Wedding Day Blessings: Jessie & Vergil

When we saw them together, we all knew. It wasn't that one or the other of them brightened when the other entered a room, the excitement typical of young couples. It was as though some immutable law of physics was invoked when each passed within a certain degree of the other's orbital space, and sub-atomic particles collided or whatever it is that they do so that light was produced. Light did not encircle Jessie and Vergil so that they were set apart from the rest of us in a bubble of their own. Rather, light suffused any space in which we were all present with them, and lit us all as if from within. Standing within that circle, the light seemed expansive enough to contain the world and we shared a gentle feeling of blessing, most of us humbled and grateful.

Knotted in a warm little kitchen circle together, Ms. Moon told us about Jessie calling and saying, I've Met Someone. We were gathered, our extended circle of family, best and oldest friends, our most trusted and treasured, as we've gathered for many years. We catch up with each other, we cook for each other, we make music, we circle around a companionable fire. The children of those we love toddle, then walk, then wander through. Some of them begin to play instruments; some raise their voices in harmonies.

When we saw Jessie and Vergil together, I think we may all have been reminded of saying those words ourselves, yesterday or last year or many long years gone by: I've. Met. Someone. Maybe there were some quiet moments that afternoon while we lost ourselves in recollection. But mostly, I think, we considered the power of love, reaching and touching us all in the simple, non-negotiable way that sunsets touch skylines. We went back to chopping collards and washing whatever had come in from the garden to be made into salad for dinner. We hugged. We caught hands while we washed dishes. We frosted mint bars and grated carrots. We smiled at each other, and we smiled little inside smiles.

It may seem trite. It may read like a sentimental story; it may raise a cynical eyebrow. But look at them together, daughter and mother, caught in a prosaic working moment in the very kitchen that tonight produces the food for Jessie's wedding. The first-person unvarnished picture is most true in Ms. Moon's voice, which she shares in flashes of captured moments leading up to the wedding. Ms. Moon is known in blogging circles for her plain-spoken unwillingness to tolerate bullshit and her deep, profound capacity for love. Between them, she and Mr. Moon and their beautiful children, their extended circle of family and the friends who inhabit some of the spaces even closer than family have set Jessie's roots deeply in rich soil of love and trust, fidelity and laughter, music and faith, and all those other ineluctable precious things where commitment can thrive as long as life.

You are richly blessed, darling children. You are perhaps more richly endowed than most people even now. Right now. Before you are ever married, before you truly cleave to one another and make yourselves into a new, green, life-filled offshoot of your own families, you are blessed; I know you both know this. Here's what may be most important to remember: not everyone IS blessed in this way. Embrace each other, and embrace those whose paths cross yours. Those whose lives have not been kissed and gilded by love, shown its many faces; those whose spirits may be poorer for this? Your love may be a light you never even know you've shared. Your love may flicker unexpected illumination into darknesses you do not imagine. Thanks to your parents, your godparents, your sisters and brothers and so many others, your love will brighten lives, and change them as a result. May this be the gift of your love, dear ones: light into dark places wherever your feet take you, a sharing of the blessings that have been poured out upon you, a benediction for as long as life. May your common gift for enriching others continue to grow and be shared, from your own hearts to ours, and to those as yet unknown.