But I really can't tell you now.
Ask me again in 70 years
and in 70 years I will have become
my answer. My answer is not full yet
and my preamble began the day I said,
"I do."
I do what?
I do what I am;
I am a husband
and I am learning to be
this to one wife.
I made a choice,
one so far beyond me,
and now I am learning
all that choice fully means.
And in seventy years
I will know the meaning of that choice,
the choice I make everyday
to be and to become
a husband, the husband of one wife.
"I do,"
is a threshold,
it is the doorway we enter through,
it is the first day of a life-long journey
to become an answer, a message.
And, right now, I am a year and a half
into my answer. And I have so much to say,
though I am like a planet growing.
And in 70 years, the mass of me
will have increased exponentially,
if I continue becoming an answer
(and I will), and then you will know me,
you will feel my gravity.
And we are all talking
(yap yap yap yap yap)
about one man and one woman,
about freedom and choice and preference
and history and precedence
but the answer is not in any of these things.
The answer is in the narrative arc of our lives.
For, as Solomon wrote,
"there is a way that seems right to man
but in the end it leads to death."
So celebrate and eat and drink
but just remember
things are not always as they seem.
And SEEMING is too easy,
but BEING is hard work
and it will take you at least 70 years.
In the meantime,
make and pass laws
and then overturn them and sue,
make and consume TV shows,
let right and wrong wrestle on HBO.
But that is all SEEMING,
all that is much more like sand dunes
in a desert, constantly changing
and being shaped by the wind.
And BEING begins at home,
where families create culture
and dream of destinies which become the bedrock,
either of answers
or the loneliness unanswered questions bring.
But I will be an end of loneliness,
as my gravity grows,
and in 70 years you will recognize me
that I have been pulling on you all along.
And then you will be able to see
into my eyes and my eyes will tell you the answer.
Is marriage only between one man and one woman?
And you will look into eyes
that have become gentle and pure
(the kind of gentle purity that takes 70 years).
Then you will know the answer
and it will be like the first phrases
being sung by a choir you did not know was there.
And the melody of the song begins
to wrap itself around us
and dress the wounds of our souls.
It is a song of healing, of gravity,
of answers to the questions
that had eroded our hope.
In the song is THE YES,
the only YES,
that, when we hear it, we will know,
and we will sing,
"...at the beginning of creation
God 'made them male and female.'
'For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother
and be united to his wife,
and the two will become one flesh.'
So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together,
let no one separate."
