what is love?

We do not understand the Cross if we do not understand sin.
If we deny there is sin, the Cross loses its meaning.
That is why it is difficult in our time to speak about the Cross.
One no longer knows what sin is.
Fr. Wilfred Stinissen, OCD
from The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love

What is love?
Baby, don’t hurt me
Don’t hurt, me no more
Baby, don’t hurt me
Don’t hurt, me no more
What is love? Yeah
lyrics by Hadaway

This past weekend my husband and I had the privilege of attending not one but actually two
different weddings.

There was one on Saturday evening and one on Sunday evening.

The one on Saturday took place at a lovely and tranquil farm, turned wedding venue, located
out in the rural countryside of West Georgia where both bobwhite and songbird joined
cheerfully in with the festivities.

The second wedding was on Sunday evening and it was also at an outdoor venue tucked deep in the
West Georgia woods which overlooked the soft rolling green hills…this while rumbles of
distant thunder gently reverberated between the “I dos”.
The vows were stated in what was a state of the art horse paddock perched high above a peaceful
lake where we had all gathered due to the threat of rain.

Both officiants/ministers spoke a familiar theme…that being the theme of the day, love.

Saturday’s officiant, a college minister, actually called up Michael Curry by name, the now
“infamous” Episcopal cleric who was invited to speak at the Royal wedding.
This college minister invoked much of the same line of thinking as the Bishop’s
during the Royal wedding yet giving the obvious nod to the fact that this current
wedding was between a Kentucky boy and Georgia peach.

I found myself shifting a bit uncomfortably in my chair as the mockingbird
overhead began, as if on cue, to sing.
“Really?!” I was thinking to myself.
“Did he just really head in that direction right here, right now, in this
peaceful meadow setting!?”
The words I heard grousing from that little-unamused voice inside my head.

This college minister, who had been the minister of this young couple throughout their college
tenure, echoed much of what Bishop Curry had said to both Prince Harry and Megan Markle…
with that being the pure unbridled all-encompassing power of love…

And his take was very much the same as that of the bishop’s in that his offering was
the same notion of an idealized jumble of both romantic and erotic love which seems to be
able to carry one and all through a married life….but the thing is it won’t.

It is a type of love that is in actuality very fleeting.

His was the notion being that joy and celebration which is found in romantic love,
could carry a couple throughout a lifetime together while
forgetting that once the shine and glitter fade,
a couple would be left staring at one another wondering what’s next.

It is a current cultural notion of love that Bishop Gavin Ashenden notes as
“the more it glitters, the more it’s good.”

The second officiant at Sunday’s wedding also spoke of love.
Because what else brings us to a wedding but what we hope is indeed love?!

But rather than going on about all that glitters being gold, the officiant was rather more
matter of fact.
He noted that marriage is not the end but rather the beginning of the journey…
and it is not always going to be the smoothest or clearest of travels.

He reminded this couple, along with the rest of us,
that there will be times that things will be hard.
Times when that romantic love and erotic love will have long since faded.
Because of time, life and even the separation of distance due to life’s varying circumstances
will each interfere with that initial love of romance which had brought them
to this spot on this particular day in the first place…
he reminded all of us that it is at this point that love
usually has to roll up its sleeves.

He then had the couple do something I’ve never seen before and was unfamiliar with.

Obviously, days before the ceremony he had previously told both bride and groom to sit down
and write a letter to one another.
A letter about what their relationship meant to them and how and why it had brought them
to this particular place…the place of marriage and a day in which they would commit
themselves one to another.

There was a wooden box on the makeshift altar along with a bottle of wine.
He explained to all of us gathered how he had asked them to write the letters but that
the letters were sealed and they had not yet shared them with one another.
In front of all of us he asked them to take the sealed envelopes and place them into the box.
He then placed the bottle of wine in the box and sealed it all up.

He told us that tradition dictated that they were to,
in a year’s time on the day of their first anniversary, open the box,
read the letters and then make a toast to themselves.

But…

Should they, at any point before the year’s time had passed,
find themselves in a place of darkness, they were to open the box and read the letters.

I rather liked that idea.

Looking back…recalling my younger self, my very immature younger self, I know full well that
what I had was an idealized vision of what both marriage and love were all about.

I think the glitter wore off on the honeymoon when we were at the beach for a week…a place
I now know my husband of 35 years was none too keen to be.
But we were there because his sister told him that’s where we needed to go.
He had actually wanted to go out west.
If he had thought to ask me, I would have voted on out west.

But here’s the thing.
Relationships, loving, growing…
they all take learning.

It takes learning to know…learning in knowing to ask, learning how to ask, learning when to ask,
learning how to speak up, learning when to speak up, learning when to be quiet,
learning when to share and learning when to listen.

It is a journey of growth.

Relationships are hard.
Love is even harder.

I think of those song lyrics listed above…“baby don’t hurt me”
But the thing is Love does often hurt…
Just ask anyone who has ever lost a loved one and whose heart now aches.

Love is not glamorous nor is it that of a fairytale.
There is a reason we are asked “for richer and for pooer…in sickness and in health”

Poorer and sickness are both hard and painful.
They are not pleasant, fun nor easy.
They aren’t pretty to see, pleasant to hear nor are they, at times, easy to even smell.

Love can appear to be very ugly at times because life can be ugly…

But here’s the thing…
Love, that day on Golgotha, was not pretty.
It was painful, it was lonely, it was bloody and it was dying.
And yet that dying Love actually went to Hell in order to do battle.
It was love in its most pure and rawest form.

And the thing is, it won.

And so what we now know is that because of that Love, that battered and bruised Love,
our love today, when battered and beaten, can actually be cleaned up,
repolished and made anew.

It will not be easy.
Nor will it always be pretty…but in the end, it is well worth it.

Here’s to the happy couples!

Below is a link to a 5-minute interview between Rod Liddle, a jounalist for the Sunday Times,
and Bishop Gavin Ashenden regarding the Bishop’s concern from
the wedding speech now heard round the world.

Rod Liddle Interviews Gavin Ashenden in the Sunday Times – on the Wedding Sermon.

And also here is a link to the latest offering by our friend the Wee Flea as he provides us
with a breakdown of the same sermon and how it is now dividing Evangelical Christians.

How Bishop Curry’s Sermon Revealed the Four Evangelical Tribes

Submit yourselves, then, to God.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:7