In their better moments, I dare say many folks would likely extend a more welcoming hand to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. But our mob mentality, especially prevalent in the institutional church, often disallows as much. The reasons for this are often touted as theological. However, I’d venture a guess that it is often much more likely to be a projection of misdirected self-loathing and fear at the easiest target du jour. Further, it is given credibility through bad, or at least popular, biblical hermeneutics (the paradigm and practices by which we understand something). Then, all is rubber-stamped by those who prescribe and hallow that same fear.
Many of the most vocal critics of alternate sexualities claim to know a gay person. I’d like to suggest that, given their predisposition toward raised-brow shock or squinty-eyed judgement of the same, this is highly unlikely. Sadly, the high degree of verbal and/or physical violence against these folks by such critics, renders them not particularly forthcoming with personal details that merely paint targets on their chests.
Therefore, the self-proclaimed prophets of righteousness toddle off into the fray, cherry-picked, ill-understood bible verses in hand, and “take a stand for Jesus.” All this while their gay “friends” are sidelined from the very same faith that calls them as does their accusers.
I’ll stop there because, when in doubt, ask someone who’s truly been there to better explain. Fellow Jesus-follower and blogger, Laura Jean Truman, recently posted this to her blog. The title alone gave me pause to consider.
Another Sunday opens her eyes, damp from night sweat, or the river of dreams. Sunrise, like incandescent eyelashes blinks away the previous day and lets dawn stretch her legs. The miniature Big Ben mantle clock I inherited from my Dad ticks stoically, chipping away the seconds that have become, inexplicably, piles of years; a woodpile of time-chopped memories too easily fuel for the fire. And ashes are but the monochrome of memory – something once hot, bright, robust.
I suppose writing is to throw another log on the fire. The words crackle and spit themselves out as the heat rises. Those are the welcome fires of tin-foil wrapped delicacies, roasted and rich, softer by the second.
Now, this day, here in my writing chair, I can serve up a few morsels, ready to taste. Two. Years. Two full years since an adventure got tucked away, folded inward to await the fires of remembrance. And, in that time, the process, not of decay, but of marination has occurred. Like a good chili, always better the next day.
And I’m starving!
Facebook memory pop-ups are a blessing and a curse. They can bring a happy smile of recognition; reminders of good times past with good people. A “curse” inasmuch as those reminders pinch the inner optic nerve with the liminal colour of what is no longer now, but then – sweet, savoury, overpowering.
Never is “a picture is worth a thousand words” truer than when reviewing pictures of magical moments, inaccessible by the senses; only through memory. The existential replaces the experiential and a tear is born.
Two years.
Just seeing those words side by side is unnerving. This time, two years ago, Rae and I had just returned from galavanting around the U.K., filling our boots with shenanigans of every sort. It was our fourth such journey. 1989. 1991. 2004.
Then, a 2016 whirlwind whack-a-mole through salad-bowl Welsh valleys, pulsating London streets, book-studded villages, swarthy Scottish Highlands, tidy bed ‘n breakfast cottages, seaside adventures, writing (always lots of writing); family and friends both old and new. I think my legs still hurt from trudging downtown London and rural Skye, lost much of the time (of course).
Time heals all wounds.
Only time will tell.
Just give it time.
It’s about time.
Time-out.
All in good time.
Running out of time.
We had a great time.
Time gets a lot of press, both good and bad. Likely because of its annoying persistence, an impatient ubiquity. It tick-tocks us into corners or shows up as an ally, all in the same day. We even honour it with a face and hands, and then entrust to it lists about which it cares little. And, just when we think we’ve earned its respect, it barfs in our lap the other side of the page we didn’t see coming.
To attend to these memories respective to our journey to the UK is to approach the unapproachable. I don’t believe rose-coloured glasses are involved here. Nor do I think it a distance-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder kind of thing. It’s much more than that.
I think the greatest impact of our time there wasn’t the allure of tourist traps or the necessary bling that accompanies them. It was, on one level, a homecoming. For Rae it was genuinely geographic. She was born there after all. Wales to be exact. For me? Existential.
As I’ve recently discovered, my very DNA hearkens from Scotland/Ireland. Ancestry and companies like it parade around biological allurements to family origin hungry types like me. I fell prey. In doing so, I discovered my patrimony, a host of living relatives, and the certainty of my own personal ancestry rooted deep in Celtic soil.
Given all that I’ve written, spoken, and warily discerned on the subject – a holy hunch, if you will – I was more surprised than I should have been. Apparently, it is one thing to guess at one’s place in the world. It is quite another to actually discover as much. Like the dog who catches the cat. So, what now?
