2015.11.29 What Moms Are For—Sometimes

Mom, how in hell do you do this?

Do what?  (A million anxious possibilities flooded my mind)

This wedding stuff. They don't want anything about God, or any of that stuff.

Well, you can pray without mentioning God. (A loosey goosey Anglican response if I ever heard one!) 
Check in with your Higher Power.

I’m calling you, Mom!  I looked at the profile of the two of us he'd put on my cell phone and laughed.

My son, Rob, had obtained his short-term, priest-for-a-day license to officiate at his wife’s brother’s wedding in California. He was legally all set, and suddenly that didn’t seem enough. I have to admit I grinned. What Mom "does" is not disrespected, though not easily grasped, by her four children, who are all smart enough to tell me that they only like church the way “you and Sim (their stepfather, my second husband and brother priest) do it.” But now Rob was faced with doing something churchy himself.

I listened, decided that, bidden or not, God would be there, gave him a few ideas he didn’t need, and invoked the contemporary credo: you can be spiritual and not religious.

Within a few days he sent me a text with his proposed service.  “Mom, Please review and pray for your son that he doesn’t flub this or fall off the cliff.”

(So now I could envision the romantic cliff-hanger wedding setting and my son on a windy bluff feeling nervous/shaky—a mother's dream!)

I’m proud to share the marriage liturgy he put togeher: the idea to call it a marriage liturgy came from me, adding an official-sounding descriptor.
                                                     * * * * * * *

Mark Twain said: “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover”

A lasting marriage will be one where you Explore, Dream and discover together!  My wife and I believe that a lasting marriage is also about laughter and friendship. Laugh at yourselves and each other often.

Be friends. Nietzsche said: "It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

This is just a short poem I wrote for you about friendship, love and marriage.
                                   
You

You
who is always there
next to me in my
breathing space
gentle like precious and pure diaphanous lace.
    You
who holds me when I’m weakest
who congratulates me when
I’m strongest
You raise me up
and let the world know
I’m in the star you think is brightest
It is you I yearn to laugh with
to sit by the fire with
on those cool San Francisco nights
It is your profile I want to see
through the gap
in the kitchen door
in the twilight of evening
as you prepare supper
    You
It is you who will adventure with
me near and far
running the coast down beach
by beach
spending the day in wet swim suits
forgetting where our shoes are
    This is love.
    This is friendship
You who calls me randomly to
say hi, to say hello
I will forever be there to make you laugh
to make you smile as best I can
to quietly listen
when you vent or cry
to say thank you
    You
My dearest friend
                          
         © June, 2015, Rob Brakeman (robbrakemanpoetry.com)


"Pastor" Rob called after it was over, also sent a photo on iPhone of the happy couple, and himself looking appropriately pious, bowed head—and with a triumphant Rob grin: "I did it!"

I texted back: I love you. He replied: Thanks, Mom.

Is there a better mutual blessing than that to be thankful for?

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.