I went to a wedding on a mowed field high on a hill. It was terrifically hot and humid but the sun was bright and there was a breeze. As the wedding ceremony moved through its stages, thunder rolled in the distance, but it sounded more like accompaniment, not a threat.
What is it about weddings? Why do we love them and mostly not want to miss them? And even the ones we want to miss but don't, arriving grumpy and late and tired and covered in travel dirt, what is it about them which can make us happy by the time of 'I do'?
I was good friends with a man named Bob Green. Bob Green was an Episcopal Priest and was the father of a dear friend. On one visit with my friend to his family home I brought my girlfriend of the day. She was beautiful. I was young and she was young and it did not take Reverend Green long to figure out the attraction. She left to go back to Boston and Bob cooked a great dinner for us two boys. It was a beautiful summer night and we were drinking lots of wine. As the night began to settle in, the Reverend began his inquisition:
“Do you love her, David?” he asked. I turned red and mumbled something and drank more wine. Of course I did not love her but I wasn’t going to say that to my friend's dad, a man of the cloth, a man who’d been married for a half a century or more (to a woman named Joy, no less); to a man who took more interest in my moral well being than did I.
He persisted. “Of course there is passion, David, but is there love?” I drank more wine. More inquisition. After long and difficult questioning, I finally admitted it was not deep conversation drawing me into that relationship of the day and he then told me the message of his deposing:
“In love, David, the passion comes and goes but the love must stay."
Of course, passion is part of love but I know "passion" is not the first word my adoring wife thinks of some mornings when I stumble into the kitchen, rubbing my ample belly, wearing nothing but old boxers, on a quest for coffee. But she does love me.
True Love.
A love so deep it creates the ability to show anger. It is confidence and also ability to show weakness. It understands without words, it accepts, it tolerates.
Great stories of true love show men and women drawing to each other against the odds, despite great differences, when seemingly insurmountable obstacles are forcing the lovers apart.
In a great work on the topic, the classic Rob Reiner film the Princess Bride, true love scales the cliffs of insanity, fights a tremendous duel, wins a game of chance against a Sicilian, defeats a Giant and recovers from being ‘mostly dead’ (among other heroic exploits). True love prevails despite all.
The real challenge is knowing the difference between true love and true passion. Good luck.
It is hard to find because true love usually is just sitting there. It will sneak up on good friends, housemates, buddies. It won't happen on cue but will happen, well, when it happens: at a coffee shop, in the library, at a diner, in a cab, at a party. Two souls stronger, two people girded to survive life’s miseries and distresses, two friends to share life’s joys and successes.
At this wedding I attended, well after the ceremony had ended, and the congregating guests had passed through the long receiving line, and a nice cocktail hour or two passed in the hot sun, the storm we’d been hearing all day came over us. We were in a tent by then, and the wind rattled the tent so viciously we evacuated the young and the old. The thunder and lightning rocked and rolled outside. Wind whipped around us. The power went out. And then it passed. Everyone sat back down and the toasts started and the electricity came on and the band started again. We celebrated for hours two people beating the odds, weathering the storm, beginning a journey of a lifetime.
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