junkmail for blankets

epistolary, for the occasion of Andrew's rehearsal dinner, April 20, 2007

Andrew,

I'm in the car. A road trip to you. For several hours on this trip I've thought about you, told Peter and Melanie some stories. I can't remember now, sincerely, how many of the details are you and how many my memories of you. The road tends to do this, to simultaneously bring out story and reveal longing--what our hearts wish to be true. I think sometimes the road has a mysterious ability to settle us. There's a point in the trip at which your body begins to receive its surroundings, settle into the seat and accept the horizon as true, as both elusive and imminent. Your fingers unfold, tap a bit, perhaps; you stop rehearsing timetables and route numbers; you're moving toward more than away from. That feeling, I think, is something akin to sincerity.

I've spent this week remembering you. I told Peter today that of all the snapshots and roadside attractions (ANDY--World's Largest Collection of Corporate Sponsored Logo Polo Shirts--5 EXITS!) of you that I carry with me, there's one that has continuously flagged me down this week. For your sake, I'll spare the setting, rising action, and climax and look to resolution: I'm in my car outside Old Navy, waiting. The store doors howl open. Brent runs out the doors. He's laughing, laughing while running. Before the doors have a chance to close, you appear, something between sprinting, flailing, and falling (I'm picturing now the Gerasene demoniac approaching Jesus). Brent jumps into the car. You soon follow, less frothy now. I'm laughing and don't know why, like a two year-old with a Christmas gift he doesn't comprehend, but he knows it's Christmas.

Why this particular moment? What happened inside Old Navy is the exciting part, but my memory keeps giving me the outside moment. What does it mean? I'm not sure yet, but I am fairly certain what that moment isn't about. It's not about your chasing men, I'm certain. Nor is it about your aversion to fashion, though the part of me that desires easy resolution is tempted by that option, wants to say it's because you were shopping for a new pair of jeans, a departure from your perennially out-of-fit red sweatpants, and to compare your marriage to finding the right jeans, but then I'm comparing your fiance to the most mundane, common garment in the western world, which is better than socks, but still. No, there's something else there.

I've been married just long enough that I should withhold any marital wisdom I might pretend to possess. But I will say this, as it was told to me. If nothing else, let tomorrow be an irony-free moment. I mentioned this to you a few days ago; I've since been thinking about it. What does it mean, "irony-free"? Free from what? To what? Perhaps we turn to irony when we don't want to receive reality on God's terms. So that to be irony-free means to unfold your fingers, your heart, and receive this gift. If I know nothing else, I know marriage, parallel to its delights, to be a constant struggle to receive--my wife, her generosity, God in her, God's reality, story and longing, the horizon. Maybe the road, after all, strips us of irony, settles us toward more than away from.

. . .

And it's coming now, near the end of this trip, why that moment outside Old Navy keeps tapping on me. It's such a singular rarity of all our moments together. For all the joking and kidding and sincere hardships you've endured (at the hands of me and Brent and even your own body), that was the one time you even noticeably, though half-heartedly and humorously, took matters into vengeful hands. I noticed and remembered it as a rarity because no one I know opens his hands and heart so sincerely as you, is willing to receive both just and unjust, as you, with such settled assurance. What wisdom I have in this area I owe largely to you. You are willing to receive God's reality because you're willing to live with both the elusive and the imminent, both the story and the longing, what is and what you wish to be--you open your hands and receive because you know your hands are, finally, not your own: inexplicably, your hands are in God's hands. As we've traveled together--St. Louis, Memphis, now Nashville--you have taught me sincerity, open-handedness, the gift of receiving: how to travel. Thank you.

Receive tomorrow with gratitude; receive your wife tomorrow and the next day with the hands of God; receive compliment, story, inexplicable sorrow; receive both the beautiful scenery and the difficult stretches of your marriage with the assurance that though God be genuinely elusive, He is no less imminent. It is no irony, but it is a mystery.

Godspeed, friend, and traveling mercies.

(other rehearsal dinner essays: 1, 2, 3)

Posted by ghetto monk at April 24, 2007 12:18 PM | TrackBack