Chapter 3

Ceremony

David Blake swatted at the alarm and growled. Then he woke sufficiently to remember that this was the day. He was marrying Jen this afternoon. He shaved carefully, sang the entirety of “As Man and Woman, We Were Made” in the shower, and breakfasted in his underwear. He dressed carefully, got the tux out of the closet and the corsage out of the refrigerator, and was ready to leave in plenty of time. The plane from Newark wasn’t so prompt, so he cooled his heels at O’Hare for nearly an hour.

Mom had stayed with Deborah and they all flew out together. Deb, her husband Keith and son Stephen along with Mom. Stephen ran to him, was picked up and hugged. Then he shook hands with Keith hugged Deb, hugged Mom. He led them off to baggage claim still carrying Stephen.

“He can walk by himself, you know,” Deb said.

“When he wants me to, I’ll put him down.” And Stephen, who had been confined in a taxi and then an airplane for far too long, soon wanted him to. At baggage claim, they stood a way off from the others.

“Ask your dad how many bags they have, including Granma’s.” Stephen ran off and came back to report that there were four. “What color is the first one?” Again, the run.

“Red with a yellow marking tape.” Keith was looking at him weirdly. Since the luggage carousel was empty, that didn’t matter right then. By the time that Stephen had reported that the second bag was grey, but that marking tape was still yellow, Keith was grinning. Smart guy, which made his marriage to Deb even harder to understand. Three round trips were enough to wear off Stephen’s edge, so they stood watching until Keith and Deborah had all 4 bags. Dave took 2 of the bags and led them to his car. Keith sat in front with him, and Stephen crowded into the back seat with the women.

“We have just about enough time,” David said.

“When is the wedding?” Mom asked.

“Officially, 1:00. Depends on the DS, though. He’s visiting another church at some distance first. We need to hear Jen preach at 11:00.”

“Well,” said Deb, “it will be her last chance to say anything without your interrupting.”

“You think she’s going to stop preaching?”

“She’s getting married.”

“Which isn’t retirement.” David pointed out. “She’s up for a vacation, which will also be our honeymoon. Then she’s back in the same pulpit for another year. I’ll be commuting to Garrett, which is closer to O’Hare than this church is -- although it’s a longer drive time in rush hour. We hope that she gets a church closer to Evanston after this year. Wait ‘til you hear her.”

Mom, who could hear an argument starting, asked about the countryside that she could see almost as well as he could. Her eyesight was worse, but his attention needed to be on the road.

At the church, a woman helped him get the corsage in the refrigerator. Weird! Jen was supposed to wear it, not eat it. But that was his directions from the florist. Then they all filed into a back pew. A couple he recognized moved out to give them room to sit together. Jen’s sermon, if not great, was thoroughly prepared. She didn’t sound nervous. He gave Keith the keys to his car and an introduction to a local who steered him to a burger joint. Stephen couldn’t be expected to put off lunch until after the wedding. David took his tux to the men’s room and dressed. He stood on the back stairs until Reverend Campbell -- Jen’s DS and the man who would perform the wedding -- showed up. Well, that was one less worry. Not that he’d expected a glitch.

“Sneaking away?”

“Jen’s in the office, wearing what I’m not supposed to see until she enters the sanctuary. This church ain’t exactly the Temple. I’m as close as I can get and still be out of sight.” Then he saw that his answering the gibe seriously showed his nervousness. His smile got a huge grin in return. Well, of all that a DS had to deal with among his clergy, weddings were probably the least worrisome things. “I’ve probably been in a score of weddings. This is the role to make you nervous.”

“A score. And did anything go wrong?” Campbell asked after looking in the kitchen to send word that he was there.

“Not really. A couple of brides nearly walked off. Neither one was the one who should have. A soloist didn’t show, sending the bride’s mother into conniption fits, but hardly marring the service. You think I shouldn’t worry about this one?”

“Especially since you’re the soloist. Do you have the license?”

“Right here.” He showed it.

“And the rings?”

“Hers. I sent mine in to her.”

“There will be a wedding. You don’t have the reputation of caring all that much about the peripherals.”

“I find that the likelihood of disaster has little influence on one’s state of worrying about a disaster.”

“Ain’t that the truth?”

And the ceremony went off without a hitch. Jen was stunning in her white gown, but Jen had been stunning in sweatshirt and Jeans. At the reception, he met Jen’s grandmother, her younger sister, and the sister’s fiancé. Jen met his family. Keith took the family back to O’Hare in David’s car, with a promise to mail to the honeymoon hotel the description of where he’d leave it at long-term parking. They changed back into traveling clothes.

