A Month of Weddings
Yesterday closed out August, the first month of marriage equality in Minnesota. Fittingly, I saw it out just as I entered it in: officiating at a lesbian wedding. As I have stood before dozens of couples this month, and as I have sat in the chairs weeping for friends, I have a couple of thoughts about pastoral pieces that I think should be included in same sex weddings, at least where the law has recently changed towards marriage equality.
First, in each case there are people who love the brides, or the grooms, who are not ready yet to embrace this notion of marriage equality, and are thus not present to celebrate. I acknowledge that their love is real, none-the-less, and that we at the ceremony pray for the day when all will celebrate love, and join in witnessing same sex couples’ marriage vows. However, in the meantime, we appreciate the integrity and authenticity of those who chose not to attend, and know that they love the couple none-the-less.
This is important because in many cases there will be many conspicuous absences of key family members. Differences in family views were most evident when I officiated at the wedding of Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s lesbian stepsister, (See http://www.patheos.com/blogs/uucollective/2013/08/forty-seven-weddings-and-a-funeral/) but they have been somewhat present in every same sex wedding I witnessed last month. Family gossip lines being what they are, I am fairly confident that word of this naming and inclusion will reach the absent members at some point.
Second, because we have not yet reached a place of universal agreement about the blessing that these weddings bring to our wider community, I urge all who attend, particularly straight allies, to go back to work or neighborhood barbecues, and describe what they witnessed at the wedding. Describe the years that this couple has been together, the love that was evidenced at the service, how good it felt for people to be there, gay and straight alike. How, in fact, it strengthened participants’ own commitments to their spouses.
This is important because our campaign for marriage equality was story-driven, based on reflections of personal relationships with or on the lived experiences of gay and lesbian couples. Though the campaign for 51% of the vote is over, to reach the 80 or 90 percent of support which will ultimately bring us together, the storytelling must continue. People who voted against marriage equality need to hear about how it is actually impacting the people around them, to balance and ultimately dissolve the horror stories of mayhem and destruction of heterosexual marriage which they have heard.
Finally, I have remarked in each ceremony I’ve officiated (tip o’ the hat to my friend Kate Tucker for this frame) that, when couples have been together for decades faithfully and loyally, we are actually present to witness vows between them and the State of Minnesota as much as or more than vows between the couple. The State of Minnesota, finally, has stepped forward with a commitment to support same-sex couples for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part—by providing social security benefits and tax benefits, access to health care and hospital beds, and all of the ease which heterosexual couples expect in the aftermath of the death of their beloved—beginning with access to the body itself, and extending out to inheritance rights, and decisions about the funeral.
The first month is over, but the struggle for marriage equality continues, even as the IRS declares that married couples anywhere can file joint federal taxes. Until the patchwork of equality and inequality tips into a nation where couples don’t need to fearfully pack marriage certificates in their luggage when they travel across state lines, we have our work to do.
Meanwhile, mazel tov to all of the newly married couples in Minnesota and other states this month. Though some of us older folks might grumble that we feel as if we’re in our late twenties again, with weddings every weekend, the joy in the grumbling is readily evident. Finally, we’re being treated as adults!
September = Back to….
photo by Jenna Starr
It’s September, pretty much, and all-the-sudden. I feel the lure of “back-to-school” as surely as the tide pulls the sea back towards the glimmering moon. But I am not going back-to-school, I haven’t gone back-to-school in September for years. Isn’t it amazing, how integrated into our systems is the seasonal rhythm of our lives and our (cultural? national? sociological?) rituals? So many of us are not going back-to-school, and yet September still has a pull, a bittersweetness. The fresh calendar page of September can be a prodding, subtle messenger of transition and shifting, of return and newness, both. What will this year hold? Who will be in our circle, who will we be and who will we see in our lives, the way most of us once did when we gathered in something like “Homeroom”?
I took a 1/4-time job recently, coordinating the Coming of Age program for a thriving local humanist congregation, and it’s fascinating to me how delighted I am to be working again. Just that much: 10 hours a week or so, just a bit, and that is plenty for me and my family right now as far as my more spread-out energies — but it is also just enough to feel a part of something beyond our family, a part of a community and of the flow of the year, the year that involves returning, as we do, to our communities and routines, at the end of the summer.
