Human connection is why we’re here.
Last week I went to my first French wedding and was exposed to a whole new kind of love. Of partnership between two people. In a pink suit and sun hat, the bride sparkled in the town hall (that really looked more like an art museum... France) and the groom looked like a modern movie star with peppered hair and cheeks touching his ears the entire day.
The civil ceremony took place at 11am with a crowd of family and friends. It was followed by a picnic in a public park out of every little girl’s fantasy: perfect sun glistening on a long orange blanket scattered across the green grass
Wine
Bread
Desserts and children filled the space along with laughter and sitting.
I don’t speak French, so between the sparse English conversations I had, questions between my two ears begged:
“What kind of partnership can exist without the mention of purity white?
Outside the realm of “until death do us part”.
With nothing borrowed, nothing blue?
No priest, no book other than the set of papers they signed and sealed with to the mayor who spoke so fondly of them (apparently. My boyfriend explained this to me in english)
I felt the vibrations in the room.
Not of rings and locks and keys -but of glistening eyes and choices. Religion was not present- at least not the kind I knew.
Love was.
And I've always thought they were the same thing.
As progressive as I’ve claimed to be as a fundamentalist-evangelical seminary drop out, my views on marriage have been challenged more in this country where freedom is ironically valued greater than the United States.
I've looked and found some of the most gorgeous of hearts simply by listening to my own, because communication is only 7% verbal. Whether we know it or not, we speak through our spirits. Not through our financial statuses or familial ties. So many of social relationships up to this point in my life have felt contractual; not by law, but by fear. I have been taught in the culture I grew up in that there is always fear of losing someone, as if anyone is yours to own in the first place. This false underlying narrative has been spoon-fed to me since I went through "True Love Waits” the famous purity workshop for teens made popular by the American Evangelical Church system in the west.
I’m not saying I disagree completely with the notion of Christian education in a sexual or relational sense.
I’m saying at the ripe age of I1, none of us really knew what the meaning of the ring we were putting on our left hand meant.
Maybe we believed not having sex with someone was God’s will for our lives— maybe we only believed what we were told— but regardless, the exposure to a “wiser”, older white man's opinion on the matter affected our psyches so deeply that perhaps to this day it is something I promise we all still subconsciously believe; or have to learn to un-believe.
I’ve learned from French people- whose country is ironically predominantly Catholic, that in Paris (and everywhere else I have been) love is a choice. Which to me, is what real Christianity at its core resounds.
Marriage and religion are not, at definition, required to contain love.
Relationships. Human Connection. Trust.
These are things that do require love.
At its origin, marriage is a contract.
As I mentioned, my parents have been married for almost double the time l've been alive. I've seen them laugh, cry and fight. Kiss, yell and grieve. And not once have I thoughts there’s a possibility they would split up. Leave one another and start a new life that would be happier than the one they were leaving behind. Because after all, they made a promise before God in a church in front of all their most trusted people that they'd be together until "death do them part. Through “better or worse."
And I’ve seen both.
We can all judge others relationships but we have a really hard time judging our own. I guess that's why I’ve always trusted religion to guide me— and 2.3 billion other people have too. Social Christianity (and many other religions) contain set of guidelines that works for a lot of people.
The rules on: how to date
how to formulate
access
judge
how another person operates have created “successful” partnerships for some.
But I think I’ve also seen these rules followed and fall apart. Christians or virtuous people who “do it all right" and still get cheated on or lied to or beaten or left. (The same with secular people; atheists and agnostics, regardless of how their moral compasses differ.)
So maybe the answer is in your chest, not your books. Not in your logic but in your soul. Not in your rules but in your freedom.
Are there any wrong choices in love - if that’s what love is after all?
A choice?