Fire and brimstone

We had our last church class today. Father Rich, the priest who will be marrying us stopped by to discuss the Sacrament of Marriage. He started out with a Tim McGraw song that had the lines, "I hope you live like you were dying." The Fiance was excited that he was being affirmed as a listener of country music. We had in fact listened to this very song at least a dozen times crossing the Mojave to Vegas.

We all listen attentively to Father Rich. He says, "I know I'm supposed to sit here and be the 'voice of the church' and tell you what the church says about marriage, but I'm not going to do that." Apparently, Jesus doesn't say much about marriage, like a paragraph at most, but deemed it important to make a sacrament out of it.

"Years ago", he tells us, "every priest said the same exact thing everywhere you went, and preached "fire and brimstone" and the churches were packed, and people liked that! But now that we relaxed a bit, no one goes to church as much anymore". They come up to him and ask him if something is a sin or not and he replies I don't know, I'm not here to tell you what to do with your life. And then they get upset with him because he's "supposed to be the priest." He says people want the "fire and brimstone," but that's not what they do anymore. But this explains why the born-again movement grows and conservative religion grows because it's easier to sell "fire and brimstone," and people in their slightly masochistic ways would rather have "fire and brimstone" than something fuzzier that says each person decides what hell is and what sins are.

This idea of living like you are dying is something we often talked about in kali. That when you really face this fear of dying and death, then you can go out there and really live because you know what's important.

He told us a story about how he was introduced to this woman's mother. The mother asked to speak with him and she told him that she had been divorced twice and she knew the church's stand on divorce, but was there anything that he could do for her. He replied, "what does your heart tell you?" Because he says, when you die, there won't be a priest there, just you and your God.

He told us stories about his father and his brother and how he too gets caught up in these things that are not so important in life. He focused the discussion on us as couples. What are the things that we tell each other? How do we become fuller people in each other's presence because of the love we share with one another?

He hopes that we have agreed upon a set of core values on which to base the marriage. He's not going to tell us what marriage is about because in many ways our relationships are unique because we are building the way we want to be married based on various advise from our communities and such, but also based on each other.

He turns the page in his folder and he starts to read something that sounds like it comes from a marriage ceremony. And then he starts to read the marriage sacrament, you know the part about to have and to hold. He reads the line, "now take each other's right hands" which he tells us to literally do. All four couples hold their right hands and he continues the with the words I have heard repeated dozens upon dozens of times before. This time it felt different holding someone else's hand in the process.

He finishes and tells us we can let go now and says, "ok you're married now! that was it, a nice short and sweet ceremony." We laugh and giggle a bit at the silly idea. Then he tells us, well, as far as I'm concerned you've all been married for some time now, since most of us had been dating for several years, starting to that time when you first said yes. He continues, "You are having a wedding in a Catholic Church and only you know the reasons why." Not much will change from just before the marriage to just after. This church wedding is just a public display of your private committment that you made witnessed by your God, because you hope that the God that brought you together, will help keep you together.

He wanted to read the actual sacraments to us today because on your wedding day when everyone is looking at you and the photographer is snapping pictures, he's not really sure what anyone can hear.

He went on asking us to close our eyes and asked us questions: why did you say "yes" to this person and not someone else? how do you feel when you are together? what do you love most the other person? what about them drives you nuts? what is fear in coming into this marriage? what is your partner's greatest fear? what is your partner's greatest dream? what do you remember the first time you met? He went on and on with several more questions. In the end, the picture in our minds of our partners in our hearts with both all the joy and the flaws and the fears.

I love Father Rich. Whenever we have interacted over the years, I've often listened carefully to his words and stories and they have always affected me in such a way that even years later I reflect upon what he has said. He has always been real. Not perfect, not priestly, but human. And I've always admired that about him, how he allows himself to be human and as a pastor who his congregation looks to, he is not afraid to admit and to show that he is human. How he gets into fights with his father, and is embarrassed sometimes for his brother, and how he thought the sweet woman his father remarried to was a complete dingbat the first time he met her. And he has often said that God is not somewhere way up where shooting lightning bolts, God is down here, in your father, in your brother, in your father's dingbat girlfriend, and in you.

He too is a man of words, and likes to listen to song lyrics. He told us about a section in the bible where God told Jesus well before his ministry that he was His beloved son. Father Rich had said many homilies and sermons about this passage. But it wasn't until 15 years ago, when his father who rarely said or did an emotional thing his entire life, got up, hugged him and said, "I'm proud of you." He says that day those words went from here (his head) to here (his heart). To this day he can tell you exactly how his father placed his arms around him in that hug. The words he said went from his head to this heart to a place that he lives them each day, when you no longer need the specific words to remind you. So it's important to listen to what each other has to say, he tells us, even when you don't like it, but because you love them, you listen. And with that, he left us and ran off to his next appointment.