I know there will still be some more hot, summery days here in D.C. I know that I have lots and lots of sometimes-tedious, sometimes-luscious unscheduled days with our Little Bean ahead. I know that there are many other people out there whose lives don’t shift all that much with the turning of the calendar page. I know I now have more of the juggling to do — life and home, household chores and work responsibilities, the daily tasks and the larger witnessing to the world and acting as best as I can. It actually matters again that I check my e-mail at least every day. And, what I notice most is that having a foot dangling in the water of our larger world is surprisingly exhilarating to me. I feel like I am more a part of the stream of life. As things get going, as all the “back-to-school” energy picks up around us, with students in school uniforms making their way in this direction and that, with school buses suddenly popping up again in front of me at every stoplight, I feel glad and grateful to be a part of that stream, in my own way, part of a community of people who observes the turning already of just a few leaves and feels the certain calling of fall.
Welcome To This Broken World, Sweetheart (2013)
photo by Jenna Starr
Amid the commotion of our family’s ordinary daily lives, I do pay some attention to the news. The violence in Egypt this week is particularly heartbreaking to observe. The rows of bodies — mostly young men — waiting and waiting in the Cairo heat for a proper burial…that image, along with the one of an elderly woman trying to stop a bulldozer from plowing over an injured young man…those images have lingered in my mind all day today. Meanwhile, there are a thousand tasks to attend to, toys and crumbs and, who-am-I-kidding, whole meals to pick up off the floor as we scurry about just trying to keep up with laundry and dishes and stay thirty seconds ahead of our energetic, feisty toddler.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to think carefully, at length and without interruption, about the whole big decision to bring a child into this broken world, but I do still think about it now-and-then. What is this place where there are simultaneously so many countless joys and delights and equally countless ways to be hurt and to hurt each other? Someday before too too long, she will start noticing things, she will start asking questions. There is so much pain in this world, so many ways that people are brutal to each other, often right in front of our eyes.
At one of our regular museum play areas this week, I spent some time observing the way the kids a few years older than our Little Bean interacted with her. I noticed that most of them, regardless of race or age, seemed threatened by her, this baby who they assumed was going to “knock down [their] tower,” “get in [my] way,” or “play with [my(!)] toy.” One little girl, probably 4 years old or so, kept moving to sit in the little chair that our Bean was clearly interested in sitting in, and then occupying it for as long as Bean was in the vicinity. I could only surmise that something about power was going on here. Here was a baby that either reminded some of these kids of a younger sibling who’d bothered them in the past, or who was clearly a less powerful being that they could exert their power over (or both). It was disconcerting to watch. Is this how we instinctively are with each other? I’ve noticed that older kids — 9, 10, 11 years old and older — seem to “get over” this competition-with-the-baby thing and are interested in playing with her at her level, so I’m relieved to see that. But I continue to mull on what it means to be a Little Person in this world, and what we are letting our children experience when we don’t pay attention.
There was a piece back in July on The Kojo Nnamdi Show that I happened to hear most of while I was in the car running errands, and it has stayed with me; it’s worth a reading of the transcript, particularly if you have more than one young child at home. One of the insights expressed on the show by Dr. Joseph Wright was that “There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that risk for depression, suicidal ideation are linked to the unattended impact of behavioral aggression in young children.” Watching the kids at the museum this week reminded me of this radio discussion so much I wanted to share it with some of the other parents who were there…but all the parents that afternoon looked so dazed and exhausted, spacing out on their smartphones while their kids romped and sometimes screamed at each other…well, it’s hard to exactly know when to make an issue of something. I am learning to observe, to gently explain to our Little Bean what I see going on if she seems confused, and otherwise, to let her play, while she enjoys just playing. She doesn’t seem to take it at all personally yet when a kid runs in the other direction rather than playing with her, or doesn’t play particularly nicely; she still has so, so much to learn and experience about how all people, of all ages, are. She gravitates towards the ones who smile at her, usually adults who look like her Grandma R. And for right now, that’s just fine. That’s all she needs to focus on for now — who is kind to her, who will help her get what she needs and wants, who will listen to her and help her as she struggles and strives to communicate. Some people do, and some people don’t. For now, I’m standing by, watching, learning from the kids a few years older about what our Bean will someday be experiencing and expressing herself, and pondering how to guide our beloved child into this world where so much more love, healing, attention and understanding are needed.
