2021.11.21 Whose King Are You?

Today marks the liturgical anniversary of our marriage on November 23, 1986. We were married on Christ the King Sunday during the morning Eucharist in the parish church, Trinity in Collinsville, Connecticut, where Dick had served as the rector for eight years, and I had been on the Search committee that elected him to serve. 

So why all this introduction? Well, because this small parish had supported us both through more than difficult times for us and them. It isn’t easy to divorce and remarry when you are clergy, but this little place had seen us both through vulnerable times and stayed loving towards us both. That is why we wanted to celebrate the sacrament of our marriage within this context at Trinity—our spiritual home, not just his job.  

While planning our service, we fussed over the hymn chosen for the day: “Crown Him with Many Crowns.” It was the obvious choice for this Sunday before the season of Advent begins and hurls us— willingly or reluctantly, depending on one’s ability to play mental gymnastics with the ordering of events in time—towards Christmas when this “king” was crowned just four weeks prior to his birth. Either a very short pregnancy, or a very premature baby, or possibly an act only Divinity could, or would, pull off. None of that mattered much to me, but I did not want to walk down the aisle with my about-to-be new marriage partner, singing about “HIS” triumphal crowning. 

Of course I am overdoing my sarcasm here, but the truth is we did debate the hymn choice for that day—the  diademata, “Crown Him With Many Crowns.” I lost that battle; the long liturgical tradition won; Christ (not He) got crowned; we married each other. When we said our vows I had a small grief seizure—tears flowed down my cheeks. Dick’s mustache quivered with alarm. It was crazy and incongruent— unless you know something about grief and it’s odd inexplicably unpredictable timing. I did not regret my first marriage, nor did I regret the divorce, but I did grieve both and occasionally still do in spurts. 

Anything or anyone that has been such a significant part of your life, will always need to be grieved, even in cases when divorce has meant a sad but inevitable end to a marriage. 

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See what we marriage partners are doing now after 35 years of happy marriage!  It’s Halloween, 2021, at a party for the retirement community where we now live in Connecticut. A party and fun was just what we all needed—a time to laugh, enjoy hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, and show off costumes. Dick and I went as Good Brother Monk and the Beloved Monastery Cat. I dressed all in black, including mask and hat, and Dick wore his hooded alb. (Someone asked where he got his costume. It’s his liturgical vestment, the one he wore when he presided at the altar.) Ms. Cat  was saved by Good Brother Monk after she lost her tail on a coyote trail. He fed her lots of fish and milk in a dish. I made plenty of mewling, howling, and purring sounds. Good Brother Monk, who prays all day and all night, closed our routine with a somewhat edited, and slightly ribald Irish blessing, ending with Latin (illegitimi non carborundum) and final praise for the monastery pussy. 

Everyone laughed heartily and we won a prize—a large beautiful woven quilt to keep us warm in winter months. Meeeowwwpurrrr. Amen. 

   

2015.11.22 We are a Good Fit

The 29th anniversary of our marriage, the second for each of us, will be tomorrow. That's according to our lovely "Animal Babies" calendar from WWF (World Wildlife Fund). According to the liturgical calendar, however, our anniversary is today, the Sunday the Church designates, Feast of Christ in Majesty, aka Christ the King.

When we chose the royal date, I immediately resisted its utterly exclusive masculine kingliness. We negotiated, as we do, with much spatting and grinning. In the end we agreed that Christ was utterly beyond gender, that we certainly couldn't even imagine a feminine option like Christ the Queen, and finally, that we would NOT sing the traditional hymn suggested for that Sunday, the Diademata, aka "Crown Him With Many Crowns."

So today marks the liturgical anniversary of our first whole day of being married—wedded bliss they call it. Such a love remains blissful and vivacious when you let those invigorating spats happen easily—with humor and the diplomacy of true compromise.

Love, as you age in a marriage over years often grows as comfortable and comforting as, yes, a favorite old bathrobe. (His is green. Mine is blue and white, strewn with pink roses.)

This poem kind of says it all. 

THE BLUE ROBE
by Wendell Berry

How joyful to be together, alone
  
as when we first were joined

  in our little house by the river

long ago, except that now we know

  each other, as we did not then;

and now instead of two stories fumbling

  to meet, we belong to one story

that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness

  of mortals, who know themselves:

  how joyful to feel the heart quake

  at the sight of a grandmother,

old friend in the morning light,

    beautiful in her blue robe!

I love you, old friend. Happy Anniversary.