d20

Speaking of warriors, princesses and sorceresses. . . I played Dungeons and Dragons this week for the first time in 6 or 7 years.

It was fantastic.

I told the story before about meeting Joshua on the El and inviting myself over to his house to play. I've also told you before about learning to play D&D with my ex-husband and his friends.

So, Monday night, I drove out to Joshua's house, which was a little bungalow that has been entirely given over to gaming. Every wall was covered in D&D maps, white boards or shelves to display miniatures and action figures. Book shelves were everywhere and stuffed with rule books. The most amazing part of the decor was that the giant dining room table had a gingham table cloth that had perfect 1 inch squares so that once the clear plastic sheet was laid over it, it could be written on with overhead markers. So, Joshua could draw the landscape of certain settings if we were going to be fighting and we could put our miniatures in perfectly scaled relationships to each other and to the savage mutant monkeys that were attacking us.

Their roommate is a minor local celebrity. At least, when I tell people that he does the Weird Chicago Tours, my friends say, "Oh yeah!" in recognition. He's kind of cute. I wonder in the fact that he's a professional psychic and ghost hunter puts him out of the running.

The group was Joshua, his wife, Scott and Darrin. All four were, as my dad says, straight out of Central Casting. Darrin was a big bearish oaf of a guy who smiled the whole time. He dropped his giant gym bag full of rule books and jumped in immediately to help me put the finishing touches on my character, laughing at my jokes and enjoying my slightly abrasive retorts. Scott looked a little like Steve Buscemi and had a giant red velvet drawstring pouch to hold all of his paraphenalia.

I loved it. It was like coming home.

I mean, I made my own dice bag for the occasion. If you click on the picture, you'll notice that the bag is lined with flannel to give it the appropriate-looking heft and that it was designed to fit my mechanical pencil, my halfling miniature and the plethora of dice I bought that morning at Gamer's Paradise, having discovered that my ex-husband got ALL the dice in the divorce.

This group plays a little differently than what I am used to. They focus less on storytelling and character development and play it more like a computer game, calculating strategically what choices they should make about the character now so that later, it can increase in levels in the most efficient way. Almost like getting experience points and being the most powerful you could possibly be was like crack. That will make it less fun for me in the long run, but they responded well when I said that I wasn't going to do what they were encouraging me to do because it wasn't in my character's nature.

It feels good to be expanding the foundation of people that I am friendly with. Even if the number of people that feel close enough to be totally myself with remains small, I might soon have a wide enough base of a variety of personalities that I will always have someone availalbe to match the individual facets of myself that I want to be at any given moment. You know, like my nature is a 20-sided die and only one side of it can ever be facing up at one time.

And, as that network is being built, I'll be having fun killing savage mutant monkeys and hearing other nerds like me laugh at my jokes.

Hen, hen

My friend Cliff posted this YouTube video that his friend posted. I actually really like Joe Cocker and love his musical style and ability. However, John Belushi's impersonations entertain me equally. So, for your amusement, here is my friend's friend's send-up.

Warriors, princesses and sorceresses, oh my!

I love costume shops.

In my life, I've been able to see (and sometimes rummage around in) the costume shops at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Cedar Point Amusement Park, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Broadway Costume Rentals and my high school. This is not an impressive list to people in the business. However, to a theatre layman like myself, it's huge.

When I read, I get completely lost in a very visual world that is being described by the words on the page. It's like I act out the scenes in my head, like when you imagine conversations that you wish had gone differently or even when you dream. As I've mentioned this before, this often results in catatonic reading that I don't realize I'm doing until after I snap out of it. Like Professor Godbole says, "But how, if there is such an event, can it be remembered afterwards? How can it be expressed in anything but itself? Not only from the unbeliever are the mysteries hid, but the adept himself cannot retain them. He may think, if he chooses, that he has been with God, but as soon as he thinks it, it becomes history, and falls under the rules of time." Occasionally, when I come out of the ecstatic state, I have a deep desire to maintain and continue the experience in some way. Like keeping the balloon suspended in the air with light taps. When I was younger, this impulse took the form of wanting to surround myself in the clothing that the characters wore, especially characters in novels where the heroines wore medieval-style outfits. Bodices, mutiple skirts, cloaks, peasant blouses. I wanted these things. Have you ever seen Labyrinth? I hadn't then, but if I had, I would have been eternally jealous of Sarah.