Forty Seven Weddings and a Funeral
It’s been almost a week now, but I’m still internalizing the seismic change taking place in Minnesota. Love is the Law! It all began at midnight on August 1…
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak presided over forty six weddings at City Hall in the wee hours of Thursday, August 1, beginning at 12:01 AM. By turns laughing and crying, he said over and over that these couples were now lawfully married. Watching those weddings of total strangers, I cried several times myself, and laughed a good bit too.
I didn’t burst into tears (as I feared I would) at the legalization of a longstanding partnership that I officiated on August 2, but I did later, driving on a suburban street, when I remembered the moment. What joy to look out at the faces of two women who have stood by each other for a quarter of a century and say, “I now pronounce you legally wed.” What joy in the faces of their relatives and friends gathered by the banks of the beautiful Mississippi in a small informal ceremony in Red Wing, Minnesota. (Here’s a short video piece of that moment, excerpted from a longer video of the wedding by Helen’s brother, Chaunce Stanton:)
Of course, it’s never that simple. Every wedding brings with it the ghosts of those who are not there, whether they are deceased or simply absent. For Nia and Helen, there were large gaps in the family fabric, perhaps not surprising considering that Helen’s stepsister is the aggressively homophobic Rep. Michelle Bachmann. This made the wedding planning both joyful and sorrowful. In our preparatory meetings, as with the other lesbian couples I’m working with on weddings this month, we talked about invitations sadly not issued, or refusals sadly received.
As Helen’s brother Mike said in a toast, Nia and Helen have been models of restraint and respect through this entire battle for equality in Minnesota. It was out of respect for Helen that wedding guests at my table did not lift up a loud toast to Michelle, stating that without her we never would have reached this day.
And yet, that’s pretty accurate. Before heading off for the nation’s capitol, Minnesota State Rep. Michelle Bachmann repeatedly spearheaded the addition of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman. The amendment never got on the ballot when the DFL was the majority, but as soon as Republicans controlled the legislature, after Michelle had moved on to bigger things, they moved forward quickly with it. And, while previously the DFL had held both houses, they were always hesitant and nervous when approached by GLBT advocates to move much of anything forward that was supportive of domestic partnership. Marriage equality would have been out of the question.
Then came the 18 month campaign, based in honest conversations with 27,000 regular Minnesotans involved. Minnesotans defeated the Constitutional amendment, and brought the DFL back into leadership of both houses. After that, DFL leaders were willing to move ahead with marriage equality. Eventually, a few brave Republicans crossed over, and both houses voted yes. And now, here we are, one of the 13 states where folks like Nia and Helen can quit worrying about caring for each other in their old age, and having access for hospital visits, and creating wills that try to assert that they are in fact related. Folks can get on with life! Hopefully we can move on with progressive movement in other arenas—jobs , housing, good education for all.
Which brings me to the one funeral I attended last week, also on August 1. It was for Ron McKinley, a prominent Native American philanthropist, educator, and activist. Hundreds of people of every conceivable culture, race, religion, age, ability, gender, and sexual orientation gazed out over Como Lake Thursday morning, some of us bleary eyed from watching weddings in the wee hours of the morn. I knew Ron only tangentially but know and love some of his family well. We heard testimonies and stories of joy, love, commitment, and wisdom in a life cut tragically short in a motorcycle accident. Several of the speakers commented on how much Ron would have loved the event, and how much the gathered crowd was in fact his legacy. It was an awe-inspiring legacy to me.
If weddings cause all present to re-examine our own relationships, funerals prod those of us outside the most intense sphere of grief to reflect on how well we are living out our life’s purpose. Ron’s memorial service certainly did that for me. As much as the weddings celebrate love and commitment, so I hope do our lives beyond that intimate partner.
So here is my toast: May marriage equality be one more step on our path towards a world where every person, no matter what, is equally valued, supported, and loved, until death do us part.
Into the Summer Daze
photo by Heather Rion Starr
We want summer to be leisurely. We want it to be restful. We want it to involve sandals, long meandering days, the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass, a steady stream of lemonade or ice tea.
We don’t, usually, want it to involve more to-do lists and travel details than the winter holidays. And most of us don’t want it to fly by, though we all acknowledge that it does.
