FlamingText

The Reverend

  So I performed a wedding for my friends Paul and JP on the weekend last, which was a first for me. I was pretty nervous about it but it seemed to go okay. Anyway, a few people have asked me for the transcript of my speech at the top (the "sermon," as it were) so I've posted it here. I thought it also might serve to balance out the rash of negativity in this blog, what with all the stories of smurfocide and penguins being forced into prostitution and all.

  If you are looking for proof that I can occasionally sound positive about something, this might be as close as you'll get. If, however, the idea of hearing a guy who's not really a minister (well, okay, legally I am) give a not-really sermon while carefully avoiding any telltale signs of specific religious belief sounds like a drag to you, you might want to skip this. I will, however, leave you with the joke that this whole affair brought to mind, and which has always been a favorite of mine:

What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah's Witness? Somebody who knocks on your door to talk to you about... nothing in particular.

Enjoy! I'll be back to my regular negativity soon, I promise.

   We are gathered here to celebrate the union of Paul and JP and the expression of their love for each other.

  There are those who see love as a mystical quantity, a holy grail shining down on the drab grey corners of this world like a star from its lofty firmament. To these people love is something from a dream, something to be quested after, longed for, idealized, and like any ideal never quite reached. But those people have completely missed the point. Because love is real.

  That rose-colored glasses view of love that threatens to drown it in a suffocating glaze of good intentions and saccharine sentiment produces a love that is too flimsy, too Disney, too much of the cinema-fairy-tale-into-the-sunset happy ending to be of much use to a couple making their way in the real world where life keeps right on going, spooling out long past the last glowing happily-ever-after of the closing credits. Not a one-time event that settles everything, arriving in the third act to save the day, love is instead an underlying theme, a motif borne out in a thousand tiny events played out again and again against the canvas of each and every new day.

  Down here in the real world of deadlines and bills and flat tires and unexpected rain a friendly face asking “how was your day?”, sharing an inside joke, holding your hand in line at the grocery store means a lot more than the grand romantic gestures our movies and books and pop songs would have us believe represent the very essence of True Love. Because when something is kept up on a pedestal it tends to gather dust; nothing is so useless as the thing too precious to be touched. To be sure, a holy grail is a fine thing, but a comfortable pair of shoes will take you a lot farther in this world. So I urge you as you go forward in your lives together to take that grail down from its pedestal and have your coffee in it every morning. Keep it familiar, keep it close at hand; it will never let you down.

  Because Love is real, and it lives with us down here in the trenches, down in the mud, down where we need it, even as it allows us to look up and dream of what could be. It is not the kind of gift that rains down on us from above, but the kind of gift that blooms out from the inside, bursting forth and climbing skyward. Everything of the divine that there is in us springs from these simple acts of genuine, real love.

And love IS real, thank God.

Posted by flamingbanjo at October 18, 2005 11:46 PM