More often than not, the impulse would fade and I would forget my desires until I had another literary episode and then the longing would begin again. But since I had very few sewing skills and no money to spend on expensive costumes ($100 - gasp), I did without.

Imagine my delight when I entered high school and got access to my first costume closet. It was a giant collection of fanciful clothing that included just about every outfit that I had ever imagined myself wearing while immersed in a book. When it was left unlocked, I stole away to stroke the textures and to explore the construction with inquisitive fingers while holding pieces up to myself in front of the mirror.

Costume shops are important because each piece takes hours (10 to 40) to construct and a fair amount of cash for materials, not to mention somewhat advanced crafting skills. Average people just don't have the resources to devote to making costumes that theaters do. We have, you know, jobs and families and household chores. But for costumers, it IS their job to create these things.

I just recently returned from a trip to Miami to visit my friend Camilla, who is cut from almost the exact same cloth that I am, and who moved to Miami to be the costume director for the Florida Grand Opera. She has three degrees in either fashion or costume design and is amazing. We met while we worked at the Renaissance Faire and she designed and made my wedding dress. Since the season is over for the summer, she's the only employee there and she let me wander around while she got some work done.

When I enter a costume shop, I'm overwhelmed by the combination of industrial decor and the casualness with which these individual objects of my intense desires are simply smooshed together on the rack.

For instance, upon walking up to this rack labeled "cloaks and capes," I'm first just struck dumb. Do you know how badly I wanted a cloak? I made a purple cotton one for my friend Dan for our Junior Honors Medievalfest but I still have the yards and yards of forest green wool that I bought for my own but never had the courage to actually cut. Ultimately, I found a basic one at a thrift store for $18 and actually got to wear it on the 6 cool days I experienced during 5 years working at the Faire.

But Camilla's shop has dozens of all colors and styles. How could I not love this one?Can you picture the dramatic entrance I could make in it, pulling back the hood to reveal a tumble of raven hair belying my female status to an inn that assumed the rough-and-tumble adventurer must be a man?

Occasionally, I have pretty-girl fantasies and so buckets of parasols catch my fancy, as well.Must preserve my alabaster skin, you know.

Costume shops are also fun because most have been around for decades. Since pieces can be used again and again for different productions in new combinations, when you look at a wall of belts, you'll find antique purple velvet belts and pouches sharing the same space as newer plain brown belts. Notice that the purple is faded on the side that faces out compared to the lining.

To survive this long, older pieces have to have been well-constructed and that care and diligence is reflected in the little details. Look at the needlework on this one.Even the more modern pieces have amazing details that no one in the audience will ever appreciate. It just looks like a big blur to them but if it were missing, the costumes would look flat. Less like clothing and more like Halloween, which would pull their focus away from the experience.This dress has layers and layers of small shapes appliqued individually to create the gauzy magical look.

Another delight of costume shops for me is that people that work there tend to have similar aesthetic sensibilities to mine. Actually, of the three colleagues that Camilla got a chance to introduce to me, two assumed that I was "in the business." In bewilderment I asked her what made them think that. She said I just looked like someone who would be.

Lots of costume people love vintage stylings and details that make objects special in addition to being utilitarian. Although the wig staff could have easily just bought a standard barbershop chair. Instead, someone found and paid for this beautiful antique chair. Look at it! It even still has the attached ash tray for when the whole world walked around in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
You push the button to open the hatch that lets the ashes drop into the compartment below. It just makes me grin with delight that such a beautiful piece of furniture still gets used.

Camilla has one hard and fast rule in the costume shop. Apparently, this is a really hard concept for many of the singers to get. Luckily, she has the ability to send them home and not to pay them for the fitting if they disobey. She has stories about sticking her hand down the top of the back of someone's pants in order to pin the seam only to receive the nasty shock of her skin coming into contact with a man's sweaty, hairy butt. Apparently, he thought the sign didn't apply to him.

