Marriage is a mystery novel worth reading, at least ours has been!
15 years ago this today, my love and I were united in Prague. We did a huge international arts installation in the backyard of dear friends, had a parade, were served tea by a white gloved gentleman in a play lot, and turned an international spiritual arts event into our wedding. Literally know one knew beforehand it was actually a wedding (but that’s another story). From there the new poem started.
We’ve lived everywhere since then, but the poem keeps being written where ever we roam. Thankful today to still be transforming with this remarkable gem and poem, poet, thinker, teacher, artist, and real woman of God.
Our audience for our wedding was international artists, church planters, writers, thinkers, dreamers, poets, singers (German opera), film makers, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all stripes and colors and languages-a banquet of creativity among the nations (my kinda party!). We were and are blessed by our funky global family, and our cloud of witnesses. Glad to still be becoming God’s art down here together!
Pictures later, as today, we are just giving Him room to celebrate this strange and beautiful conjoining of two oddly remarkable people. Who says artists and mystic types can’t get married? We did, and the collaboration keeps bearing fruity fruit! Although the poem we are together is slant, the lines are written in the ink of love from above. We couldn’t make up something this cool, strange and beautiful.
That day we (our anglican friend from England; and Reverend Sir Andrew Jones, whose home, hospitality and family, hosted this fine arts affair, offered the creative improved homily-which had some holy heat on it, not just because it was Summer! Angel slam poetry coming down on that altar of Grace!) read Jesus’ prayer for union for his followers-John 17 (one of my favorite passages in the book, where we are overhearing Jesus talking to His Dad on behalf of us; His prayer for unity and oneness.
We read it over and into us, and over our future hope for others as well. The mystical union of marriage is a mystery, worth deeply entering, a song worth becoming. We are thankful to have given Him room to form that cadenced, nuanced and uniquely shaped prayer in us over the years. We are still learning how to embody it more fully daily—“the pleasant lines of our inheritance” together.
But we, together, obviously bring God pleasure, and room to dream out loud, to make up new songs, and to improvise, and that makes me happy today. He wanted dance partners to collaborate with. And I think we’ve let Him lead!
And thankful for my love. His little funky temples us each, and together, an odd shaped sanctuary.. The new creation we are becoming together still ignites, excites, and surprises me!
Though of course, as someone said beforehand, “Marriage is also fellowship with His suffering for one another.” Good advice, though foreboding at the time. There are many types of death to self involved, required to “Give God room to form.” Another said; “Love is choosing to die daily.” Doesn’t sound inviting, but it is. For it, makes the best poetry. More like a gospel song.
Love is less an institution than an opportunity for mutual transformation daily. “It forces us to The Cross, more often daily; and God knows we need it!”
We’ve tried to allow inner room for that formation, through the poem of our marriage, over the years and among the nations, and cities we were planted. And I pray it’s fragrant lines bring people hope from time to time, like a good line in a poem returns at just the right instant as a joy seed.
So, thankful today for the poem we are becoming, and the lovely lines which have already been written and pronounced. Looking forward to reading the whole collection of poems at the end; enjoying it being written in the meantime! Good to have little bookmarks along the way! Happy anniversary to us today! Thanks God—we were a good idea!