Best Wedding Ever? Rudy and John Got Married

I may have attended the best wedding ever yesterday. Of course, I borrow "best wedding ever" from the online lingo of the now; people often write "best. day. ever." (for example) as they tweet and post and update. And, depending upon how the marriage goes, one's own wedding is usually thought to be the best. Or maybe the wedding of one's child.

Nonetheless, this wedding was more than splendid. It happened in Tacoma, Washington, where "same-sex" marriage is now legal.  Rudy Henry and John McCluskey got married. There were about 200 people in attendance, and a friend was only half-joking when he said, "This may be the social event of the year in Tacoma."

Not that Rudy or John are local celebrities or ever sought the spotlight. It's just that a lot of people love them, and they've done a lot of good work over the years.  John, for example, has been working to help young gay and lesbian persons for decades--to keep them safe, sheltered, counseled, and supported. I met John about 10 years ago when my wife and I hosted a fund-raiser for a campaign to secure rights for gay and lesbian people in Tacoma.  The resulting law made harassing such persons or denying them housing illegal.  John is a tall, elegant man, right (I almost wrote "straight") out of the 1950s: dapper, urbane, witty.  Rudy is also a very funny, very kind, smart person, too. In Tacoma, both have been what used to be called "pillars of the community"; that's partly why so many local officials, business leaders, people who work in the not-for-profit sector, and academics were there.

But the thing is, Rudy and John have been together for 53 years.  Completely compatible, totally devoted, and loving. All "relationships" should be so blessed and resilient.  And it had to be a "relationship" for 53 years because society didn't want people like Rudy and John getting married. Go figure.

So there we were in a Methodist Church, with a pastor and the Mayor co-presiding.

Rudy has some health-problems, so he sat in his wheel-chair, with one arm bound to his chest.  He was pushed down the aisle, then up a side-ramp and around to where we could see him.  Then came John, escorted by a friend.  Eventually John sat next to Rudy, and the ceremony was on. Both wore classic black tuxedos, flowers in the lapels.

When it came time for Rudy to say, "I do," he dead-panned it, putting in mind Jack Benny.  A tilt of the head to the side, a slight raising of the eyes, the perfectly timed pause, the sigh, and then, "I do."   We all cracked up--except from John, who just smiled.  At one point during the ceremony, Rudy, like every person in the building, was overcome by the moment and wept a bit. John comforted him and kissed his head and held his hand.  When it came time for the rings, John put one on Rudy's finer--and on his own , for Rudy doesn't have the dexterity just now.

Not incidentally, the opening song, played and sung by Steve Smith, was "Oh, Happy Day."  The closing song, recorded, was "What a Lovely Way to Spend and Evening." There was to be another, final recording, but of course the equipment malfunctioned, so Steve jumped up, ran to the piano, and played & sang "We're Going to the Chapel, and We're Going to Get Married."

It's impossible to describe how much love and respect there was in that relatively small space on Tacoma Avenue, a cold rain thumping the concrete and asphalt outside.

And there was not a little grief, for one not only admires the dedication, dignity, and perseverance of Rudy and John (and others like them); one also grieves for the difficulties they have faced. And for the long wait. But it's good to remember that, for the most part, they weren't waiting.  They were living their lives, together, for 53 years.  Finally, sluggish society caught up with them.

When they came back down the aisle together, we all applauded, cheered, and wept.  As is often the case with weeping, the reasons were multiple and complicated.  We wept for their happiness.  Some may have wept because Rudy and John, without trying to do so, show us how good people can be.  We wept because of their 53-year-wait.  We wept because Rudy is frail.

Most of the things that make society good, that--in fact--make it work, were present when Rudy and John got married.  That the wedding took place shortly after the atrocity in Connecticut put this goodness in stark relief.

I am not among Rudy's and John's close friends. My wife knows them better than I do because she ahs worked with them.  But I count myself privileged merely to be their acquaintances.  So when it was my turn to say a few words to John, I said, "Congratulations, John. You're my hero. I love you."  I hugged him, and he hugged me. "I love you," I said. "I love you," he said.