So, when I turned a corner and saw this shot framed in front of me, I had to take a picture and title it "Butts."

A companion to that shot is called, "Heads."

Thank you for being my friend, Camilla. Thank you also for letting me fall deep down inside my imagination, where I am a warrior. And a princess. And a sorceress.

Come Thou fount of every blessing

Being single is hard.

Right now, I'm not say that for the reasons you might expect. I've stopped worrying that my eggs are getting old, as Anne Lamott says, "like the eggs you get at 7-11" and I can live without cuddling and intimacy and someone to talk about my day with on a regular basis. I can also live without having an automatic date for the wedding and being included in my friends' "couple nights."

But I'm having trouble living without someone who fucks with my shit. I'm having trouble living without someone who needs to forgive me and does. I'm having trouble living without someone who thinks I'm funny and annoying and sexy and slovenly and needy and a blessing and who wants to hang out with me most of the time despite those contradictions. I miss having someone I can get angry at who will stick around until we both feel better. I miss having someone who rests his head on my chest and lets me stroke his hair while he cries in the safety of my arms and the dark.

I've been reading Debbie Blue's book From Stone to Living Word. It's blowing my head off. She is able to lay out the logical narrative ending the journey at truth I believe intuitively and so can't explain.

She writes that the Garden of Eden was about humans convincing themselves that to be god-like is to be independent heroes. She points out that so many of the heroes we admire are shown to be weakened when they attach themselves to other people. Look at the Jedi Knights and Spiderman, she says. But the reality is that God actually gave up being alone in order to attach himself to humans. I think we can all agree that God gets to be the ultimate role model for humans, right? And She does this both at Creation and again by taking on the form of Jesus. God invited the mess that is relationship as the ultimate state of perfection. It was good.

But we don't like chaos. We hate that the sea can wash over us in a tsunami and the rain can alluvasudden dry up or that mothers die of cancer. We want order and rules. We want experiences that we can hold in our hands, analyze and understand completely. Even if these rituals, rules and explanations don't actually keep destruction and hunger at bay. Anything that assures us that life is not a mess - just like a relationship - is an idol, according to Debbie Blue. Because life is a relationship between us and God. God keeps insisting on it. No matter how often we walk away from the truth that we cannot exist unless God wants us to, no matter how much we want to believe that the highest position to aspire to is as a lone-wolf tycoon, God insists on fucking with our shit and forgives us and thinks we're funny and annoying and sexy and slovenly and needy and a blessing and wants to hang out with us most of the time despite those contradictions. She writes:

It would be revelatory to recognize that somewhere we believe (or if not quite believe, then act in ways that suggest we believe) that it might be good to be alone - not just part of, but better than, bigger than, more important than. Not one with but removed from, set apart from, somehow transcending the masses. I think this story [the apple] in Genesis might help us see that somewhere, consciously or unconsciously, we question the goodness of our relatedness all the time.

I agree with Blue wholeheartedly both regarding the superior state of being in relationship with all of its mess and that we tend toward aloneness by default. "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love." I think Laura Kalpakian says it similarly in Steps and Exes but gives it a feminist twist:

Only men think it’s so romantic to go it alone. Look at you – you’re off with your boat – you and no other. Man against the sea! Why do men think you can only be a hero by yourself? Man against Nature! Man against Society! Why don’t men ever acknowledge that keeping something together can be just as heroic as being all alone? Men are always against something. Why can’t they be for something? [. . .] I’m not committed to universals. I’m for very modest, particular things. An ordinary life. Watching my daughter grow up. Making a home for us. A living. Nothing very grand or ambitious.

Kalpakian resonates as well as Blue does for me because my experience with men is the same as her character's.

I have been thinking about the ex-boyfriends that I am beginning to stack up in my backyard like firewood since the divorce. Although one or two of them didn't work simply because of a lack of chemistry, the majority of them didn't work because the guys wanted to date me but didn't want to be my boyfriend. They didn't want to get their lives all mixed up in mine.