More on that ride soon.
Reminiscing can take more than one form. Time is friend to one, foe to another. When we’re younger it’s common for us to remember everything in vivid detail and easily recount as much. Time is our friend.
But, as I grow older (along with everyone else), time grows restless. Not yet foe, but starting to act a little shifty – less trustworthy. And, like hair, teeth, balance and bladder control, memories disappear. They thin. Those garnishing details, enhancements, indispensable at the time, begin to drop away.
Once it begins, the connections between head and heart grow more tenuous. Colours fade to pastels, then to black and white, finally to retreat into a palette of grey ooze. Faces slip further back from the front of pictures until they disappear altogether and, soon, they become just another “somebody that I used to know” (thank you, Gotye).
Llanthony Priory, Wales
That is why I write. It is especially why I memoir. When memory ceases to recall details, setting, faces, connections, passions, tears, laughter, even rationale, there will be on paper at least one thread of a life lived. That life had adventure and discovery, not just existence. Proof of significance, a justifiable place in the world. A reminder not just to me, but to everyone that I was here. I had something to say. I had people I loved, who loved me back.
A journey, two years hence. I remember. One day I may not. That is why I write – to remember not to forget that one day I won’t remember.
What follows is a “bloggified” version of my sermon from last Sunday, June 3rd.
* * * * *
Today we begin our summer sermon series entitled “Defiance: Challenging the Norm.” We will focus on Jesus’ radical, counter-cultural life and the ways he defied social norms, religious traditions, and theological expectations. We’ll be using for this exploration the gospel of Mark.
Mark will reveal to us a Jesus offering hope for the abundant life, convincing people that he was the promised Messiah, spending time with disreputable people, challenging the social conventions of his day, healing, teaching, eating and drinking, praying, and teaching his disciples to do the same.
So, when we hear the word “defiance,” what comes to mind?
The stubborn two-year-old who sits pouting, arms folded, at the kitchen table because he didn’t get his way?
The angry teenager who shouts, “I hate you!” just before slamming shut her bedroom door?
That guy who insists on his right to walk through the shopping mall, teaming with families, with an open carry pistol?
Or, conversely, the PC police, social justice warrior who shouts down a speaker at a university campus because she disagrees with the message?
All of the above? None of the above?
Maybe this is what we think?People rising up against their oppressors. Jesus did that, although in subtle, subversive ways. And, he starts from the inside out. His weapons of choice? Love and his own life.
Or perhaps this?Pealing back lies to reveal truth. Jesus did that. “You have heard it said, but I tell you…” “I Am the way, the truth, and the life…”
Or maybe this?Alone, or together, having the courage to speak truth to power? Jesus did that, too. “Woe to you blind guides…” “You brood of vipers…” You know, the kind of things you say to your grandparents at family dinner.
How about this?Here we see Jesus turning over the tables of the money-changers. This is Jesus, in defiance of the business of faith: T-shirt, bumper-sticker religion.
The image we decided on for at least the first part of the series is this one.A little girl stands courageously against a raging bull. We see here the weak against the strong. The vulnerable against the bull-y (no extra charge for that one).
The dictionary defines “defiance” as follows:Let’s explore how this might apply to Jesus.
All four Gospels are unique. They are four unique authors speaking from unique perspectives saying unique things about the unique, but complex person of Jesus.
Matthew wrote primarily to the Jews. Matthew’s Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s covenant promise to Abraham and of all the Law and Prophets.
Luke, a doctor, presents us with Jesus, the son of Man, lover of the poor and downtrodden, the hated prodigals now welcomed into the presence of God through him.
John was the mystic. He was the closest friend of Jesus and had heard his very heartbeat. It has this scent of tender familiarity. John’s Jesus takes us deep into the loving heart of God.
And then there’s Mark.
In the space of fifteen verses we get:
The proclamation of a wild man – John the Baptist.
The baptism of Jesus in the Jordan.
A voice from heaven (freaky at the best of times).
The temptation of Jesus, who Mark says was “driven” into the wilderness.
The arrest of John. You know, the guy mentioned a couple sentences earlier!
And, the beginning of Jesus’ Galilean ministry!
Mark’s gospel reads like a Hollywood blockbuster that opens with a car chase. It’s the biblical equivalent of the Fast and Furious! He’s so excited to tell us about Jesus that he spares no time. He. Is. Focused. Let’s just git ‘r done!
My wife and I are both lit-geeks. But Rae is really more the story-teller. She says that, in any study of story, the question of pacing is incredibly important. Too fast and it can lack the heart, depth, and staying power of great storytelling. T o o s l o w and y o u r i s k l o s i n g y o u r audience.
