Thirty-eight Years Married

Today we celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary--38 years! It feels like just a blip.  Here is one of my favorite pictures of us, a picture taken at the March 2026 wedding of our nephew, who was born in 1993:

This morning in 1988, we'd have been in Greenwood, South Carolina. I'd have slept in the house that used to be a parsonage where my grandfather served a congregation for many years. Thirty years ago in that house, my grandmother ironed my wedding dress. Below you'll see my grandmother, with my aunt Joyce helping.




Yes, I had a long, white dress. We got married in the same church in Greenwood, South Carolina where my parents had gotten married in 1962, the same church where my grandfather had been the pastor. We had the ceremony at 11:00 in the morning, so that our out of town guests with long travels home would have plenty of time.  We tried to keep the ceremony and the reception relatively simple. For example, we chose daisies for our bouquet. Our reception included sandwiches, so that our out-of-town guests wouldn't have to buy lunch on their way out of town. We had the best wedding cake I've ever had.

In many ways, we're still that same couple: we try to keep life simple, while at the same time, keeping a commitment to hospitality. We are hyper-aware of our blessings, and the fact that much of the world will never taste the extravagance of a wedding cake. But we don't deprive ourselves--we stop to admire the daisies.

Here you see a picture of us on this day in 1988, and the two of us at our 25th anniversary dinner:

Here's my final thought for an anniversary morning. I'd expand the thought to include not just our spouses but also our friends and colleagues and family members.

Wedding Anniversary #37

On this day in 1988, I'd be getting ready to be married in the same church where my parents were married in 1962, the same church where my grandfather was pastor for many years before he died.  Here's one of my favorite pictures of that early morning:

Yes, that's my grandmother ironing my wedding dress so that I'd be suitable.  The dress was not wrinkled; I have no idea why my grandmother decided she needed to iron the dress.  She was the kind of woman who believed in ironing.  I am not.  But I can still appreciate the efforts that people make for me to make me more presentable.

I appreciate them more now, 32 years later.  Then, I'd have wanted to spare my grandmother the hassle of ironing a dress that was just going to be rumpled anyway. This morning, I'm amazed at the fact that anyone on this planet is willing to iron a wedding dress. My grandmother had ways of showing love that I didn't appreciate at the time.

We got married at 11 a.m.  We had friends and family members with a long drive home, so we wanted them to be able to get an early-ish start.  We had a short honeymoon in Asheville, N.C.  That first night, we went out to eat.  We shared a slice of cheesecake with blueberry topping, and we each got our own cup of coffee.  That felt like an extravagance, not sharing a cup of coffee.  Then we got back home in time for our grad school classes.

For the most part, we've been happy together. He was a Philosophy major, and I was an English major: temperamentally we're suited. We come at social justice issues from a similar direction. We're artistically suited.   I know how lucky we've been.

I look back on that day when we got married and shake my head. I was convinced I was so grown up; I had just turned 23. But really, what do any of us know when we enter into such a union? We think we know all that we need to know, but we will learn so much more.

Constructing a Marriage

 On this day in 1988, I'd be getting ready to be married in the same church where my parents were married in 1962, the same church where my grandfather was pastor for many years before he died. That church was in Greenwood, South Carolina, a church I continued to attend through the following decades as I visited my grandmother regularly.  I felt family history every time I was there.

On this day in 2023, my spouse and I will go across the mountains to the church in Bristol, Tennessee, the church that is a descendant of the first church my grandfather served.  When he graduated from seminary, in Columbia, South Carolina, he went to serve 5 parishes in East Tennessee, and that's where he met my grandmother.  Later, those five parishes would consolidate into two parishes.  I took a picture of the picture that hangs in the pastor's study of Faith Lutheran, the church where I serve as a Synod Appointed Minister:

The church in the above picture is one of the churches where my grandfather served.  I wonder if the building still exists.  Probably not--it would be very old by now, and while those buildings were built to last, most of them don't.

After today's service, which will include the Blessing of the Backpacks, we will have a sandwich and ice cream sundae event--it's an annual event to celebrate the end of summer and the start of the school year.  Even though it has nothing to do with our anniversary, I like the idea of celebrating that way.

If we have enough energy afterward, we may go over to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum.  They have an exhibit about women in old time music that will close soon.  

At the end of the day, we'll return to this house, the fifth house we've owned, the fifth house that we've renovated.  It's a work in progress, as are both of us, as is this marriage, as is every relationship.  This house is the most well constructed house we've ever owned, and I have hopes that as we head into the future, we'll be able to say the same thing about this marriage.

