An Ongoing Conversation

Last night, Saturday 8/3, Pastor John Duty and I co-officiated Nicole and Nick's wedding at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Here are the remarks I shared:

I believe that anyone who knows Nicole and Nick will tell you that they "suffer" from the Lake Woebegone affect; they are both quite above average... So, there is a lot we can learn from them.

I believe that one of the areas we can learn from them is the very idea of two people coming together from different faith traditions, with different ideas about the world. You see, the most striking thing about Nicole and Nick is the fact that while they each have very distinct and different ideas about the spiritual world, they do not let that create even the slightest distance between them. Quite the opposite!

Nicole and Nick are deeply in love, so much so that in what is a mutually held description she says, "I didn’t even know that people like Nic existed to dream about." Lest you think, however,  that they are starry eyed, and just ignore and overlook their differences, let me tell you that these two are friends and intellectual soul mates in the deepest sense of those word. Not for nothing does Nick describe their relationship as, "having (a) conversation that hasn't seemed to cease in over three years."

So, how do they do it? Well, I recently found this beautiful quote from the great Christian theologian of the 20th Century, Reinhold Neibhur:

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, may be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe, as it is from our own standpoint; therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."

What is Neibhur telling us here? I believe he is saying that surely our views, our beliefs, our convictions matter. Honestly, why study theology and philosophy, if they don't, right? We must be guided by the paradigms we use to find meaning in the world.

However, when we step back for a second, we realize that we must put our paradigms in context. We really can't and shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. We must understand that the universe is great and time is infinite, while we are small and finite. And so, when all is said and done, we must be saved not by our paradigms of thinking, but by love, and by the final form of love, forgiveness.

This is how Nicole and Nick live their lives. May we all be wise enough to learn from them.

Saved by Love

On Friday 6/28, I officiated Ginny and David's wedding at the White Elephant Hotel in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Here are the personal remarks I shared with them:

I love the fact that Ginny and David met at culinary school. Why, you may ask? Well, because what is learned in culinary school vs. how most of us "cook" is a perfect analogy for real love vs. fleeting romance.

You see, most of us do our "cooking" by nuking something for a minute or two in the microwave. In culinary school, the philosophy is that if you can make it in a minute, it is probably not worth eating. Heck, just learning how to prepare a good stock, that will then go into future recipes, is done deliberately and slowly.

In the realm of love, it is much the same. Love at first sight is something that is more the stuff of legend than fact. Real love, like in Ginny and David's love story, starts with a firm foundation of friendship, the stock upon which the dish of love may be prepared, if you will. Then it develops gradually and deliberately into a deepening love story, becoming richer and richer with flavor.

This fact about Ginny and David’s love story reminded me of a fascinating passage written by Reinhold Neibhur, one of the greatest theologians of the previous century. Neibhur taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and is buried right here in Massachusetts. Listen to this; it is like poetry:

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, may be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe, as it is from our own standpoint; therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."

Wow. In our instant gratification world, can there be a more important message? So let us resolve today, like Ginny and David did in developing their relationship, to be deliberate, to give things time, and in Neibhur's words, "be saved by love."