catapult magazine

To

by Robert Zandstra

To care
To love
To marry
To covenant

With God’s help, to be God’s helper to each other
To preserve God’s pleasure

To receive a crown,
                              a wedding crown,
                              wrought not of yourselves,
                              but in the furnace of mystery-
the crown-a ring, a collar, a sash and breastplate you gird on,
a golden halo of light around the body
The crown you receive is the martyr’s crown,
the reward of witness, of testimony, and the death of your own selves.

To be the jewels in each other’s crowns

To witness your own death
but be united beyond death:

To be bone of God’s bones
and flesh of God’s flesh
your bones ground to make God’s bread
your lifeblood mixed into wine
and you die.
                    Then
God’s
          water
                    breaks
and you are born,
you emerge,
with the Spirit brooding over the face of the deep water
and the water is transformed into wine

To feed on each other in your hearts,
          then to venture forth in peace
          by yourselves yet with singleness of heart

To finally make
          sense of the senses,
          song of whispered songs,
          a story of history, and
          history of your story,

a story that began with tension,
then attention,
today intention,
and always with tending, tending-

To cultivate the garden that you did not plant
but is entrusted to your care:
your harvest, gatherings, produce,
seeds of gratitude and hope,
rain from above,
leaves and humus below your feet,
tendrils-tenuous, tenacious-that then extend, without end

 
now, between
golden age and golden years
to take the proper step

bone of his bone
flesh of her flesh

Note: Crowning the couple is part of the Eastern Orthodox Sacrament of Marriage ceremony.  An ancient Orthodox tradition says that martyrs will receive a crown in heaven.  The couple is symbolically crowned to signify that, through each other, they will die to their own wills and live into Christ’s. The crown also signifies their mutual union with Christ and thus their shared kingship and glory.