Three Years of Morning Watch

Three years ago, at 5:30 a.m., I did my first Morning Watch.  It was in the early days of the pandemic and its lockdown.  My church had already been doing some live-streaming of Sunday worship service, so making that pivot to broadcasting worship wasn't hard for us.  My pastor added some evening Compline services to the mix.  Those of us who are early risers wanted something on the other side of the day, and I volunteered to be the one to do it.

I thought about choosing texts for the day, but then I wondered why I would do that, since we had common lectionaries.  I took the path of least resistance for me, which was using Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours.  I used the Facebook Live feature and used the church's Facebook page, which meant that people could tune in live or they could watch the recording later.

The format remains the same.  I read the readings for the day, and then we have 5-7 minutes for whatever activity centers us.  I almost always sketch.  These days, it's often the only sketching I do in a week, and as always, I'm amazed at how much I can accomplish, even if I only do it a few minutes a day.

When I began, I thought I'd do this for a few weeks.  And now, here we are, three years later.  We're no longer under lockdown orders, but we also are not done with this disease.  But that's not why I'm still doing Morning Watch.

This practice nourishes me.  I would be doing it regardless, and it's really no problem to broadcast.  I'm almost always up and awake before 5:30 a.m.  I almost always have internet access.

Do people tune in?  I know that there are at least three people who tune in regularly and leave comments.  I know that there are plenty of people who see the broadcast and don't leave comments.  I have heard from some people about how much this practice means to them, how it's gotten them through some rough patches.  That alone would keep me doing it.

But it also enriches me.  Doing a broadcast, knowing that some people will tune in at some point, keeps me doing it.   And starting my day this way makes for a better day, a better week, a better month--better years!

Progress of All Sorts

Portrait from a life in progress:  bread dough rising in my biggest bowl on the kitchen counter at the condo we're renting, and soon we will head back to the old house to do the last minute spiffing up for the open house that will be later today.  Tomorrow, the house goes on the market, but we hope it won't be for long, because we hope we will get offers today.

Will I be at the open house?  Oh my heavens, no!  We have a realtor, someone who is professionally trained to do these things.  I would say the wrong things if I was one of the hosts.

I do wonder if I should bring some bread dough over to bake as we do the spiffing up this morning.  Or would that smell class with the other smells that we've tried to infuse into the air?  I think that I will not risk it.  I'll bake the bread later today.

We spent much of yesterday at the same task--tidying, straightening, touch up painting, getting the old house ready for market.  It was a strange way to observe the September 11 anniversary, but in a way it felt appropriate.  Let us clean up our messes in the hopes that someone else can come along and appreciate what we've built/created.

In the middle of the day yesterday, I did a bit of driving, taking stuff back to the condo, getting us lunch from Taco Bell.  I listened to a radio special called Blind Spot, about various events that led up to September 11.  It's a condensation of a nine part podcast.  I thought about listening to the whole thing, but that would be quite a time commitment.  Besides, much of the information was not new to me.

Later in the day yesterday, I watched the livestream of the installation of the first transgender bishop, Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer, bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod of the ELCA.  Wow.  What a moving service, and the liturgy nerd in me appreciated how the service was constructed and how the elements worked together.

The beautiful thing about a livestream is that we can still access the service, even after it's over.  I may go back to watch parts of it again; if you'd like to do that too, go here and scroll down.

I was so happy to see Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, the bishop of the whole Lutheran church, presiding.  Lutheran church leadership has not always been leading the way when it comes to issues of inclusivity.  I am hopeful that change is on the way.

I am hopeful that this moment of inclusiveness will lead us all to dream bigger than we've been dreaming, that those who have been outcast and marginalized will have a powerful hope for the future, that we can all move forward to that future that will be welcoming, safer, and full of promise of what can be accomplished for us all.

But now, back to more mundane issues.  There is bread dough to be shaped into loaves, and a final straightening to be done.

Wedding Anniversary in Year 2 of a Pandemic

A few days ago, one of my friends asked, "When you met your spouse, did you immediately know that he was the one?  Did you immediately envision growing old with him?"

I said, "It was 1983 when we first met.  I thought we'd be dead in a nuclear war soon.  But I did think he'd be a good partner in surviving the immediate aftermath before the radiation slowly killed us."

She laughed, but indeed I was serious.  I think of myself as the last of the Cold War babies, the ones always scanning the sky for a mushroom cloud.  My elementary schools had both tornado drills and nuclear drills, which were the same:  take a book, crouch against the wall in an inside hallway, put the book over the back of the head and spine, and hope that it's all adequate protection against a failing foreign policy/the result of warm air meeting cold.