Jeffrey was the exception when I lived on the island. Tom noted once that Jeffrey and I had such distinct shared mannerisms that it was hard to imagine us as individuals.

I miss that. I don't really know how to find it again. From either God or a man. I have some guesses but my batting average is pretty low.

Being single is hard.

Welcoming and affirming

Yesterday, I marched in the gay pride parade with my church. My friend Rachel posted some background to the organization that we were marching with.

It was an interesting experience both for what it taught me about myself and what it taught me about the gay community.

You see, I would generally see myself as worldly when it comes to exposure to gay rights and gay issues. I have honest-to-goodness gay friends, I've always believed that people were born that way so I've never really fallen for the "it's an abomination" line. By the time I started thinking about the issue, I was already thinking about translations of the Bible as a means of preservation for the social order so "the Bible says it's wrong" can be argued against a hundred different ways, in my book. I've never let my students use "gay" as an insult and actually converted some over to believing that's harmful, rather than simply obeying the authority figure. I worked at the Renaissance Faire for five years and witnessed all manner of after-hours flamboyance. Hell, Susan made me watch Priscilla when I was 17 years old and I loved it.

But for some reason, I was overwhelmed when confronted with so much flamboyance when I arrived at the parade site. Beautiful drag queens, fantastic costumes, glitter all over bodies, young and old. But there were also men in just their underwear and a pair of boots or women naked from the waist up except for stickers on their nipples.

I'm a fan of public nudity. I've had some great experiences on the island, learning that nudity is not always equivalent to sex but it sometimes simply an expression of the friendship intimacy you feel or hope to feel with other people. It says, "I'm comfortable that you won't judge me for how funny I look without any of my clothing supports that put my parts in the right places." Because everyone looks ungainly hauling themselves out of a hot tub. Everyone looks goofy naked because of all that unchoreographed motion. Being naked in the bright sunlight or even the dim light of the sauna is really not very sexy at all if it is devoid of sexual context.

But when I encountered public nudity at the gay pride parade, I found myself tucking my attention inside the safe sphere of my feet and my chest. I felt nervous and didn't want to make eye contact with anyone. Plus, it seemed a little gauche to look. I found my group but since I didn't know anyone, I leaned against a building and waited for a familiar face. I was overwhelmed but also moved powerfully and fought back tears at the huge show of support for people that have been so oppressed. It's so different when you are actually there in person. It's amazing that so many people can love so many other people all at one time.

But when talking with Nanette to give her directions, I found myself addressing her as Pastor Nanette, which I've never done before. As if her position of authority would protect me.

Because it wasn't just public nudity. It was public sex. Of course, not all of the parade is like this. A lot of it is just like every other parade that I've been to. And I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've ended up making out with a strange guy in a bar by the end of some South Side Irish parades, so it's not like I expect parades to be chaste. But this was often explicit. A woman wearing only her skimpy underwear and a strap-on. Lots of spanking, bumping, grinding, and bondage.

I suppose that for centuries, gay people have been told that they are deviant. So, to empower oneself, one flaunts everything that society considers deviant to eliminate the internal shame that has been impressed into one's soul. By going tot he extreme, what should be normal no longer feels extreme anymore.

While I was in Miami, I wore all my new sundresses. One is very low cut and several are strapless. Camilla exclaimed that I looked like the woman that she and Ruth (my boss at the Faire) always knew I could be but never was while I was married to Dennis. They used to marvel at how reserved and pure I seemed to be. (of course, this is part of why I was so successful at selling to little girls.) But my ex-husband wanted me to be sweet and innocent and so I was. As I've grown up since then, dated men who actually expressed an attraction to me and learned that I possess power because of their attraction, I wear outfits that are more and more revealing. I'm fairly certain that I stay within the bounds of appropriateness and good taste but my newfound power gets expressed to the world through the decisions I make about what to wear.

I suppose that some of the people in the parade are expressing their power by displaying sex in addition to sexuality.

