ABOUT MARRIAGE (& DYING), Part 1

Apprenticeship to Love: The crooked path of sacred marriage (August 13, 2026)

TODAY'S QUESTION

How are you preparing to become something more than you imagine yourself to be?

TODAY’S MEDITATION

It's nearing the date of one of my favourite weddings. The beginnings of a marriage between a woman and the man she decided to marry many, many years ago. Her heart was made up early. She knew.

It took him over ten years to ask her for what she knew.

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These two are now several years into their union. When I see them, it brings me joy, to see how they are doing. I wish this for every couple that I marry.

What, I often wonder, did they do right? What are they doing right?

I wonder, because most of us don't experience what I see them experiencing. I want to understand. For myself, and for those I work with: how does this thing called "love" look and feel when it is allowed to be what it is rather than what I want it to be.

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The work of weddings and the work of helping couples understand their marriages, this is holy work. I have the honour of listening to men and women talk about their desires and fears, and their frustrations. Mostly I hear about the fears, and how these men and women feel themselves failing. I am blessed with their vulnerability, and humbled by their trust.

Recently, one man spoke to me of being afraid. He anticipates marriage, but the shadow of expected losses looms large. So large he hesitates to step forward, to step out of himself, into something larger: himself as a husband, and father. He mistakes my seeming lack of fear for confidence. I laugh. I tell him there is still much trembling in my boots as I step forward. Love is a risk. There is much dying, much sacrifice involved. I know only that, called to the threshold, there is no future for me standing still on that threshold. And certainly, no going back.

Another man speaks to me of his wavering commitment to marriage. He loves the woman he is with. He is committed, he says, to "doing everything." And then, it all falls apart and he is confused. And afraid. Perhaps even cynical. (And this is too familiar; I recognize it as a way I've used to avoid stepping forward into myself.)

A third man, understands the sacrifice that marriage commands. He speaks quietly of his readiness. Maybe he has the least to lose? Maybe. Or, already experiencing how much his surrender to loving her is giving him, maybe he is more afraid of losing what surrender brings, than of losing what surrender takes? He is the most ready to cross the threshold into the unknown—and to receive everything, and especially the "everything" he can't imagine.

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I believe that crossing the threshold into marriage is one of the most frightening things a man can imagine. For good reason. All who cross are lost.

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The one we love, she is our siren. We've been warned about her, by our bros: the waters of marriage are dangerous. Protect yourself, we are told: get a prenup; keep something safe from what you are being called into; etc etc etc. To no avail.

We are drawn to her. Whatever her particular song, the song of marriage that comes through her voice and her body, it is a song of our ruination. It calls us into the ruin of who and how we have known ourselves to be.

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There is a rite of passage this culture has failed to remember and failed to honour. We know the 15 minutes of glory in front of our family and friends. We know it well. But there is a deeper ritual involved in our marriage, and it a ritual of sacrifice and loss. It is about death.

In pre-modern times human cultures were not so quick to move through ceremony and ritual. We spent some time with death and sacrifice before we threw ourselves over the threshold, onto the rocks of our ruin. Because in some unworded way, we knew that we could not serve our beloved or our union until we had experienced the ritual and conscious death of our younger, uninitiated self.

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I don’t see a lot of men truly ready. We think we submit to the Siren song. But like so much about what is modern, we do not know this in our bodies, in the places where we keep our fear, and our courage. We think we are men. But we haven't learned to sacrifice our lesser, boyish selves. So we aren't ready.

I certainly wasn't ready.

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Marriage is so much more than we can imagine, when we approach the threshold. Once crossing, we are undone. Only then are we broken open. Open we are —perhaps— ready to be made into something more beautiful and more powerful than we can imagine.

She needs this from us. If we have children, they need this from us. Our community, certainly, needs this from us. The maturity to be ready to sacrifice, to die and dying, to be reborn into something larger than ourselves. And so, she calls us. With a siren song that will undo and unmake every man who listens.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀Pranayama is …practised in order to expand the dimensions of prana within you but also to expand the dimensions of time and space. (Kundalini Yoga School)

🌀In order to support a life that is intuitively guided, you must have the freedom to make mistakes, for it is this very freedom to make mistakes, and not be punished, that opens the higher centres of the brain to intuition. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀You are beautiful. (My beloved, she who must be heard, seen, loved; my oracle)