Hence, even Mark’s very pacing teaches us. Something has happened that radically changes the way we look at and experience the world, and he can’t wait to tell us about it. There is no more waiting. It’s happening right here, right now, in real time. It is decisive, dramatic and begs a response.
But how does Mark’s Jesus illustrate defiance?
We can do that in a single verse. Mark 1:1 says,
“The beginning of the good newsof Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
How is this defiant, exactly? Well, this is a significant statement for many reasons.
What do we know of ancient Rome? It was a military occupation possessing a particular skill in “crowd control.” It was marked by its efficiency, technology, discipline, and finely-honed bureaucracy.
Rome was intimidating and ruled by means of the well-known adage – “the beatings shall continue until morale improves.” The Jews were all huddled up under the great shadow of Rome, longing for the promised Messiah to come and kick some Roman ass.
But what kind of Messiah did they get? Mark’s point is to convince them that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, just not in the sense they wanted him to be.
Let’s read that statement again:
“The beginning of the good newsof Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
You may recall that Herod considered Jesus such a threat that he slaughtered an entire generation of Hebrew children. What was he so afraid of?
A child, rumoured to be king of the Jews, would have posed no small threat to a bumbling narcissist like Herod (sound familiar?).
Many Roman Caesars believed themselves to be God incarnate, a notion they were only too happy to enforce. For anyone other than Caesar to make such a claim would have been foolhardy in the extreme. To the Romans, for Jesus to be described as “the Son of God” was not a theological matter. It was a political threat.
And, guess what form of death was designed specifically for political dissidents?
Crucifixion.
Mark’s opening statement therefore is already a dangerously defiant one!
This Messiah does not set out to conquer. He sets out to suffer that the notion of conquering might come to an end. He doesn’t conquer Rome. He conquers death at Rome’s hands, forgiving them the whole time.
A defiant bait ‘n switch if ever there was one! His non-violent love defied – said ‘no’ – to blind hate and aggression and, through death, led ultimately to the freedom of all.
Jesus defied hatred with love.
He defied exclusion with invitation.
He defied the misguided hope for military salvation (take note America) and brought instead, freedom from sin and death.
He defied the kingdom of Caesar with the kingdom of God.
He defied everyone’s expectations, trading pride for humility.
Jesus should have baptized others. Instead, he allowed John to baptize him.
Jesus, Lord of the wilderness is, himself, driven there to starve and face down the archetypal temptations we all face. Why? That he might truly be one of us, in every way.
Jesus could have ruled a heavenly army. Instead, he says “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
Let’s ask Mark to take us on a journey, shall we? A journey into the heart of God, a God who does not look like what we’d expect.
There are days in my marriage when I have wanted to travel back in time to May 14, 1988 and tell the starry-eyed bride I was then, STOP! Don’t do this!
Would I be the ghost of marriage, year eight, and tell her about the secret bank. Not the monetary kind, but one where resentments build with compound interest and low percentage-rate forgiveness that would make the next decade and beyond a tough slog?
Would I be the ghost of marriage, year seventeen, and tell her how her father’s death and career change and self-limiting beliefs would cause a two month separation?
Edinburgh, 1989
Would I tell her there would be temptation from other women and men, struggling in their own lives, that hint at an alternative?
Would I tell her she’d gain a lot of weight with food addictions and become unattractive, while he had set out to conquer his alcohol addictions?
Would I tell her that financial challenges and personal disappointments would make us feel trapped?
Or that I might make enemies with his friends and he with mine?
Or that one of us might behave badly in public and make the other squirm?
Do I tell my younger bride about children, and sleepless nights and teen-agers and drugs and worry?
Do I tell my younger bride that, often, she will feel more like an unpaid maid and nanny, and that romance was just for books and movies?
I could also time-travel back to December 28, 1986 and remember the night I knew I was going to marry him, even though we didn’t start dating for another three months.
He said a girl he recently dated was too perfect. He wished she’d spill or trip. Anything. In retrospect, he got way more than he wished for. I’m not exactly spill-proof and trip over unseen objects.
I could relive the kismet as we discovered a massive list of shared interests. The conversation was easy and our senses of humour played off each other—something that has sustained us for over thirty years.
I could compare him to previous dates I found stuffy or boring, or relive that epic second kiss we’ve recreated so many times.
I can still see the pipe band marching across his face when I told him I was born in Wales and loved Britain as much as he did.
