Prepare
We are meeting regularly with our minister to prepare for our marriage. These meetings have been important for us; rather than catalysts for talking about important issues, they have provided us with a witness who can help us solidify the outcomes of conversations we've already had.
Often she compliments us on how we already seem to have internalized some of the "lessons" we are supposed to be taking from our sessions. Sometimes we think she's right; sometimes we leave saying, "If only she could see us at our worst moments."
The word "prepare" is a strange word. It has a sort of scary connotation--a sense of holding back in the present in order to get to something better in the future. Whether used by street preachers comically shouting, "Prepare the way for the Lord," or by a Greek Orthodox priest explaining to a Sunday School class the importance of fasting prior to communion, there is something almost scary about the word. Even in a secular sense--prepare for your interview, your meeting with your boss, the presentation, the hard conversation you need to have with your kid--the term indicates something large and important and therefore potentially ruin-able is looming on the horizon. You could ruin it--you, alone--if you don't prepare.
But the etymology of the word "prepare" does not seem to connote any sort of holding back or suffering. It means, simply, "before" (prae) and "make ready" (parare). What does it mean to do something before something else? Isn't this simply an acknowledgement that everything we do, even breathing our last breath, will be followed by something else, and something else after that? Isn't it simply an acknowledgment that we have found ways to mark this passing of what we call time? And what does it mean to "make ready?" To soak the beans for tomorrow's soup, to set the table, to change the sheets for a guest--these mundane acts are ways we prepare, daily. They aren't so scary.
The truth is, it is moments like these--making soup, setting the table, changing the sheets--that make up most of our lives. Yes, there are also those scary moments--the presentation that could cost you your job, the talk with a friend that could either build or further damage the trust between you, the moment you're called to stand up for what you believe, no matter the cost--but most of our lives, at least if we are relatively comfortable, with at least enough food and water to live, are made up of mundane moments. But even those mundane moments don't always go as planned. The soup could end up tasting funny, a glass accidentally dropped, the washing machine could stop mid-cycle. No way to be sure.
Maybe, similarly, there's no way to really prepare for marriage. Recently, the husband of a former neighbor suffered a breakdown and left his family--completely unexpected, no signs at all that this was coming. If there were signs, anyway, she didn't see them. Another friend swears that when her husband told her he was not a man, needed to transition, she had never sensed this, never thought of herself as someone who might someday love a woman. Even now, in a marriage to a woman, she considers herself straight. I think about how my own parents suffered through seven years, a stillbirth, and two miscarriages before having their first child. How my father had not expected to lose my mother when they were 49, to ride out four years of cancer with her, to have to raise his children without her.
Nobody knows what is coming.
And so maybe the best way to make ready is simply to bless each moment. We make ready a table, a bed, by the simplest action, which we can do without thinking, or do with intention, with love. I had a friend who swore she could tell her mother's mood by the taste of the food--that somehow her anger or grief or joy ended up captured in the atoms of whatever she was making, even if she used the same recipe every time. I don't know about that, but I do know this: we are here, now. Each moment is an opportunity to pay attention. We learn by living. We draw on the past, on what we've learned, when we're tested. We talk about past, present, and future, dream possible and impossible dreams, live daily small and large disappointments.
I don't know how to even imagine what "forever" means. I don't know how to be sure that I will always feel the way I do now, or of what the future holds--I can only be sure that change will happen, and that we can't predict how it will look.
"Don't go too soon," our minister said to us today, when I realized we'd talked for much longer than our appointment and stood up, grabbing my purse in a hurry. "Slow down a minute. Let me bless you."
Often she compliments us on how we already seem to have internalized some of the "lessons" we are supposed to be taking from our sessions. Sometimes we think she's right; sometimes we leave saying, "If only she could see us at our worst moments."
The word "prepare" is a strange word. It has a sort of scary connotation--a sense of holding back in the present in order to get to something better in the future. Whether used by street preachers comically shouting, "Prepare the way for the Lord," or by a Greek Orthodox priest explaining to a Sunday School class the importance of fasting prior to communion, there is something almost scary about the word. Even in a secular sense--prepare for your interview, your meeting with your boss, the presentation, the hard conversation you need to have with your kid--the term indicates something large and important and therefore potentially ruin-able is looming on the horizon. You could ruin it--you, alone--if you don't prepare.
But the etymology of the word "prepare" does not seem to connote any sort of holding back or suffering. It means, simply, "before" (prae) and "make ready" (parare). What does it mean to do something before something else? Isn't this simply an acknowledgement that everything we do, even breathing our last breath, will be followed by something else, and something else after that? Isn't it simply an acknowledgment that we have found ways to mark this passing of what we call time? And what does it mean to "make ready?" To soak the beans for tomorrow's soup, to set the table, to change the sheets for a guest--these mundane acts are ways we prepare, daily. They aren't so scary.
The truth is, it is moments like these--making soup, setting the table, changing the sheets--that make up most of our lives. Yes, there are also those scary moments--the presentation that could cost you your job, the talk with a friend that could either build or further damage the trust between you, the moment you're called to stand up for what you believe, no matter the cost--but most of our lives, at least if we are relatively comfortable, with at least enough food and water to live, are made up of mundane moments. But even those mundane moments don't always go as planned. The soup could end up tasting funny, a glass accidentally dropped, the washing machine could stop mid-cycle. No way to be sure.
Maybe, similarly, there's no way to really prepare for marriage. Recently, the husband of a former neighbor suffered a breakdown and left his family--completely unexpected, no signs at all that this was coming. If there were signs, anyway, she didn't see them. Another friend swears that when her husband told her he was not a man, needed to transition, she had never sensed this, never thought of herself as someone who might someday love a woman. Even now, in a marriage to a woman, she considers herself straight. I think about how my own parents suffered through seven years, a stillbirth, and two miscarriages before having their first child. How my father had not expected to lose my mother when they were 49, to ride out four years of cancer with her, to have to raise his children without her.
Nobody knows what is coming.
And so maybe the best way to make ready is simply to bless each moment. We make ready a table, a bed, by the simplest action, which we can do without thinking, or do with intention, with love. I had a friend who swore she could tell her mother's mood by the taste of the food--that somehow her anger or grief or joy ended up captured in the atoms of whatever she was making, even if she used the same recipe every time. I don't know about that, but I do know this: we are here, now. Each moment is an opportunity to pay attention. We learn by living. We draw on the past, on what we've learned, when we're tested. We talk about past, present, and future, dream possible and impossible dreams, live daily small and large disappointments.
I don't know how to even imagine what "forever" means. I don't know how to be sure that I will always feel the way I do now, or of what the future holds--I can only be sure that change will happen, and that we can't predict how it will look.
"Don't go too soon," our minister said to us today, when I realized we'd talked for much longer than our appointment and stood up, grabbing my purse in a hurry. "Slow down a minute. Let me bless you."
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