Yes & yes

OMG, you guys. First of all, it is so hot today!

Clearly, this candy is good for you.

Serious. Grab yourself a spicy corn-flavored Tamboreta lollipop and a Miller Lite (okay maybe that’s just me).

Okay. Actually, this post is not about the current heatwave, and my taste in Mexican candy, but rather about the change of name in this blog. Rachel and Lindsey got married! Yaaay!! It was great.

Our waiting room was an arts classroom with some truly amazing tableaux setup for still-life study. We lined up outside the auditorium and listened to our friend Kat play guitar and sing. Listening to the singing and standing next to my dad behind Lindsey and her dad was the only time in the ceremony I almost cried.

Ike read “i thank you god for most this amazing” as the opening prayer. This poem is about the start of life and how life comes from a very mysterious origin. We shall call the origin God. Also, how the beginning of life is not a singular, biological event.

The First Reading in the Liturgy. David read from the Song of Solomon. This reading ends “Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion; its flames are a blazing fire” and speaks to love’s passionate awakening. The Song is a song for new lovers. (This reading also inspired our inscription inside our wedding bands.)

The Second Reading. Leah read a selection from the First Book of John, which begins “Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.” This passage creates a narrative out of the first reading: that love is not an emotion confined to poetry and passion. Love is an action, of work and deeds. (In a broader sense, this is the heart of what Christians mean to Witness.)

Our officiant, Frank Cordaro, read from the Gospel of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…”). If the opening poem ecstatically welcomes a new life, and the readings trace love’s evolution from passion to partnership, then the Gospel offers no conclusion, but opens the narrative beyond the partnership being celebated, and accepts all of heaven and earth into the possibility. Those who commit themselves not only to one human being, but to mercy, justice, and peace, are those who truly come to know love.

Frank’s Homily was very sweet. Frank is a radical peace activist and “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” is a prayer very near to his heart. He spoke a bit of his own work, dedicating himself out of love and faith to a cause that routinely gets him imprisoned. But largely he spoke about us and how our positions, as women in a faith that doesn’t find women’s views very important and as gay people in a country that doesn’t find gay rights very important, offered us a privileged opportunity to realize the vision of Matthew. It was very Catholic. Very gay, feminist, liberal Catholic.

We stated out intentions, the assembled announced their support, Frank blessed our rings, we exchanged our vows, and slipped on each other’s rings. I take you to be my wife. I promise to love you wholly and completely, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, in life and beyond. I will respect you as I respect myself. I will be true to you and honor you all the days of my life.

The last bit before we left went somewhat awry. My sister handed me a glass orb in a velvet bag for Lindsey and I to break. The breaking of the glass can have several meanings. The most traditional is that it serves to balance the joy of the event with a somber moment, as it recalls the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Additionally, the step taken to break the glass is like the step of marriage: once taken, it cannot be undone. As impossible as it is to repair broken glass, it is as impossible to undo the bonds of marriage. All this is very good, except that we couldn’t actually break it.

We stomped on it (just like we practiced), but it bounced away. Fredo, in a welcome moment of helpfulness, took off a shoe and handed it to me. Alas, even without heels on, it couldn’t break it on the carpeted floor. I called it a wrap and we kissed anyway. Anyhow, I gave Fredo his shoe back and we recessed in a somewhat orderly fashion. Mazel tov!

New Year’s Resolution

I’m not sure you noticed, as you were enjoying time with friends and family, but I did not update the blog in December. I was also enjoying time with friends and family. My December was a blur of settling into a new apartment, Chanukah, birthdays, Christmas, New Years, and old friends coming into town. While I talked about the wedding a great deal, I haven’t written anything about it lately. And now, as it’s the very last day of January, I almost haven’t updated this month either.

So, blog, welcome to 2011. Twenty eleven is the year I get married, which means the answer to “When are you getting married?” is no longer “Next year!”, but, “In a few months!” Yikes.

