now make their home in Minnesota, the couple had traveled back to a Chicago parish named in honor of a Saint dedicated to the Poor and Marginalized. It was an intimate service with small intentional touches that turned attention away from the dresses and flowers so that the pearls of the community, its people, would receive the emphasis. Friends and family sat together from different times and places in the life of the couple, not familiar with every person who sat beside them, yet able within the course of the pithy ceremony and reception to have a moment to touch upon the lives of each person present. This was not an audience for a grand spectacle, but a close collection of fellow-travelers called to walk together on the road ahead.
The message of collective strength was evident in the details of the Mass, evidencing the experience of a couple trained in ministry and bride who counts St Thomas Aquinas among her ex-boyfriends. While Megan and Matt now make their home in Minnesota, the couple had traveled back to a Chicago parish named in honor of a Saint dedicated to the Poor and Marginalized. It was an intimate service with small intentional touches that turned attention away from the dresses and flowers so that the pearls of the community, its people, would receive the emphasis. Friends and family sat together from different times and places in the life of the couple, not familiar with every person who sat beside them, yet able within the course of the pithy ceremony and reception to have a moment to touch upon the lives of each person present. This was not an audience for a grand spectacle, but a close collection of fellow-travelers called to walk together on the road ahead.
*************************************
*************************************
Colossians 3:12-17
After the scripture had been read, Father Christopher Robinson, C.M., went about unpacking the texts the couple had selected and articulating (when his voice was not choked up speaking of his friend and former colleague) a prayer for love and unity. Indeed, among the passages chosen for the service there were some surprises and spoke to the personal and relational needs of this newly knitted family. In particular, the second reading, Colossians 3:12-17, stood out as a curious but fitting replacement for Corinthians 13:4 ("Love is patient, love is kind..."). In this letter, written in the first century A.D. from prison, St Paul addresses a group of parishes in Asia Minor, "clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:12-13). Fr. Chris noted how in this scripture, as in the others, a high theological Love and Unity are replaced by an image of caritas and community that have a distinctly human edge to them. This is a congregation struggling to hold together and trust one another on a long and difficult road.
"There is no 'them" to blame in this text, a commentator on this passage explains, "there is just 'us'" ("A Call to Forgiveness and Unity" by Bob Utley). The modern sense of individual pride and responsibility is not present in this community, although it experiences its own divisions. What it knows is hardship, pain, and fear that causes people to become hardened to one another. It is an understandable reaction. The emotional and social person puts on armor to deal with the "tough love" of a world that seems to threaten them from without. The unity here is not the surrender of the self to this exterior but the surrender of a sense of interiority and exteriority. Don't cloth yourself in armor, but compassion (the word in English from the roots meaning "together" + "energy"). This does not deny the hardship, pain, and fear, but rather shares it and makes it a concern not of the weary person but the strength of the collective. The later lines of the letter, addressing the community to love as Christ is loved reflects the sense of togetherness that Dr. Utley terms, "The beloved has a beloved. The singular has a plural." The love and unity of Colossians is not the one in the many or the many in the one, but the one with the many and the many with the one.
*************************************
*************************************
Love is Tough
"Love is the trust of a friend on the road," said the opening hymn, and that is not a statement of sentiment but an expression of a mode of ethical relation. It is a responsibility that is at once a joy. This is not the "tough love" of the world but the vulnerability to admit that "love is tough." It is the harder decision not to be hard but admit our contingency and dependency. We need one another and without one another we will not make it far down the road. Put another way, our life is in our collective hands and our power is in each other. Love is tough (i.e. difficult) and love is tough (i.e. strong). In this sense, the simplicity in the adornment of the wedding was a call to be socially naked and present. The service was beautiful because what it brought together was allowed to shine and not buried under flowers, lights, and laser-shows. The community was called to look at itself in bare terms and say, "this is who I am, trust me. I will walk with you on this road, my strength is your strength."
The wedding of Megan and Matt was a chance to come together to celebrate the couple and the community that love sustains. After the ceremony was a reception where I got to talk with the couple as they took an opportunity to get off their feet for a moment. During this time, in between quick mouthfuls of yummy cupcake and pizza, they affirmed what they hoped people took away from the day. Matt said that he wanted to share their definition of love with their friends and family - not tough love but love which is tough. Megan said that she wanted to celebrate vulnerability - not clothed in dresses and gestures that draw distinctions between people but in the clothing of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Certainly, in addition to a full belly, new friends, and a complimentary glass to commemorate the day, we all left traveling on the road carrying the weight of each other, a feat made possible by the collective strength of one another.
*************************************
*************************************
Congratulations Megan and Matt!
*************************************
*************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment