Pink on the underside of grey clouds at sunset… the color always reminds me of icing, or a berry sorbet, another of the infinite sweetnesses of life… Have you seen a crab-apple tree? I’ve seen a few, at least I think it’s a crab-apple… the skins of these apples look like sunsets, or dawns, too. Yellowish green with a fade to that beautiful pink color like the last clouds of day.
The change from summer to fall to me the symbol of seasonal change. When winter turns to spring I am always ecstatic for the blossoms and green, but I don’t think of it so much as changing seasons. Perhaps because fall, sunset, and old age are times that are suited well for slowing and reflection, noticing that change has once again led to the wind down of the year. After all the exuberant growth and extroversion of spring and summer I always find myself a little sad for fall, though it has its own set of things I love. I for some reason, though I am young and should really still have my immortality complex intact, I always think about passing, aging, death, the falling of energy and the fading of light. While winter may mean death for some people, to me winter is the time after death before rebirth, it is the hibernation period, the neutral time, the dead zone. It’s a time for going inside, working internally, but not really contemplating death, it’s already happened, it’s past tense. Sunset, fall, old age, these are times for passing, for peace, for letting go, for coming down from the frenetic excitement and pace of the morning and day, the summer, and the prime of life. The flux of seasons, the dawn, day, dusk and night of our day, the stages of life, each of these mirror each other in their cyclical linking, their natural flow into each other, and what kind of energies are evoked as they occur. Though I am relatively young, there is a sunset of sorts going on in my life, and the lives of those in my peer group, so when I witness sunset, and when fall starts, I tend to become very reflective and aware of just what it is my life that is being cycled out to create space for new growth. It’s more and more present in my mind as friends marry, settle down, begin to have children, and generally pass out of the last throws of childhood. Though I hope we all maintain our childlike sense of wonder and adventure, it seems in this time happiness seeks deeper ground… the desire to put down roots and truly merge with life in the process of creation becomes a powerful and humbling call for many.
I had a beautiful conversation this summer with a dear friend of mine who was getting married. We sat on the floor of the large church where the wedding would take place. When we had first moved in together years before she had brought me down to this church, a block from where we lived, and taken me into the bell tower to see the sunset. Over time we had worked at events at the church, eaten dinner with friends in the yard where she was working to create a garden for the congregation, we had planted fruit trees together in the front yard, planting with those trees the intention to follow our hearts. We had walked by it a hundred times laughing on our way to the lake, the grocery store, the BART, art galleries on Fridays. Though we’ve both moved away, we now again sat on its floor, looking up at the high ceilings and the stained glass windows, and we talked about the act of joining lives, communities, and hearts in the act of marriage.
In honesty I had been surprised to hear they were getting married, being a part of her household and thus the daily throws of her relationship, I had heard all the doubts, the frustrations, and the fall-out. But as she explained it to me, I began to understand partnership in a different way. Life had presented them with a decision, he was moving away, and she had no reason to move, other then to be with him. She had to decide whether she wanted to leave her friends, the community she had built here, to move south and be with him. She knew she didn’t want to move unless he wanted to marry her, so the only question that remained was should we get married, and it was all wrapped up in this question.
No I know this may seem to a great many young modern people that this is strange. But it’s really not. We have no idea what the future has in store for us. Marriage isn’t about the kind of life you want to have or your vision of the future, it’s about the kind of partnership you want to go through life with. The style of decision making, the things you want to learn, how you learn best, who you want to be and who can support you in that. I believe the best marriages people go through many transformations, at times together at times individually, and can still see the essence that they love, pervading each of these new formations of a person. Who do you want on your team? Who are you going to grow with, who can see and accept you for whom you are, and who do you love even in their darkest moments? But why marriage? Why not just a commitment, or engagement? Do we need the formal declaration?
Those in the relationship can only give the answer to this question, and for her the answer was yes. She continued to explain. She looked at her family, she looked at her ancestors, and she looked at all those relationships in her life that she aspired to, and she saw marriage. In truth, she felt fear, she felt confusion, she felt vulnerable, but she also felt a trust in her heart. What do we do now? We look at those who we admire who faced similar choices and ask them for their wisdom. Their wisdom was to join together and bring in the community. We love each other, but when we’re unsure and unstable, will you, our community hold us together? This is what in her family the tradition of marriage is about. Of course marriage is about a long-term commitment, but it is also about joining as one in a public way that unites new groups of people into a larger community, and humbly asking that community for its support in creating something new. She went to her family and told them, you have made this decision, and I am putting my trust, my love and my faith in that too. I don’t know if this is right, but this is my act of affirmation for both my love and for my community, and in doing that, whatever doubt there has been is dispelled. She placed herself in the loving hands of her lineage.
I don’t know why this touched me so much. Perhaps it is because in this country of diverse cultures there are few rituals and ceremonies we share. Without a religious tradition there is even less ceremony in our lives. But ceremony is important for human beings. We need to celebrate, to mourn, to mark, and to acknowledge life moving and changing as it does. In some ways it seems weddings have taken multiple meanings. Perhaps because we don’t have coming of age ceremonies, or career accomplishment ceremonies, or other ceremonies to mark important milestones, weddings have taken on a complex of meanings. At once displays of wealth, status, adulthood, proclamations of belief, etc, as well as love and being chosen and choosing. Yet in her study of the tradition in her own family she touched the roots of the ceremony in her community’s context, she found the meaning in it for her, began to understand how the ceremony could help support, develop and mold relationships over time into what she admired, couples who were polished by love and compromise to be at peace in themselves, in their relationships and in the world. What she did was also a big yes. Big yeses always feel good, to both say and to witness.
Life Together 