Or I could tell her how five years before I met him, an English teacher read aloud the poetry of a former student. I was so impressed. I recall the political metaphor poem about the Beaver getting screwed by the Eagle (a Canada-USA relationship poem, obviously). I fell in love with his writing even before I fell in love with him.
By year twenty-four, this aging bride remembered the writing and coffee dates at University. The pair of them found expensive words they loved. They used them in papers, whether they fit or not.
She’s still easy prey for handsome men with big…vocabularies.
Indubitably.
Waimea Canyon, Hawaii, 2007
Today, I’d tell my younger bride, start writing your book in year one. Don’t wait until year twenty-four.
My year-twenty-four bride definitely didn’t want or expect to rediscover all those kismet-ty things that brought them together. But she valued his editing help and fell in love with him all over again.
Writer geeks together
I’d tell her to keep finding British shows to watch together. Make him playlists and new music, while also d.j.-ing road trips with all the classics. I’d tell her to travel to places you both love and go to concerts—like Coldplay at Wembley Stadium or U2 in Seattle.
Coldplay at Wembley Stadium, 2016
Today, she sits proudly on her bridal perch of thirty years. She’s thankful that this starry-eyed bride expected the tough times.
They wrote their vows from the book of Ruth, “may God deal with me be it ever so severely if anything but death separates you and I.” Harsh words. But it would seem they meant them. They agreed before they married that they’d prioritize marriage counselling if necessary.
Wise foresight. It’s been necessary. Several times. And I would tell that bride today, and every bride and groom, go for counselling.
Go alone.
Go together.
Just go. And keep finding things you love to do together. Most of all, trust in the power of redemption.
Today, I’d tell that bride. Do it again. He’s worth it.
On a windy Calgary day on May 14, 1988, I got married. Rae Kenny-Rife to be exact. If my math is correct (in these matters it’s best to be accurate), that makes 30 years.
Eyes, the gateway to the soul.Rae and I posing in her father’s living room (you’ll just have to forgive the mullet)
30 years.
30.
Years.
It feels strange just reading those words. A guy at my level of A.D.D. seldom manages 30 minutes at anything.
Rae, 30 years ago today (yummy)
That’s 360 months. 131,400 days. 7, 884, 000 minutes – well, you get the idea.
Marriage has been compared to many things.
The slow, arduous climb up a mountain, increasingly steep, and constantly threatened by dodgy weather.
Cool. Lots to see up here.
Wild, adrenaline-pumping, white water rapids.
YOLO.
A crazy carpet ride down an icy hill. Partners in guts and glory. Fellow felons of fun and frolic, as it were, gathering speed, danger, and panicked screams along the way.
Go for it. Whether by fall, splash, crash or slide, it’ll wrap up all too soon – sometimes with an uncomfortable bump at the bottom.
Besides, you can cry or laugh alongside someone who also pissed themself on the way down.
As fashionably 90s as one can be in a kilt.
We love to ask our elders, decades of partnership under their belts, “what’s your secret to success for a long and happy marriage?”
Of course, in the asking, we assume their marriage to be both “successful” and/or “happy,” whatever those ultimately mean.
Therefore, let me humbly suggest we begin with a satisfactory definition of terms. What do we mean by long, happy, and especially, successful? Is it successful only inasmuch as it is long and/or happy? Put another way, can short marriages also be defined as successful if they were happy most of the time? What about those decades-long marriages that, although long, were rarely happy? Are we to view those as successful as well? At the end of the day, is happiness or longevity the litmus test for a successful marriage?
On our Hawaiian Islands cruise, 2007
I could wax philosophical and ask whether Shakespearean star-struck gooeyness makes for good lovers (if so, hide the kitchen knives!). After all, who doesn’t love a good love story? That impossible pairing of impossible opposites who, against impossible odds, stumble into bliss together.
Nah.
Back to our aging honeymooners instead. Among the most common answers to the question are as follows:
Communication (including sex).
Laughter.
A sense of shared purpose.
Frugality and discipline.
Hard work and sacrifice.
Children.
Not children.
Regular date nights.
Bourbon…the list goes on.
To those staring at 50, 60 years or more, 30 years seems like a drop in the bucket. So what? They felt the same way as I many years ago.
30 years!
That’s a very long time and I’m proud of it. We’re proud of it. And, were someone to ask us our recipe for “success” I’d likely say, “I have absolutely no f**king idea!”
Communication. Let me land there for a minute or two. In any marriage, communication can mean many things. Lack of it might best be described as unseized potential for understanding. Maybe even happiness. Relationship carpe diem, missed.
At other times communication bubbles over like foam on warm beer.