And so while I’m tempted to share with you our big to-do checklist, that would probably be boring. Instead, I’ll be honest: I am now, finally, excited about getting married. The end of one year and the start of another, no matter how arbitrary the Gregorian calendar may be, invite inevitable self reflection. And this being the year of Yikes the Wedding, my self-reflection has stumbled upon a rather startling fact: I am madly ridiculously in love with another person. People being mysterious things, this is a bit of a gamble, when you think about it. Lindsey and I at best only know each other as well we know ourselves, and who can say how well we know that. And here we go, standing up in front of our family and friends to say that we shall trust that we know ourselves, and perhaps each other, well enough that we promise to spend the rest of our lives together.

It’s old-fashioned to value marriage as an institution (it’s old-fashioned, maybe, to value institutions at all). But we do, and so we are. Also, of course, mad ridiculous love.

Wedding weekend!

Not ours!

My older sister got married July 9. Lindsey and I went out to the D.C.-area to attend, then extended the trip with a few days in New York. It was most excellent to catch up with some friends who live in D.C. and NYC.

Being in my sister’s wedding was lovely. It was wonderful to see everyone and meet so much new family (both sides have big expansive families), and amazing to watch Jess and Brian pledge their vows. The wedding was gorgeous, this is what wedding magazines look like.

Wedding Venue: Newton-White Mansion

The highlights of the wedding for me were small. One was getting ready before-hand in an upstairs room of the mansion, with the moms and the bridesmaids and Jess. My mom was so unbelievably happy and everyone was nervous. The room felt very much like something glass. The other moment was when my dad made me cry, by crying when he walked my sister to Brian during the ceremony. Aw, dads crying, you know.

Lindsey and I haven’t officially sent out announcements to everyone in our families that we’re getting married. Jess and Brian were getting married, and ours seemed a long way off. But we haven’t kept it a secret either (hello, internet), so mostly everyone knew. And almost everyone is super psyched about it, which is yay. And probably means it’s about time to put-together some Save-the-Date type things.

Save the Date!

The Catholics, lol.

This post is going to be a tangent on Catholicism, but first, an anecdote:

In the car: my mom (Catholic), my dad (Jewish, but quite familiar with Catholicism having been married 33 years), myself, and Lindsey
Dad: So have you thought about where you’re getting married?
Me: I don’t care very much particularly where the ceremony is. Lindsey wants to have it in a church.
Lindsey: I don’t think we’re going to find one though, so it doesn’t matter.
Me: There’s lots of congregationalists around though, I’m sure it’s fine. Or UUs, maybe Methodists…
Lindsey: If it’s not a Catholic church, I wouldn’t really bother.
Dad: Why wouldn’t you have it in a Catholic church?
Mom: O_o?

/anecdote Tangent on being Catholic right now:

This Easter was the first Easter in my life where I missed Easter Mass. And I missed Good Friday Mass, and Ash Wednesday Mass before that. And if you know us, you know we both love Ash Wednesday Mass.  Anyway, I missed Easter Mass for a variety of reasons, but mostly the Catholic Church hasn’t done much recently in the way of compelling faith.

I don’t so much mind most of the Church’s anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-individual, anti-freedom stances. I think there’s something to be said for inherently conservative tradition. It’s the Church actively working against the teachings of Christ that I can’t abide. So this week’s Newsweek tackles the role of women in Catholicism in light of the clergy’s current sexual abuse scandal. Obviously, the violation of children and the cover-up of decades of child abuse doesn’t exactly inspire a renewal of baptismal vows. The Newsweek article cursorily covers the role of nuns. Which leads me to recall this NYT article about nuns being investigated by the Vatican for doing too much work outside the ecclesiastic arena.

It’s never really easy being Catholic, but it’s usually the Church that makes it difficult. Protecting child abusers, but worried about nuns following the Sermon on the Mount? Do you really want me to leave? (I mean, yeah, probably you do.)

Andrea Gibson talks about committment.

50 years is a long time. If you name a facet of how you live your life– family, job, location, religion, community, school, beliefs– we are facing changes in them right now.  The year is ripe for things to develop. The only thing not likely to change in the next six months, the next year (the next 50 years), is our committment to each other.

My friend Dove shared this YouTube video with me. Andrea Gibson is a relatively famous spoken word poet. “I Do”: