junkmail for blankets

wedding oils

sorry for the lack of new posts, friends. last two weeks of school. i want to get in my car and find a metaphor and go hide in it for a while. on the subject of metaphors, i've been thinking about my married friends. below is one of the "speeches" i had the privilege of giving at a friend's wedding (names changed to protect people, etc).

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Maybe it would be appropriate to start with a prayer. I have stolen this prayer from my friend Jon Barlow's four-year-old son: "Father, help Jesus to give me the bread to eat and pour the grape into cups and put them in the holes and help me not to fall out of bed . . . ."

After talking with you the last few days, Pete, I imagine the request simply to not fall out of bed resonates well. Finley, you feel this, as well, and you could add a request for Jesus to help you mop up your blessing.

To fill the rest of you in, I was over at Pete and Finley's new apartment about a week ago. Finley had recently received, from her friend Cara, a beautiful gift: In the spirit of Elijah, Cara filled a jar full of oil and gave it to Finley. Affixed to it was a note explaining the story of Elijah and the widow’s oil. If the widow trusted that this man were sent from God, and that the oil were a symbol of his blessing, then the oil wouldn’t run out, and, thus, she would always be blessed. It was a lovely gesture from Cara, and though she’s no prophet in the sackcloth-and-ashes sense, surely there was blessing in the act.

Pete and I were standing on the back porch, eating granola or doing something healthy like that, I'm sure, when we heard a muffled half-laugh, half uh-oh from the kitchen. Pete put out his granola and went into the kitchen, where he found Finley’s blessing dripping down the sides of the cupboard and onto the countertop, and I watched Pete and Finley trying to salvage their blessing with Bounty.

I don’t know whether this is a metaphor for your future married life. I have been trying to avoid this whole metaphor-for-my-life thing altogether, though we, Pete, have done our share of explaining our lives in pictures.

We did not consider them pictures at the time, though God knows, literally, how often we have turned our future married lives to metaphor. We have imaged, projected, sketched what our wives would be like; we have cut and pasted and tried to color in the lines. And we have known all along that it’s so much easier and safer this way, when we ourselves are not on the page, and when we can erase our mistakes. In this sense, when you make your vows tomorrow, you’re promising to hand your pencil box to God, to sit still long enough to let him draw you and your wife as he’d like. God knows it will be hard for the both of you.

And what of the vows you will be taking tomorrow? Here’s the picture I have. Actually, you gave me this picture, probably without realizing it. A few nights ago, you said that when you and Finley struggle with something, with anything, really, that the only thing to do to bridge the distance is to lay your crap on the table and walk through it. Picture that literally for a moment. Sure, this image likely won’t show up on the 2004 Thomas Kincade calendar, but it will show up often in my mental picture box. Because when I heard that, I heard covenant; I heard God making a vow with and for Abraham, God laying down two rows of death and stench, and Abraham walking through it. And the beauty of it is that even though it wasn’t God’s crap—in fact, it was Abraham’s, mine, and yours—God himself was the first to walk through our crap; so though you will make one vow tomorrow, your life together will be a continual laying down and walking through, and the only thing that will make it palatable is that God has and will continue to walk before you. You are not just promising to love in sickness and health and those other things; more importantly, you are promising to take Finley’s hand and follow God through your own crap—it will be dirty for a time, but the day is drawing near when he will finally make you clean, erase the filth and grime, color you with a white that even Crayola couldn’t imagine.

That is your vow, and here is mine. Many of you don’t know this, but Pete and I haven’t always been friends. Before he got engaged, before he took me and Ben highway sledding in the van, and before I started writing and moved in on the girl he had been interested in, Pete didn’t like me very much, which led me to think, naturally, that maybe I didn’t like him. After many months of this mutual unliking, Pete asked me to go eat lunch with him. I wasn’t sure why he would do such a thing, though I imagined that a public scene was in the causing.

We went to the Mongolian BBQ on Olive Road, where you get to pick your raw meat out of a lineup and pour oil on it. We sat in a booth, small talked for a few minutes, trying to muster up courage to speak our reasons, and Pete poured his heart out to me, repented, and, thus, named me his friend. And this is what he did. He considered my heart, he recognized that it hurt more deeply than either of us could put into words, and he did the only thing he could: He decided that he would not hold my sins against me, and that he, whose own heart was drying out from bitterness, would quit holding his sins against me. He put courage into me, courage I needed to speak words of healing myself, to pour out oils of blessing into others’ parched hearts, and I wished at that moment that I could be more like him.

This is the vow that I have been speaking silently over the years, that I would be more like Pete, specifically in his encouragement.

Over the last few years, through all of my pain, questions, struggles, with both God and girls (not easily delineated), Pete has refused to give me answers; rather, he has given me what I’ve needed, only to say that “I know you hurt. And I care. And whatever you choose to do, I love you.” He has convinced me that death and life are, truly, in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. He has taken to heart the admonition to encourage one another as the day draws near. He has refused, in my pain, to try and throw me pep rallies for Jesus. By his words, he has encouraged me to believe that not only does he not hold my sins against me, but that God himself does not hold them against me. His words have pictured this for me: He does not hold my sins against me. He does not hold my sins against me.

Pete and Finley, but Pete especially, we both know that marriage will be difficult, and that you will be difficult, and that you will sin greatly, and that your heart will at times dry out for bitterness. You will not think of me every day during your married life, certainly not during your honeymoon, and appropriately so, but in my absence, I encourage you to tell yourself what you tell me. He does not hold your sins against you. He does not hold your sins against you. You are free to not hold Finley’s sins against her. When you come home from a crappy day at work, and Finley doesn’t comfort you the way you had pictured, you must not hold it against her. Finley, when Pete tends to his sexual needs before yours, you must not hold his sins against him. Ten years from now or this weekend on your honeymoon, drown each other in grace, let the oil break and flow and drip all over each other—use your tongues well and wisely—death and life are in its power. In this, you will sketch God’s grace for each other, and spill it as often as you will, it is endless. Go ahead, try and use it up. He’s got a bounty of blessing. He’s got more blessing than you’ve ever imagined. He will give you his bread to eat and pour his grape into the cup and help you put it into the hole and help you not to fall out of the bed.

I have no illusions. Our friendship will be different. The pictures will change. The day is drawing near, yes, but today, I know that with the blessing there is still our crap, and you will continue to hurt. Know that I care, and that whatever you choose to do, I love you.

Posted by ghetto monk at March 3, 2004 08:43 PM | TrackBack