One Of Harold’s
Marriages
One
Of Harold's Marriages
My friends, we gather together at a beautiful
lake on this sunny Fourth of July to celebrate an ancient, solemn and joyful
ritual. This is, for Harold and Wanda, a rite of passage by which they signal
their entry into a new life.
Marriage, like war and weather, has always provoked commentary, high-minded and
otherwise. The tobacco farmer and poet Wendell Berry tells us that it lies well
beyond mere careless happiness, "…on the other side of--but never out of
reach of--the valley of delight."
An anonymous poet says forming a union of love, like art, is to bring harmony
and order out of chaos. Another unknown says love is the triumph of imagination
over intelligence. Joseph Barth pronounces the institution as our last, best
chance to grow up. And Victor Hugo says, "The supreme happiness of life is
to be loved for yourself. Or, more correctly, in spite of yourself."
Being married on the Fourth of July is an
affirmation of the role independence plays in a loving relationship. It is like
a dance, in which the partners hold each other but lightly, each moving in his
and her own fashion to the music that fills them both.
For Harold and Wanda, music and prose, poetry and painting are sacraments;
a deep love of art fills their souls. And like art marriage entails moving
forward, persistently, toward an ideal held in the mind. Thus the best
preparation for the union is to fully understand the idea which is sturdy
enough to survive one's ultimate inability to achieve it fully.
Perfect love is a god, Plato proposed, divine, everlasting and as unattainable
by human beings as the stars. In that form love has existed in the universe
since the beginning of time and will endure forever.
There exists also the individual brand of love, which strikes us here on
earth like a glint off the sun, making us suffer, pine, rejoice…and, sometimes,
marry. To make a pledge of perpetual loyalty--of the kind that soon will be
made here by Harold and Wanda--is to lend and commit oneself to the long human
quest for moral value.
Vows are indeed a sacred affirmation of moral value, and are also spells,
invocations--not so much to heaven as to a still-unrealized being in oneself
who may grow to maturity to fulfill the promise.
Wedding rites and the associations we have with them, like the other rites of
passage through history, prove that the human family is one, even if its
members are as varied as birds in their mating dances and songs.
Each individual must find his or her own meaning in this ceremony with its
architecture of enduring time and moral responsibility.
As we look about us, we are reminded that in sacred space every detail of
ritual flows from the concept of united heaven and earth, where earth and sky
meet. It is where time stands still, and history dissolves into eternity.
Love prays. It makes covenants with eternal power. The union that is thus
informed adds a new value to every atom in nature, for it transmutes every
thread throughout the whole web of relation into a golden ray and bathes the
soul in a new and sweeter element.
Love is not the purview of cowards; it is, rather, the perogative of the brave.
It is the nature and end of marriage that Harold and Wanda do in symbolic fact
represent the human race to each other. All that is in the world is beautifully
wrought into the texture of this man, this woman.
The world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. In time flaming regard
is sobered…losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough
and good understanding. At last the lovers discover that all which at first
drew them together--those once intriguing features, that magical play of
charms--had a prospective end, like the scaffolding with which the house was
built, and the purification of the intellect and the heart, from year to year,
is the real marriage.
Thus we are put in training for a love that knows no sex, no person, no
partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere so that virtue and
wisdom may be enhanced and perpetuated.
Emerson tells us that Love is the dawn of civility and grace; the rememberance
of these visions of love outlasts all other rememberances, and is a wreath of
flowers on the oldest brows. We do not ever forget the visitations of the power
of love to our hearts and mind, which created all things new, which is the dawn
in us of music, poetry and art.
Love makes the face of nature radiant with purple light, the morning and
the night varied enchantments, and in love the single tone of a voice makes our
heart beat…and all these forms are placed in the amber of memory…for the
figures, the motions, the words of the beloved are not like other images
written in water, but, as Plutarch said, "enameled in fire."
In love we may put aside a fear of death; in our beloved's eyes we live
forever. In love we may fear nothing. Love is forever.
As in Psalms, "sorrow endures for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning."
And we need never fear that we can lose anything by the progress of the soul.
The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive
as these relations must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more
beautiful and so on, forever.
The vows:
"Harold, do you stand alone and free to join this woman in marriage, to
love, honor and nurture her for all the days of you life?"
"I do."
"Wanda, do you stand alone and free to join this man in marriage, to love
honor and nutrure him for all the days of your life?"
"I do."
"May I have the rings please? Thank you. In Native American tradition a
ring is called the hoop of life which is eternal. It is symbolic of the sun,
the moon, the earth, the cycle of the seasons. It bespeaks the
interconnectedness of all living and non-living things."
The judge hands the ring to Harold, who places it on Wanda's finger.
"Do you, Harold, pledge with this ring your loyalty to this woman for all
the days of your life?"
"I do."
The judge hands the ring to Wanda, who places it on Harold's finger.
"Do you, Wanda, pledge with this ring your loyalty to this man for all the
days of your life?"
"I do."
"By the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I hereby
pronounce you husband and wife."
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