Psalm 45 - Rooted and Interconnected - Celebrating a Marriage

Yesterday was a wonderful celebration in our family. We celebrated the wedding of one of our nephews and his long-time girlfriend. My wife was the officiant and it was a beautiful and fun celebration. How fitting, then, that the next Psalm is one that is a song celebrating a marriage as well! Like the previous one, Psalm 45 is a unique Psalm compared to all that have come before it. It isn’t really addressed to God in praise or thanksgiving per se and there’s no sense of lament or concern. Instead it is a celebration of a royal marriage between the king and his soon-to-be wife. Full disclosure - it definitely reflects marriage views of ancient times so just be aware of that. However, that being said, it is still a beautiful celebration of both partners in the union, of joy, and of gratitude for the marraige to come and the marriage relationship that will follow.

There are two photos that reflect some of the meaningfulness of the celebration yesterday.

A focus throughout the ceremony was on trees. Where the service was held was in the midst of some beautiful, wondrous, wide, and deep-rooted trees. My daughter and I commented that they looked very Ent-like (Lord of the Rings reference in case you are unfamiliar). In the ceremony, my wife reflected on the ways that trees are rooted together, communicate, protect, and nurture one another. She wove together the rootedness for this beautiful couple along with the family and friends who had gathered - all of us a part of the rootedness for each of them and for their union together going forward. This same message was also woven throughout the vows and the blessings.

While Amy shared of this for the couple, this is a reality for all of us. We are rooted together and we can try to live purely as individuals but when we do that we are going against the very nature of who we are. Few quotes sum this up better for me than that from Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail where he writes:

In a real sense all life is inter-related. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality.

This truth was also reflected in what Amy did for the couple as their blessing. She used a practice rooted in Celtic tradition of handfasting. For the blessing, their hands were “tied’ together as Amy shared a blessing. Here’s the braided cord that was used.

This also reflects the same truth shared around the trees. This new couple is bound together in a way different than they were before. But I love the braided cord that was used because it isn’t just a single strand but a series of separate braided cords (each made up of multiples) and also interwoven with leaves. So not only is the tree imagery there but also the commitment that this couple made to one another and the spoken commitments that everyone at the ceremony made to this couple as well. All of them rooted and tied in with one another.

There are so many other connections that are in all of this - those that have been shared already, those in this Psalm today, and still others. In the book of Ecclesiastes, it has a section that speaks of the power of relationship between not just two but three (usually presumed to be the people and God but can be opened beyond that) where we read in 4:9-12

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians (especially chapter 12) of the interconnectedness of people together in a single “body” where how every part rejoices together and every part suffers together and where each has unique gifts to be used for the building up of the whole.

And these are universal truths as well. So many cultures have this same understanding of our connectionalism to one another. In many African cultures, notably Zulu and Xhosa is the concept of Ubuntu which essentially says that each of us exists because we exist. One way of putting it in English has traditionally been, “I am because you are.” This concept is not only in these cultures but is seen in so many others as well.

So this morning, I celebrate once again this beautiful marriage from yesterday in light of this celebratory Psalm. But I also hear in it a challenge and an encouragement to me (and hopefully to you as well) to remember and live this same deep sense of rootedness and interconnectedness.

Finally, here’s part of the wedding present Amy and I shared with this couple. This is sunrise from this past October at Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. At that time of year, this is the first place in the continental US to see the sunrise and this is the same place that this couple was engaged. But their day wasn’t this clear and colorful. It was cloudy and fogged over. So this gift of these two trees taking in this sunrise was our gift to them - once again, rooted and interconnected.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

PS - For the next few weeks, posts may be a bit more irregular and also there won’t be any “real” Scout photos. We are leaving later today on a trip to Ireland and Spain to visit two of our children who are doing study abroad programs this semester. So there definitely will be some photos of those two beautiful countries and we’ll see how the Psalms speak into our time over there. I did bring along the little plush “Scout” that my sister sent a while back and you saw from our trip to Acadia in October. Scout is at home with a super-awesome dog-sitter and house-sitter. But here was Scout a few days ago expressing her opinion about us leaving…