As the parade went on, my nervousness faded. This was helped by the vodka lemonade that was offered to me out of a 5-gallon office-style water cooler when the parade was stalled because of an injury. Also, once we got started again, my group reached the main drag and I began observing the responses people had to a group of 50 Christians marching and handing out buttons that said, "God loves all of us." People would call out. "I'm a Lutheran!" or "I like churches!" When we would stop briefly, we were almost always engaged in conversation immediately by someone in the crowd, asking somewhat incredulously about our church.

What caused me to tear up if I thought too long about it as I marched was the sheer number of people that made eye contact with me and said, "Thank you." I must have heard it 40 or 50 times over the course of the parade.

Can you imagine what it is like to come out of the closet? I'm certain that every person who has was approached by at least one Christian who felt it was his or her duty to inform the person that homosexuality was a sin or that the person was broken or that the person was going to hell.

Whatever the context, those words hurt.

And I'm sure that plenty of queer people have heard much worse.

So, when a bunch of self-proclaimed Christians marched amidst the latex and the whips and the feather boas to say that God loves all of us, they said "Thank you."

Wicker Park Grace is what's called a "welcoming and affirming" church, which means that we believe that God gave all of us the mental and spiritual faculties to determine her will for our lives. Many of us do not believe homosexuality is a sin. Those of us who do are working too hard getting the plank out of our own eyes to worry about the speck in someone else's.

I am grateful to the people who came out to the parade, including my friend Amanda from school and my friend Monique (who saved me from a spanking of my own) ;-), because they mirrored back to me my own value in this world. In Genesis, God says to Abraham, "I'll make you a great nation and bless you. I'll make you famous; you'll be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you; those who curse you I'll curse. All the families of the Earth will be blessed through you." The result of God's blessing is that Abraham must turn around and be a blessing to "all the families of the Earth." He is not allowed to keep it to himself.

I have been blessed by being allowed to bless others. They thanked me for that blessing but I wish that I could have thanked them without seeming trite for allowing me express the power that I have because I am trying to learn to love everyone, just like God commands both Abraham and me.

Spirituality of Imperfection

I just spent 2 and a half hours over very good dinner with Ernie Kurtz, the author of one of the most important books in my life.

It was a wonderful experience: the platonic ideal of dinner conversations. Dr. Kurtz is about 70 years old with a smooth pale gnome face with spectacular eyebrows. He apologized that the heat kept him from wearing a tie but his seersucker jacket showed signs of yellowish foxing at the collar. I was utterly charmed. He's more soft-spoken than I expected him to be but not in a frail way. We talked about ideas and the world, asking questions and listening to answers that required life stories to be complete.

I have a feeling that conversations like this can only really be had amongst students and combinations of the young and the old. Students obviously have a maelstrom of abstract thoughts that need to be spoken out loud to gain shape. The young and the old are at such different stages of life that gossip about the personal details and immediate experiences of birth and death don't get exchanged easily if both participants are of equal footing. If one is ministering to the other (in the literal definition of attending to the wants and needs of others) this doesn't happen as often.

But Dr. Kurtz and I met in an egalitarian space. He had sent me an email after I wrote about his book and asked to meet me when he was in town. I was delighted to be noticed probably as much as he was tickled to be quoted.

So we talked about sin and shame and how those words have fallen away from their true meanings. We talked about emerging Christianity and if it can be sustained in the same way that AA has: decentralization. We talked about getting churches more like AA meetings. We talked about stigma and how it is sometimes necessary to keep a group cohesive. He said "sin is . . ." and I can't remember the rest of the sentence but it was subversive and unexpected and I'm sure I'll wake up in the middle of the night and wonder how I could of forgotten. Or else the concept will become part of my regular worldview and I'll be hard-pressed to remember a time when I wasn't aware of that particular truth. We talked about Judaism and its broadness that can encompass so many different expressions of spirituality. We talked about how the early feminist movement couldn't let women become themselves fully because our society equate strength with power. Therefore, they could not admit any vulnerability for fear of losing the power they were trying to gain. Now that they've had some power for awhile, the rules have changed a little and they can start to admit vulnerability. Because shared vulnerability is what it is all about. The ultimate truth is the acknowledgment that there is something not-right about all of us. We talked about how we can eliminate consumerism without destroying capitalism. He told me that the wisdom of his years brought him to the conclusion that materialism is the ultimate evil; the thing that keeps us from God. He asked me how metaphor influenced my faith.