How blessed we all were to observe this wedding, and "observe" was one theme of the wedding, for Rudy and John, being Christians, invited a friend to read a favorite selection of theirs from the New Testament, specifically Luke, Chapter 17, verse 20:

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you."

Rudy and John got married. Best. Wedding. Ever.

A Less Well Known Lazarus from A Less Well Known War Poem

In class we recently studied some poems about war, including such "standards" as Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner." Among the less well known poems we studied was "Still Falls the Rain" (1942), by Edith Sitwell, which--between the title and the poem--suggests that the topic is "The Raids. 1940. Night and Dawn." By "raids," of course, is meant the nightly bombardment of England, especially London, by German aircraft.

However, the poem turns out not to be about life (or death), per se, in London during the bombing. There are no images of the bombed city or of bomb-shelters. Instead the poem begins this way:

Still falls the Rain--
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss--
Blind as nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

That is, the poem begins not so subtly. It places the raids squarely in the midst of general human suffering and sin and in a Christian tradition and does not concern itself with this particular war (World Warr II), with the Germans, or with the British. It appeals to Christ insofar as he suffered, believe Christians, for the sin that, among other things, apparently keeps driving people to make war, so Sitwell is not focusing on who is bombing whom or on who "started" the war. As far as her poem is concerned, humankind started the war. She also alludes to Cain and, not honorifically, to "Caesar's laurel crown" (as contrasted, implicitly, with the crown of thorns). Conventionally, of course, we may be accustomed to thinking of World War II as needing to have been fought and to thinking that "the good side" won, so Sitwell's poem is disconcerting insofar as it perceives the war from a completely different framework, just as Robinson Jeffers, in his poems, viewed the war as a clash of empires. Neither Sitwell nor Jeffers takes a conventional, "popular" view of the war.

Later in the poem, the speaker urges Christ to "have mercy on us--/On Dives and 0n Lazarus./Under the Rain the sore and the gold."

The reference is not to the "famous" resurrected Lazarus but to a chapter in Luke (16, verses 19 and ff.), in which there is a rich man [Dives] who wears fancy clothes and dines extravagantly every night. A beggar named Lazarus appears outside the rich man's house, hoping for some crumbs but getting none. He's covered with sores, which the rich man's dogs lick. Thus the dogs treat Lazarus better than their master does. Dives and Lazarus die, the former going to Hell and the latter to Heaven. According to Jesus, Dives then looks over to the other side (to Heaven) and asks Abraham to send Lazarus over with some water. Abraham responds by saying (to paraphrase), "Sorry, it's too late; you made your choice when you were alive, and now you and Lazarus will be separated by a chasm."

By coincidence, this parable from Luke was the subject of a homily at my parish the same week, and the priest pointed out that even in Hell, Dives "doesn't get it." In Hell he behaves like a selfish rich person and asks Abraham to treat Lazarus as a servant. In a sense, the priest said, Dives's Hell is self-created; it is as much a mind-set as anything else.

But Sitwell's poem lumps Dives and Lazarus together, as the rain (and the bombs) fall, and asks Christ for mercy for everyone, rich person and poor person alike.

The parable--which Christ tells to the Pharisees, by the way--is hard to take because there's no second chance for Dives. The poem is hard to take because Sitwell sidesteps conventional ways of looking at war, at Germany's raids on England, and at World War II, and she goes straight for a Christian theme. I told the students it was perfectly all right not to like this poem, as long as they understood it--understood why they disliked it. Ironically, it may be easier to like "Dulce et Decorum Est," in spite of of the graphic images, because to mock empty, easy patriotism is more conventional now than asking Christ for mercy during a war. Sitwell not only invokes religion in time of war but a particular religion. She also invokes a less well known Lazarus from the New Testament.

We also studied some poems by an American Iraq-war veteran, Brian Turner, who has published a book of poems with Alice James Books in Boston. He, too, does some unconventional things with war poetry. You might look for his work.