San Francisco de Asis Catholic Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos, November 30. Photo by Christine C. Bastian.
Everything comes together at this time of year: our first snow in Santa Fe and Taos (seven inches here and more coming), family gatherings, Christmas feasts with friends—and I’m reminded of the enormous changes the past two years have brought, not all of them easy to accommodate.
I’m witnessing a surge in big, old-fashioned weddings for those who can afford up to half a million dollars to rent tents, clubs, hire staff, and buy the necessary clothes: perhaps a rebirth of hope, or of delusion, when we all know that half of all marriages—big, old-fashioned or not—end in divorce.
But that is only part of the story. Sophisticated couples sometimes want to avoid hope and delusion as well as the monstrous expense, and practical considerations, like the demands of work or the need for a green card, enter into the equation . Now it’s possible to get the whole thing done online.
The advertisements emphasize speed, comfort and convenience: get the license at home, on Zoom, in ten or fifteen minutes. But I wonder: is getting married about speed, or comfort or convenience?
I don’t think so.
But there’s another important factor: no family needs to be included. And that in this time of multispecies entanglement, may seem the best way out of the confusion, misunderstanding and even confrontations that can happen when we limited humans face not only the unknown future of a marriage but the unknown actors central to the event.
In my case, individuals from Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and a native tribe might all be included in a wedding that actually occupies space and time—or complicated explanations of why they are left out.
Trying to think of a solution not available on Zoom, I wonder about the so-called “native” traditions of these remote parts of the world. African drumming? Middle Eastern cuisine? Latin music? Native dances?
I suppose a potpourri of all these elements might be composed, but these young people probably know and care little about their ancestral rituals.
The one I’ve found most appealing—and terrifying!—comes from the Cheyenne and involves drawing a sacred circle with chalk on the floor, placing the couple inside it, tying their hands together with twine and leaving with the circle intact.
Even more terrifying are the words of the traditional Episcopal wedding service in which the couple is advised, “Marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God,” namely “for mutual joy, for help and comfort, and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture.”
Is there anyone under thirty who could bear such an injunction?
And then comes the terrifying vow: “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.”
When practical considerations—careers, money, citizenship—are so bound into the reasons for marrying, as they always have been, is there anyone (except perhaps the ancient and desperate) who would willingly take such a vow?
Well…
There may be an upside to the connecting, temporary or permanent, of individuals coming from distant parts of the earth or from unfamiliar and unknown faiths and rituals—or from nothing except practical considerations and a bit of hopefulness. At least they may know their own limits—financial, emotional, spiritual.
As I finish the final edit of Taken by the Shawnee, to be published by Turtle Point Press next June, I have Margaret Paulee Erskine, my central character, as an example: she married in the late 1780’s in hope of betterment, as did her husband, killed by the Shawnee: a better piece of land in Kentucky, maybe a larger cabin, maybe eventually a house made of brick or stone, enough food to ward off starvation and, of course, children, wanted or not.
Very practical. Perhaps my new relatives from Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and one of the tribes would find this formula acceptable.
But I still think binding the couple’s hands together with twine might be a useful exercise.
This excerpt from Wikipedia seems very relevant to your post:
“In 1782 John Fawcett wrote the words to his “Blest Be the Tie that Binds” hymn, his most famous hymn by far.”