A WEDDING IN JUNE

Apprenticeship to Love: June 22, 2025

Today’s question: In the face of the world and its suffering, what shoulders are you offering for others to stand on?
Rev. Hans Peter Meyer

TODAY’S MEDITATION

There are several stages in a man's life. One teacher has suggested that during and after our middle age is the time for us to teach. After that, the stage of preparing to die.

Most of us do not know the day of our dying. So perhaps it is important to always be in a time of preparing.

Most of us, whether we choose it or not, realize that we are often called into the role of teaching. Whether it is a younger sibling learning how to walk or draw or play a sport, a new colleague learning the ropes, a client learning about a service or product many of us, at a wide range of ages, will find ourselves teaching. How we are in this often informal role lays a foundation. Another will build their knowledge and awareness on what we give them, and how we give it to them. In this way we are also preparing for death, leaving our legacy.

I marry people. A teacher has suggested we can consider our ceremonial work as "world changing" work. That is how I approach this work. I consider the marrying of couples to be very important teaching and legacy work.

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Two things changed my world yesterday. One was the wedding ceremony I presided over. The other, bombings on the other side of the world that killed many, and threw a shadow over the light of those working towards peace and compassion in that part of the world.

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Yesterday began as a beautiful wedding day in June. We were on the beach. We were staying at a lux resort. It had rained in the morning. By ceremony time, the sun was playing hide and seek behind the clouds. Most of the sky was blue. A soft wind was gently stirring everything.

I've been standing on the edge of a threshold of my own for days, weeks. To see this couple, prepared and excited to step into marriage, and to help facilitate that, it felt right.

For a moment, I felt right.

The groom had been a student of mine. Together, the prospective bride and groom, were students in the months we took to prepare for the ceremony. Whatever I offered to them, and whatever I continue to offer them as the marriage unfolds after the wedding, it was only a foundation for what they will do.

I gave all that I knew how to give. They will prove me, as they stand on my shoulders.

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There are many thresholds, many rites of passage.

Some months ago a man was lamenting that, with children in their 40s, he was still feeling the burden of parenting. I said to him that I don't know if we're ever done with this work, as parents. It just changes.

A threshold I am currently hesitant to cross has to do with my parenting. I'm hesitating because I have no how-to manual. I have no assurance of success, or even an idea of what success might look like. My children need something from me, but I'm not sure what it is. I don't know how to step forward.

What I do know is that my work, in this moment of indecision, is to practice. To slow myself. To sit, and allow.

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Despite the wreckage that this culture makes of marriage there are those who persist and give the rest of us belief. Faith.

I am mistrustful of what too often feels like the one-sided emphasis on celebration that underwrites most weddings. In the preparatory work I do with couples I bring my focus on the crucible of marriage. This is the altar on which the prospective bride and groom are invited to sacrifice themselves.

Discovery was the theme of yesterday's ceremony on the beach. The two who would wed described their courtship as a conscious adventure of discovery. They relished in the sharing of this journey. They were excited about the discoveries to come.

I am a little more sober. I know my own flight from sacrifice and discovery. And I am grateful for their fearlessness. It suggests that, even in my preparations with them, they've discovered a firmness and resolve, that they may take whatever I've been able to offer, and to use it as something to build on. That they can stand on my shoulders.

That is my prayer: that, as a ceremonialist and teacher, this couple, and all the men, women, and couples who lend me their trust, stand on my shoulders. That they may know even more love and beauty than I can imagine for them.

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This morning, as I listen to news from around the world that seems too much for my small efforts to "change the world" through ceremony and practice, I am reminded to pray, and to love. To persist in what I know are real and true in my sphere of influence. With my beloved. With my children. My extended family and friendships. To stand with those who, even in the face of trauma and catastrophe, continue to discover themselves and each other. They inspire me. They are radiant. They are the belief and the practice of love.

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How do I support this couple, and the couples I work with, that their weddings and the marriages are legacies of love that build family and community? How, in the face of death and destruction, do I leave a legacy that sustains life and love? I believe I have this capacity. I believe that at this time of my life this is what I have to give, these shoulders, that others may stand and build their own experiences of discovery, of love, of beauty.

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