In 1983, when I first met my spouse at our small, southern, liberal arts college, I chose a major based on what I liked, not on what I thought would take me into the future.  People asked, "What are you going to do with a major in English?"  I said, "We're all going to be dead in a nuclear war.  What does it matter?"  I read various survival scenarios.  I kept my 74 Monte Carlo longer than I should have because it had an ignition that would survive an electromagnetic pulse.

Even though I was expecting a nuclear war, I still got married on this day in 1988.  People gathered, we made our pledges in the same church where my parents made similar pledges, and off we drove for a short honeymoon in Asheville, NC, before we had to be back for grad school orientation.

This week, we've begun transitioning to the next phase of our married life, as we have moved to the condo that we're renting.  I don't know if this is true for everyone, but moving brings out the best and worse in our relationship.  My thoughts have returned to those post-apocalyptic scenarios.  My spouse would be very good at making a shelter out of the ruins.  Why is moving so hard?  I would be very good at gathering and reassembling the scraps of society into something useful.  Why is it so hard for me to take a household and move it a mile away and figure out which item goes on which shelf?

One of the benefits of having been together for decades is that I know our patterns, and on my good days, I'm patient.  On my best days, I know how to get us to a better spot, out of our frustrations and anger towards the ideas that we had of how we were headed to a better spot.

We still have so much work to do, but we are further along than we were this time last week.  I no longer expect that we will soon be dead in a nuclear war, but I do realize that we're at a slightly higher risk of that scenario in our post-Cold War time.  During my childhood, the U.S. knew who had which nukes.  Now we don't.

A global pandemic that has produced a highly contagious variant is not the pandemic I planned for, but here we are.  And now we are doing the kind of planning for the future that some people do in their younger years:  looking at our finances, looking at our expenses, making some judicious moves that will net us the best return on our investment.

Thinking about Resistance on the 40th Anniversary of the Sandinista Success

Forty years ago today, the Sandinistas deposed the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza.  I have no memory of that particular moment in 1979.  When I think of 1979's most important historic moment, I think of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Iran.

Both of those events had profound influences in the 1980's and beyond.

I could make the argument that the events sparked by the Sandinista victory led us to where we are today with the humanitarian crisis on the border between the U.S. and Mexico.  I have distinct memories of President Reagan trying to make us all scared of Communists swarming up from the South and taking over Texas.  At the time, most of us assumed that Reagan envisioned an armed invasion, not the kind of movement that we see today of people looking to build new lives in the U.S.

I had no doubt that Texans could have taken care of that kind of armed attack.  I often wonder if the Sandinistas hadn't won, would Reagan have been able to manipulate our fears as easily?  I don't think so, but humans are easily manipulated by fear, so I could be wrong.

I've been thinking about our current moment of resistance and past time periods too.  I'm writing a dystopian novel that takes place not far in the future, but I have a vision of exploring past resistance movements too.

On Tuesday, I was delighted to come across this article in The Nation about the Pledge of Resistance in the 1980s (do an Internet search for Pledge of Resistance, and you'll discover that there have been several).  I remember signing the pledge, but would I have really followed through if Reagan had launched a military strike?  I was a college kid, so I might have; in many ways, college kids have less to lose and less of a sense of consequences, and in that, I was no different.

The Pledge of Resistance was different than past pledges.  The article says, "But the Central American Pledge of Resistance was unique in linking disobedience to an invasion that had not yet happened. By providing a threat of future action, the pledge bore resemblance to the strike votes taken by unions to show unity and demonstrate workers’ readiness to walk off the job. 'The innovation in the ’80s was that the pledge had a trigger event,' explained Jeremy Brecher, a social movement historian. 'It was a very creative way of establishing a nonviolent deterrent.'”

This social justice movement of the 1980's accomplished amazing things, which so few people remember.  It was peaceful and less heirarchal than movements of the 60's--and those two factor probably contributed to the success of the movement.

How do I define success?  After all, you could argue the fact that we have so many people fleeing those countries in 2019 is because of the failure of the 1980's.  I could point to any number of government policy failures that have led us to this moment; are social justice movement failures more to blame than the various governments that have failed in so many ways?  I would argue no.

In fact, I would argue that without the social justice movements of the 80's, our current situation would be worse.  We might be involved in a decades long hot war, the way we are in the Middle East, if the Pledge of Resistance and other movements hadn't convinced the Reagan administration to back off on threats to invade Central American countries.

As a student in the 1980's, I remember wondering if we made any sort of difference as we protested, as we resisted, as we supported those who did more, like Jubilee Partners who got Central American refugees safely to Canada where they were more likely to win their asylum claims.  When I moved to South Florida and had a chance to talk to some of those people who had fled Central America in the 1980's, people who had gone on to build better lives here, I concluded that we did make a difference.

