Writing a ceremony is not something that just happens. It’s certainly not an on demand activity. I can’t set aside a time and tell myself that I am going to write a ceremony on a Tuesday afternoon at 2.15pm. Writing a ceremony takes a lightning strike and they are very rarely convenient.
The last one happened in the middle of a normal workday. I was actually teaching a class of year 7/8 students Latin roots and spelling rules. Not the most exciting of topics, but necessary when teaching my kids how to spell words they’ve never seen before, nevertheless half way through the description of logos and pathos, the sun hit the dinosaur through the blinds in just the right angle and my kids laughed at the way I pronounced logos like a Mexican wrestler, and it hit like a lightning bolt. The world froze and the kids looked at me a little strangely and our lesson took a HUGE tangent.
Pathos – appealing to others based on emotion. We were talking about a Zombie Apocalypse and convincing the authorities that as a zombie, what emotions would you use to convince the authorities of your reason for living or whether you should be ‘taken down’. Out of the mouth of a twelve year old came the line, ‘I’d tell them I loved them.’
It’s not necessarily the most earth shattering revelation nor is it a particularly profound statement that will change the way we view the world. What it did do was start a discussion with some very clever twelve year olds about what it means to be loved. And out of the mouths of babes, it was right there.
Apparently all that love is, is caring about someone else’s feelings more than you care about your own. And that was my lightning bolt. Loving someone, marrying someone, choosing someone is never really about you, it’s about them. It’s about wanting things for that person that make them happy and doing what you can to make that happen and putting what you want second. And if that’s the case, then the world is filled with it. You can see it, touch it, feel it everywhere and in the smallest of moments between people of all kinds.
So watch out newly weds. I’m waiting for a couple who want a very special kind of zombie love in their ceremony and until then, I’m searching, daily, for the moment of love that we share as people.