Then they exited the church to a shower of rice. Everything had been done; everything had been said. But people weren’t ready to go. There were more and more photos, more and more platitudes. Kids who had been brought by their parents instead of paying a babysitter, were running around -- more fun than watching three people make long ritual speeches. Then too, the reception had been long on sugar.

One of the running kids fell down right at his feet. He began to howl. David picked him up and sang the falling-down song to him. The kid quieted down, and his mother retrieved him.

Joe Englehard, chair of Jen’s staff-parish committee, drove him and Jen to O’Hare in plenty of time. Then they were on the plane together. There was a lot he wanted to do with Jen, but he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do with her before an audience. She, however, had a question.

“Where did you get that song?” Um, she’d seen it when he’d suggested it. Must mean the publisher.

“Wren has a publisher. I can’t remember the name at the moment, but the license was quite reasonable.”

“No. The one you sang to the kid. The falling down one.” Okay. Entirely different song.

“The Ecumenical Institute is a lay-training group on the west side of Chicago. I learned about it when I was still in New York. Strange that a Chicagoan hasn’t heard of it.” Which was really context, not an answer. But he wasn’t sure how much of a context she had.

“And they taught you that song? That’s lay training?” Well, that told you how little she knew about E I.

“Well, the boy wasn’t ordained, was he? Anyway, they have a live-in staff, they call it an order. An order of married couples. An original idea, though you could claim that William Booth had it first. Anyway, I digress.” Ask David Blake whether the bus had gone by, and you’d get a discourse on the internal-combustion engine. Still, he wasn’t sure yet what parts she needed to know.

“E I, as it is called, has families. And they make up songs to express their theology just as Charles Wesley made up songs to express his. Or to express John’s. So, they make up some songs, at least that song, I can’t think of any others right now. They make up some songs to express their point of view to their children. Notice that the kid stopped crying.” Which is why he’d adopted the song.

“Stephen seemed to disapprove.” He did. And why was Keith hanging around that late anyway? Well, they weren’t at the airport when he and Jen got there; they must have caught their flight.

“Stephen has heard that song before. He stops crying, though. He knows that he’ll hear the song again if he doesn’t.”

“Seems to me that crying after you fall down is what you’d expect from that age.” That was worrisome. They would, presumably, be parents someday. Not right away, but some day. Bystanders could say: “Johnny is young enough; his crying is natural,” and “Timmy is older: he shouldn’t be crying.” Parents had to bring the child from one stage to the other. It was something you learned, just like spelling. But, unlike spelling, schoolteachers wouldn’t do the job if the parents didn’t.

“Oh, it is. And the song doesn’t say to stop crying. The song merely suggests a new context. The reason toddlers are built so close to the ground is so they don’t (usually) get hurt too bad when they fall down.” You fall; you cry; you get up and go on. Sooner or later, you learn that the second stage isn’t necessary. He hadn’t really cried when he’d learned he didn’t make a good pastor, but he would have been much better if he’d had the ‘going on’ stage firmly in mind. Well, they were discussing E I. Maybe he could drop a hint.

“You should take one of their courses.” She’d either love it or hate it.

“I’m not quite a layman.” A little too much self-deprecation mixed in with the resistance.

“They teach courses for clergy, too. And courses either clergy or laity can take. I took courses from them while I was at the D School.” As he’d taken them when he was studying for a PhD, he wasn’t belittling her in suggesting that she take some. “Look, I don’t have any of the materials with me. Just keep an open mind; that’s all I ask.” And she looked like she would. But she was off chasing the negativity.

“I know you don’t think I’m very well educated...”

“Compared to what? You have a second degree; high school is about average for the country. If I don’t think you know enough to quit learning, I don’t think anybody does. I certainly don’t.”

“You know one hell of a lot.” Couldn’t she see that she, too, knew one hell of a lot. That wasn’t the question. He didn’t go around moping because she was prettier than he was.

“But not enough. The background for New Testament studies is daunting. You have to know the culture of the people who wrote the books. And most of them were split between two worlds, mebbe three or four. Saul was a man of the eastern Mediterranean Hellenist culture, but he was also a Jew. How did the Septuagint influence him? And there are things about Hellenist culture we don’t really know. Rome had to have had some influence, and what were the peculiarities of Tarsus? We laugh about Jen’s being a Chicagoan and David’s being a New Yorker. But people are much more mobile today than they were in the first century, and Tarsus had its own laws and centuries of history. Certainly, the Jewish heritage, of which we know a good deal, influenced Paul a lot. Anyway, I should know all of that. I should certainly be on top of what is widely known about that stuff. And I’m not.”