Hopefully future generations will look back on these days of the Trump administration and be able to take courage from what we managed to accomplish.

Genesis Benedictions

When I think of Bible passages that move me to tears, it's usually the Psalms and the prophets.  I've never thought of the first chapter of Genesis as particularly moving--until yesterday.

I heard this story on NPR about the 1968 Apollo 8 mission and the broadcast of the reading of Genesis.  I was driving to work, and the beauty of this passage which contrasted to the social upheaval of 1968 and of our own time:  "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep."

The story also discussed this iconic photo:

I was born in 1965, so I don't remember a time before this photo.  I don't remember what it was like not to have this vision of our planet photographed from a distance.  I know that many have theorized that the environmental movements of the 70's were made more likely by this photo that reminded us of our blue and green planet floating above the inhospitable habitat of the moon.

Later, this photo was on my brain as I did my sketch for the day:

I thought of the benediction of the Apollo 8 astronauts, still so suitable for our current time:

"And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas - and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

Thirty Years Married

Today we celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary--30 years! It feels like just a blip.

Thirty years ago, we'd have been in Greenwood, South Carolina. I'd have slept in the house that used to be a parsonage where my grandfather served a congregation for many years. Thirty years ago in that house, my grandmother ironed my wedding dress. Below you'll see my grandmother, with my aunt Joyce helping.




Yes, I had a long, white dress. We got married in the same church in Greenwood, South Carolina where my parents had gotten married in 1962, the same church where my grandfather had been the pastor. We had the ceremony at 11:00 in the morning, so that our out of town guests with long travels home would have plenty of time.  We tried to keep the ceremony and the reception relatively simple. For example, we chose daisies for our bouquet. Our reception included sandwiches, so that our out-of-town guests wouldn't have to buy lunch on their way out of town. We had the best wedding cake I've ever had.

In many ways, we're still that same couple: we try to keep life simple, while at the same time, keeping a commitment to hospitality. We are hyper-aware of our blessings, and the fact that much of the world will never taste the extravagance of a wedding cake. But we don't deprive ourselves--we stop to admire the daisies.

Here you see a picture of us on this day in 1988, and the two of us at our 25th anniversary dinner:




Here's my final thought for an anniversary morning. I'd expand the thought to include not just our spouses but also our friends and colleagues and family members.

A Marriage at 27

If it was this day in 1988, I'd be getting ready to be married. 

Our wedding was at 11 a.m.; we had guests who would have a long drive after the ceremony (back to Memphis, back to Virginia), so we wanted them to get an early start.

This pillow was made by one of my mom's friends.  It's astonishing that we've kept it in good shape.  It's a great metaphor, if I don't think about all the wedding presents that have been destroyed through the years.  Why did I put the gorgeous crystal pitcher in the dishwasher?  What was I thinking?  I don't want to see the metaphor there.

Happily, our marriage has more in common with fabric art than works of art in a more fragile medium.  The fabric does not shred apart completely; the trials we've faced have knotted us together.

Here you see a picture of us on this day in 1988, and the two of us at our 25th anniversary dinner.  What holds a couple together for 27 years?

Once I'd have said that common interests were important.  Once I'd have said a couple needs to have similar beliefs, whether they be religious in nature or a shared commitment to a social movement.  Once I'd have said that couples should have a similar outlook when it came to finances.  I'd have said that because it would have been true for me.  I've since met many couples who don't have those things, and they're perfectly happy too.

I'd go to something more essential if I was giving premarital counseling today.  I'd talk about the need for compassion and forgiveness.  If you're thinking about marrying someone who holds a grudge, I'd advise you to think long and hard before going through with that.

I have felt lucky because my spouse forgives me, even if I make the same mistake again, as humans do.  His compassionate nature helps him see that I'm trying and helps him see the factors that contributed to the mistake.  His compassionate nature helps him remember the greater good that he's seen in me and the potential that I have.

I try my very hardest to do the same for him. 

Sure, there are times when I wish I could change things.  I'd like to wave a magic wand and change our behavior or our circumstances.  But we have learned so much more because we don't have that magic wand.

I would argue that we can learn the same lessons in different schools:  through our relationships with our families, through our work with colleagues, through our friendships.  The great British poet John Keats called this world "a vale of Soul-making."  I would argue that it's our relationships, especially the ones that last for many years and decades, that most form our souls.  Even the relationships that don't end well have much to teach us.

I look back on that day and shake my head.  I was convinced I was so grown up; I had just turned 23.  But really, what do any of us know when we enter into such a union?  We think we know all that we need to know, but we will learn so much more.