thinking back
The rest of my 25th anniversary was more affecting.
I went to a 6 p.m. healing service with P, S, and one of P's friends. It's called a healing service, but it's really a standard Eucharist service with an opportunity for prayers of healing after the communion. Only a few people usually attend: it's much more casual and intimate than the normal Sunday service.
In the Episcopal Church, marriage is one of the sacraments, along with communion, baptism, confirmation, and a few more. When I got married, I didn't understand anything about the meaning of marriage as a sacrament. In the years since, I've come to believe that marriage isn't just a private relationship between two people. A marriage involves the entire community. When we stand up to be married in front of our friends and family, they pledge to support us, and we pledge to work together to get back to that community.
So here I was in a church, 25 years later to the night, pondering the process of ending that sacramental bond, that covenant.
When we went up for communion, I stood there, by myself, alone with my feelings, pondering all these things in my heart.
After communion, I knelt down and asked for prayers of healing for Jennifer, myself, my children, and for those close to us.
Afterward the service we went out to dinner. I was still moody, but a margarita helped lift me out of my melancholy. When our table was ready, seven of us squeezed into a booth. given the circumstances, being in that booth surrounded by friends felt good and right. It was a community: a small one, but a community.
Individual friendships are very important to me, but so is that sense of community, of belonging and acceptance. I haven't felt that in a long time.
I went to a 6 p.m. healing service with P, S, and one of P's friends. It's called a healing service, but it's really a standard Eucharist service with an opportunity for prayers of healing after the communion. Only a few people usually attend: it's much more casual and intimate than the normal Sunday service.
In the Episcopal Church, marriage is one of the sacraments, along with communion, baptism, confirmation, and a few more. When I got married, I didn't understand anything about the meaning of marriage as a sacrament. In the years since, I've come to believe that marriage isn't just a private relationship between two people. A marriage involves the entire community. When we stand up to be married in front of our friends and family, they pledge to support us, and we pledge to work together to get back to that community.
So here I was in a church, 25 years later to the night, pondering the process of ending that sacramental bond, that covenant.
When we went up for communion, I stood there, by myself, alone with my feelings, pondering all these things in my heart.
After communion, I knelt down and asked for prayers of healing for Jennifer, myself, my children, and for those close to us.
Afterward the service we went out to dinner. I was still moody, but a margarita helped lift me out of my melancholy. When our table was ready, seven of us squeezed into a booth. given the circumstances, being in that booth surrounded by friends felt good and right. It was a community: a small one, but a community.
Individual friendships are very important to me, but so is that sense of community, of belonging and acceptance. I haven't felt that in a long time.