I’ve been walking around in a funk lately. My brain loops keep revisiting my childhood, searching for an occasion when I felt loved or accepted, and failing to find much. This is not news to me. It’s a repetitive activity that is fruitless and tiresome. Eventually, I realized that I’d been watching a Netflix series that hooked into those issues. I had to remind myself that I am not currently a child, I am an adult. And I get to choose how I feel and behave in my present. I get to choose where I focus my energy.
Sometimes I also have a sour attitude toward marriage, and romantic relationships in general. I’ve survived my share of betrayal and abuse at the hands of people I trusted. I’m not sure I even know what it feels like to be loved. Of course, I’m referring to the ego kind of love. The kind of love that inflates and props up our social identity as “worthy”. I’m not interested in that anymore. I have better things to do with my time and energy.
I am, for example, a marriage officiant. This is the season when I get phone calls from people asking me to perform their ceremonies. Most of the people who call me are looking for a very simple affair without all the expensive hoo-hah. Some of them are young couples with stars in their eyes and no idea what they are getting into. But many are older couples on their second go-round. They do know what they’re getting into and are willing to try again.
Yesterday I performed a ceremonyon the shore of Lake Superior that was simple, beautiful, and heartfelt. It’s the reason I do these ceremonies––because I believe in the possibility of infusing a relationship with spiritual Love. My intended role in these ceremonies is to set the energy table. It’s up to the couple to bring the spiritual food. It is an incredible honor to bear witness when they fill their plates, not with lust or control or social status, but with kindness and gentleness and trust. Unlike ego love, spiritual Love is a feast that everyone at the ceremony feels. It’s why we cry. We’re experiencing the intensely beautiful feeling of our spirits coming home.
That is why I officiate weddings also. In our world so many are leaving out spirituality in their lives, it is I believe because they equate religion with spirituality and they are so through with religion.
Have been meaning to reply to this for a while. I’d like to hear more about the ceremonies you perform–how do people find you, where do you do the ceremonies, do you write them yourself? Curious about the process.