Sitting Tight

I took one of those talent assessments a few years ago and it indicated I have a strong bias for action. In other words, sitting still does not become me. Right now, I am on day three of hunkering…

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The Wedding Poem

Wedding bells have been in my ears for the last two weeks and now that the parties are finished it has been time for reflection, gratitude, and soaking up all the feelings of love from family and friends. I have been reflecting on all my family members and the new young children that were present at the wedding and festivities. Besides all the Hollywood and media hype and exposés about weddings, weddings are simply about the love of two people and getting both families together. Eating, drinking, and talking about everything. And I mean Everything…

I learned things about my daughter that, either I didn’t remember or I wasn’t aware of. It’s great how siblings and friends can enlighten both families about situations in grade school of the bride and groom that still bring laughter and soul searching memories flooding back. We all get to see and hear life time stories that bring a common bond to both families. Now, newly formed relationships have new insights, wonderings, and more deep reflections about things that happened to the young couple in their youth that we wonder why they did that, and why we didn’t do that in our younger years.

That’s why this week after the wedding has been full of deep reflections. I had some great conversations with the grooms family and in particular one grandfather named Jerry. He opened up with stories of his past that some of his closest family in the Midwest had never heard. He talked about his time in the Merchant Marine near San Francisco and later the Navy. All this flooding out for his new family members to hear. Weddings do this and we can all be grateful when this happens and we find out something new about our own children or the groom and his family. As parents we leave memories…

For me the memories will be about Jerry, how beautiful my daughter was in her wedding dress, and the stories told about the bride and groom at the reception. Other great stories were told over drinks at the dance which is always a full blown dance party with my family. Listening to my daughter and her husband the last few days after the wedding has been a flood of laughs about friends coming and going. About how things worked and didn’t work and about what to do with all the left over booze and food, Yikes…They are all priceless.

As humans we get to make weddings what we want. We can go to the courthouse and elope, have a small intimate group, invite everyone we know and pull out the checkbooks, or do it Hollywood style. It all depends on what we want, the cost, and logistics. Other cultures have more specific plans and models for weddings. And finally, the animal world is the most specific of all and requires mating dances, positioning, and certain practices that must be followed to consummate the so called wedding. We as humans get to observe, discuss, and decide about how weddings work or don’t work. We get to show up with our best self to take in all the love that is expressed and shed tears of joy and love for both families.

Its fascinating to me how we can mirror the natural world in our dating and relationship lives. The animal world has infinite ways of being in relationship from a life of minutes as in some insects to long years of partnership, as in the case of Sun Conures, Bald Eagles, Voles, Swans, and Wolves. Our culture seems to mimic this behavior from short lived relationships, to partners cancelling wedding plans, to living and being married a life time of years together, AND, everything in between.

One of my favorite love poems is “ The True Love,” written by David Whyte. It has a great feeling of longing for a partner, the years of struggle, doubt, and even fear of giving ourselves to another when we may not be sure of who we are ourselves. Yet there is an anticipation, a trust in our humanity that brings us to face our self trust that allows us to give ourselves away to another.

The poem I want to share is the poem I wrote for my daughter and her husband and read at their reception. I wrote it months before the wedding when a flash of insight came for the theme. This idea of self trust and self love and how it is important to feel this when you are approaching this Holy day of becoming one with another, is an important focus for the poem. Wrestling with theses questions brings life into sharp focus and you don’t want to fool yourself when you are at this edge in your life. For the wedding couple, I was able to witness a growth and maturation over a span of five to six years which revealed itself in the highs and lows of being in relationship.

We are here witnessing the love of two people,

loving themselves enough

to be in union with another

is testament to self-love.

That we love ourselves enough

to risk that bond with ourselves

to share that love born within, with another,

is a testament to our commitment

to love another as ourselves.

To bring that feeling of Loving another, to share

the Holy reason we are here on earth, to Love

and to learn about Love.

This commitment to explore who we are in another’s eyes.

To see our Love reflected in their eyes,

then knowing we are complete in our being

here, in this life, at this time.

At this Holy place, on this great Earth.

Being seen, we are made again,

being felt as pure love again,

as it was in the beginning, now and forever.

To be ourselves, the largest self we can imagine,

and meant to be.

For this love of self, and now the Love of another,

to take the next steps together,

in joy, love, sorrow, trust, and faith

as a belief in tomorrow, acknowledged today,

becoming one again today,

being one again today…

Now, creating as one

this life together,

bounded only by your shared vision,

to have and to hold,

everything together.

It was a special day and evening. It reminds me that this earth is special and our place on it is likewise special. Who knows how long our legacy will last. We hear old stories of Atlantis, the ice age, and how civilizations have been wiped completely off the earth and yet here we are raising families, building our dreams and working to out-last our dimming sun.

I watched the movie, “Interstellar,” last night (space travel and sci-fi are some of my favorites) and it is a compelling movie for me. Dealing with issues of gravity and propulsion in space and the effects on time in a black hole is dramatic. The characters are all dealing with intense pressures to get people back to earth and save people on the planet by transferring people to another star system. I’m glad we are not there yet. Interesting, though was a conversation that came up near the end of the movie and a character was postulating how Love could affect the transmission of information between people regardless of time or space between them. She was wondering if love is actually a substance or fabric that is more than an emotion or thought. Is love actually the web of life?

Is all of this sci-fi, or mumbo jumbo? I think not. These are questions the brightest minds have asked for centuries. We are only beginning to understand ourselves let alone the Universe. My bet is on love and the effects of love and how it is the greatest healing force in the Universe.

The early stone-age bushmen of Africa had one of the most intimate relationships with nature that I have heard of. They could hear the stars singing and the sun made a ringing sound to them. They understood the relationship between all animals and themselves and learned how to survive for a speck of time. They are able to understand the personality dynamics of animals and how they relate to the human dynamics we have with each other. To the Bushmen, each animal displays certain characteristics that can apply to humans. By watching and studying animals in their cosmology they are able to understand how the Universe works and how humans find their rightful place in the Universe. Have we forgotten how to listen to the universe we live in?

A wedding, a marriage, a family gathering is a testament to our learning about love. We see it, we feel it, and we experience it, now can we listen to it?

Create and be well,

Brian R. Martens

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Sitting Tight

The Wedding Poem

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