Sunday, September 18, 2016

Puzzle Pieces Fall into Place

Saturday evening I officiated Allison and Reed’s wedding ceremony at The Orion Ballroom in Dallas, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

One of the things that really impressed me about Allison and Reed, as individuals and as a couple, is that they are really solid, down to earth people, but at the same time, really deep. I had some really profound discussions with them, from which I feel I learned a lot. And when I sat down to write these remarks, I was reminded of a really deep song by the Waterboys, “The Whole of the Moon”. Allow me to quote a few lines:
 
I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands
I had flashes
But you saw the plan…
I was grounded
While you filled the skies…
I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew…
Yes, you climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail…
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

Nobody is really sure what Mike Scott, the Waterboys’ lead singer, meant when he wrote this song. Is he talking about a lover? It is quite possible to interpret the song this way. Many of us, when we find that someone, that fills our skies, might say something like Reed does, in answering the question of why he wishes to wed Allison now. He says that she is the missing piece to his puzzle. With her the crescent, becomes the whole of the moon. She changes the very shape of his existence. Going on 16 years now, every rainbow he has pictured, she has held in her hand, and only together, soaring over it, has he felt he could truly take flight.

Allison, by the way, answers this question, as to why she desires to wed Reed now, a little more practically, ”Because it’s been 16 years... Homeboy took his sweet time...” Now humor aside, there is great truth here. For many, if not most of us, there is a degree of gambling or at least making an educated guess, when we marry. To be blunt, how do I know that simply because I love the you of today, I will love the you of tomorrow? We hope that through seeing the crescent, we know what the rest of the moon looks like. For these two, however, no guessing or gambling is needed. They have been together, through thick and thin. They have seen in each other the whole of the moon.

Now, some speculate, that Mike Scott is, actually, talking about himself at different phases of life. And he is not saying there was anything wrong or deficient at the crescent phase. Most of the time when we draw a moon, we draw a crescent. The crescent is beautiful. It too lights in the midnight sky. Indeed, most couples who, like Allison and Reed, meet in college, get married in their twenties, when as individuals they are still in that crescent phase. As individuals, they each have yet to uncover who they really are. Not Allison and Reed, though. They have the privilege that few of us have, to meet each other each in their own individual crescent phase, and while together, to each grow into their own, patiently waiting for their individual puzzle pieces to fall into place, until they each could clearly see the whole of the moon in their individual lives.

The truth is we don’t know, nor does it matter, what Mike Scott meant, but I choose to believe both interpretations as valid, and in Allison and Reed, I see both. Indeed, their words about each other, individually and as a couple, make this well evident. As Allison says, in a sentiment mutually shared, “He is the one who motivates me to make changes, be who I really want to be… He stands by my side and always has my back... He always goes for what he wants, regardless of how hard it might be… We laugh at each other. [We are] sometimes stubborn and hard headed… but in the end - my life is with him. At the end of each day, he’s always the last one I want to see.”