A Joyous Task

We interrupt the regularly scheduled infertility kvetching for an important announcement and some profound pondering.

My dear friends are getting married, and they've asked me to officiate at their wedding.

What a mind blowing thing.

What an honor.

I am totally in love with the couple getting married. They're both incredibly smart, sexy, compassionate, and passionate people who are So. Freakin. Right for each other. They do what people in love should do -- they sparkle and sizzle when they're around each other, and they make everyone around them fall in love with them, too.

I also have a special place in my heart for them because, like Atomic and I, they found each other after they'd become fully realized grownups.

To be perfectly honest, my first emotion when they asked me to officiate was fear. I blurted out, "I don't have enough gravitas for that!" I mean, when I think about someone conducting a wedding, I think of someone, well, older. But that's obviously my bias, not theirs, and I'm grateful to them for showing me that.

Now, I am not religious, per se. In fact, I think that most religious dogma is built on equal parts fear, fairy dust, and bullshit. But I am committed to bringing a spiritual and ritual aspect to this wedding. I want my friends to feel utterly blessed, and I want everyone there not just to witness, but to participate in the making of a sacred pact.

This whole fertility business has, in a way, put me in touch with the divine (in a non-dogmatic way, of course). I talk to my ancestors. I look for and respect the spark of divinity, in myself and others. There's a lot of goddess magic floating around me, offered by so many loving members of our extended family. And maybe that has something to do with why I'm officiating at this wedding.

I recognize that officiating at a wedding is not just a ministerial duty, it's a spiritual task. I recognize that whatever challenges we have before us, we can't face them alone. I have learned that the good thoughts and intentions of others can hold us up when we'd otherwise be falling down.

And now it's my task to tap into that well and bring the sacred. As a newly-ordained Spiritual Priestess of the Universal Life Church (Sole tenet: do what is right. I'm down with that.), I intend to fulfill that task with honor and with great joy.