What is just one of your hopes for the summer months? I am asking myself and my family that question these days, as we charge full-bore into a busy summer. I suppose it will fly by, but I am not at all a hot-weather person and I live in Washington D.C., so it’s just fine with me if it at least scoots along pretty quickly. I am looking forward to particular moments of various trips—moments I can already imagine myself wanting to freeze and grasp and hold. And I am also a little overwhelmed by all the details of traveling with a toddler. “It’s an adventure, it’s an adventure, it’s an adventure,” I keep telling myself, but if every day is an adventure, when do we get to relax? In the hubbub of summer activities, when and how will we pause and breathe and do what feels most summery to me: savor our lives, in all their fullness?
Photographs are one way that I savor the beautiful moments—I love taking photos and I love going over them, looking through them again and again, making cards and books from them. I’d like to figure out some other, more familial, interactive ways to pause and savor together as a family and as the groups of families, friends, colleagues and communities that we will be dancing in-and-out of this summer. What do you do to savor the summer?
Who Decides What Is “Value-Added?”
For whatever reasons having to do with time but also interest, I am the one in our family who sits down and pays the bills. I like doing it. I get a feeling of satisfaction from being able to pay the bills, a sense of security and peace of mind, however ephemeral, that we were able to cover our expenses for another month. So perhaps that explains the somewhat-embarrassing and totally obvious revelation that crossed my mind recently—a complete sentence which I almost, but thankfully did not, say out loud—“We are not making any money on this venture.”
By this venture I suppose I meant “our life right now,” in sum. Living in Washington D.C., in the District so that it’s easier for us to get around and my partner can (and does) often bike to work. Having and raising a child, and my staying-at-home for the moment as we adjust to all the new responsibilities and tasks of parenting. As happens to everyone in some way at some point, we’ve also had or will soon have a series of additional complications and expenses this year–unexpected hospitalizations for our kid, a cross-country move, legal fees for same-sex co-parent adoption, dental expenses for me, a much-needed new computer, and so on. We are so not making any money on this whole “life” venture at the moment.
Maybe that’s why the phrase “value-added” got stuck in my head earlier this week. I’ve overheard it a bunch, on the radio and I’m not sure where all else, but it’s out there, this phrase. What does it really mean? Who decides what has value? In our home, we mostly do, though it’s far too easy for other people’s opinions, values, judgments, and commentary to influence our own thinking. We’re human, after all, we are part of communities that we value and learn from, are inspired by and sometimes stressed out by (as in, we “should” think about moving into a bigger place soon, or “really we should have our kid in daycare for socialization and optimal learning” and so on and on). I’m as susceptible as anyone to this stuff—perhaps more than most. So I find myself this week stewing on this phrase “value-added,” mulling it over in my mind, trying to get a handle once again on who’s in charge around here. Am I deciding what has value in my life, or am I framing and highlighting (and judging and doubting) particular aspects of my life because others have impressed upon me that that’s what has (or doesn’t have) the most value?
My grandfather used to pick me up at my mom’s house when I was little girl and and say that he had $20. Then he’d ask me: “Should we buy a hamburger with it, or put it in your college savings account?” I was six or seven years old. I always knew what the right answer was, and also that we’d probably get to stop at McDonald’s too. I loved, loved, loved going to McDonald’s when I was a kid for “2 cheeseburgers, please, small fries, and what’s your special shake?” Back then, McDonald’s had a different “special shake” flavor every day–banana and peanut butter were my favorites, egg nog at Christmastime. Back then, knowing about their special shake, having that routine with my grandparents, and being able to choose for myself: that was what I valued.
These days are not all that different. Though I’m no longer a McDonald’s regular, I still value knowing my favorite things at neighborhood establishments, knowing the storekeepers, knowing my neighbors, being a part of a community. I still value having a routine and I still value being able to choose for myself. I am certainly grateful to be able to stay home with our Little Bean, even though I am truly exhausted some days and I do wonder if it’s really worth it. Does it really matter if I’m the one who reads to her, plays with her, changes her diaper or cleans up her mealtime messes? As she becomes more and more self-assured, I can see already that it does matter, that we are teaching her, in the ways we’ve best figured out that are doable for us, that she can trust us and trust the world, at least the world she’s interacted with so far.
I am fascinated, this week, by the way economic terms infiltrate our day-to-day language. Just in this post, I see the words and ideas of “value,” “venture,” “trust,” “cost,” “product” and “outcome” over and over again, words that we use for different purposes depending on the context. Has all this double entendre, um, benefitted us (pun intended) or muddied the genuineness of our language? Do we know what we mean when we speak anymore, even in our own heads? Do we know what we value without anyone else’s…assessment?