Then, there are those times of steel-blue silence. Arms folded. Back against back. Eyes squinted and distrustful – what Canadian novelist Hugh MacLellan once called “the two solitudes.”
2016, Caerleon, Wales, UK
Communication. In 2012, following an extended period of marriage difficulties, in what could only be described as a blinding hurricane of sexual renaissance, we were reminded about the powerful communication that can happen in the sheets. You can speak in a thousand different ways, but the robust vulnerability of intense bodily contact places trust at a whole new level.
Oddly, it can also be the best form of deception. Merely sharing orgasm doth not a relationship make. (That said, what a great way to find out!)
No harm, no foul, right?
On its own however, it is insufficient. It pales to the much less glamorous task of authenticity and mutual openness. The gristle gained in the grind.
Sex can iron out wrinkles sufficiently to make relational garments fit better. It can oil the squeaky hinges on the door that opens outward to freedom, inward to contentment. It loosens up tongues, long silent, to reinitiate the project of bridge-building.
It can, in the words of Richard Rohr, take us to the temple gates, but only the vastly superior love of God can open those gates and escort us in. Something much greater than a post-coital daze is necessary to sustain a relationship through the long, rigorously demanding years of life.
And those years are often hurled at us like glass in a hurricane rather than gently lowered down in a tidy basket of fruit, smiles, and puppies.
Laugh I’d say. If you don’t know how, bloody well learn. Few things are as life-giving as gut-busting laughter. This we have done in spades. The girl is a walking party. She attracts mischief and gloriously infantile guffaws like scuffs on new shoes.
Laughter? Yeah, we’re pretty good at that bit.
30 years.
I wrote this on our 25th. Rae wrote this on our 26th. Now, on our 30th I add another 5. And, if someone felt the urge to ask me how we’ve managed this long – “what’s held it together? What’s the secret? How did you do it?” – I’d be hard-pressed to give a decent answer.
Was it the many times I could have more readily throttled her than cuddled her?
Was it the time we told each other to f**k off while losing control of Scottish teens at a church seaside games night?
Or, the screaming match in a church parking lot when I threw the car keys into traffic?
Was it the years we rarely touched each other?
The first or second time we separated?
Was it the nights, sometimes many, I decided to sleep elsewhere – anywhere else?
Was it those times I was so angry I couldn’t see straight or imagine another minute with her?
When the best remedy I could find was booze?
Or, was the nights, huddled under winter blankets, watching BBC together?
Our shared passion for justice, and distaste for ecclesiastical hypocrisy, and political bullshit (in America, those are the same thing)?
The Nirvana of a Welsh rain pouring restlessly over Tintern Abbey stone?
Tintern Abbey. No wonder it inspired Wordsworth so much.
Mutual lump-in-throat dry mouth, driving B roads in rural Britain?
Back roads, by way of example.
Our love for all things ancient and wonderfully impractical?
Those liturgical dates at a Taizé prayer service, an Anglican or Catholic Mass?
Antiquarian bookstores?
Well-honed inside jokes?
Favourite Spotify playlists containing everything from ABBA to Gregorian chant?
Writing dates at oceanview cafés?
The embarrassing hilarity of late middle-age sex?
The shared writing of a symphony, Opus 1 (Calum) and Opus 2 (Graeme)?
Yes. All of it and more. It’s been bliss at times, shit at others.
But, it’s our shit. The shit we know. The shit we’ve weathered together.
30 years and I’m still horrified at the sheer level of commitment required. I still blanche at the profundities of this whole deal – the distance there can be between contentment and chaos. How contentment, however spotty, gives perspective to said chaos.
Mostly, how God has managed to help us smell like roses in a sea of self-inflicted shit.
1989. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. Rae, looking like a 1940s starlet!
If a “successful” marriage, whether long or short, happy or not, is one characterized by awareness of its failures, but possessing a desire to deal with them, we likely fit the bill.
If “happy” simply means more sunlight than shadow, more gratitude than regret, more genuine than shallow, more honest than projected, more lived than protected, we likely fit the bill.
30 years.
25 + 5 = 30.
For me, it equals quiet satisfaction.
Happy Anniversary, babe. Let’s keep adding numbers until we forget we were adding numbers.
Once it begins, the connections between head and heart grow more tenuous. Colours fade to pastels, then to black and white, finally to retreat into a palette of grey ooze. Faces slip further back from the front of pictures until they disappear altogether and, soon, they become just another “somebody that I used to know” (thank you, 
Pealing back lies to reveal truth. Jesus did that. “You have heard it said, but I tell you…” “I Am the way, the truth, and the life…”
innerwoven 