I read in People magazine once a quote from a celebrity who was asked to describe the best part of an evening and she said. "Who can say which drop was the most enjoyable of a good, hot shower?" I feel that way about my evening. I am so lucky to have gotten to spend this time with someone of such wisdom, acuity and curiosity and to watch his face as he turned over things that I said or asked and generated a newborn thought in response.

When I am sad that I do not have a group of friends to form a daily family to support me and to rely upon me, I remember that what I do have are opportunities again and again to have one-on-one dinners with intelligent, empathetic people and that those social events need space so it's OK that they are not regular occurrences.

I am blessed.

Splash!

Vacations are supposed to be more fun than this.

Of course, I mean, this moment. Right now.

My vacation hasn't felt like this the whole time.

But right now, it sucks.

I have this rash that comes to haunt me every once in awhile. One doctor has told me it is impetigo. Another said it wasn't. Both agreed on a cream that tends to keep it from spreading too far but that shouldn't be worn out into the sun. The rash doesn't seem to be contagious but it does itch.

And it only lives on my face.

So, I have an itchy, puffy, bumpy red face since this time the cream didn't really seem to be very effective. I've had this face for the 4 days of this summer that have been particularly cool, sunny and beautiful. Also, I'm very tired. It's been a full week since my last final and I'm still sleeping 11 hours a night and taking anywhere from 2 to 5 hour naps. So, aside from brief forays out into the world, I have been sitting in my apartment, trying to ignore the blue sky that peeks in through the venetian blinds while I lie in bed because I don't actually want to do anything except try to stop my whole face from burning and itching just by willing it so.

I have things to say to you all. I promise I'll be back. But not today. Today, I'm going to get enjoyment out of this vacation, regardless of my face.

I'm going to read a book. It's going to have fairies and elves and dragons in it. I will forget all about my gross face while I live in Jane Yolen's world for a little while.

Do you know why I know this is possible?

Last Wednesday, I was reading my first novel since I started school last August. It had a 15-year-old female protagonist, fairies and dwarves and it was set in a Renaissance Faire that had obviously been informed by the Faire I worked at for 5 years. It was a joyful experience. Like jumping into a lake on a hot day. The transition from uncomfortable to soothed was immediate and absolute. I got on the El to go home from a meeting, sat down, noticed the guy sitting next to me looked at my legs, the opened my book. I didn't notice the world again until I was a stop and a half away from mine and as I savored the state of ecstasy I had recently been in, I looked around. Francis Spufford calls this state "reading catatonically." Proof of the depth of my immersion came when I realized that the man who had looked at my legs was my favorite kind of nerd: portly, pasty and making Dungeons and Dragons characters on the entire trip! How did I miss that? So, for the 2 minutes I had, I engaged him in conversation. Since he was wearing a wedding ring and has shown himself to be a person of similar tastes to mine, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was catching a glimpse of the title of my book when I first sat down. In the course of our conversation, he was incredulous that I would be interested and then as he began to trust me, I wrangled an invitation to play with his group sometime. Woohoo!

So I get to read my books AND I get to play D&D.

I'll be back to write some more. But right now, I'm jumping off the edge back into the water.

Flowers and rice

On Tuesday night, a friend told me about her friend who was breaking up with her boyfriend of 10 years. My heart hurts a little for the woman because she has to tell people that she broke up with her boyfriend. Like any other 16-year-old girl who casually broke the heart of some pimply boy and called a new one in a week. The reality is that this woman is divorcing her partner. 10 years? That's a common-law marriage. But we don't use the language of "common-law" anymore so unless this woman wants to dredge up details to every schmoe off the street, she is doomed to miscommunicate her situation and won't get the appropriate response from misinformed people in response.

She has no heuristic that communicates rightly the spectrum of emotions she might be feeling at any given moment. If she could say that she was going through a divorce, people would say they were sorry and what could they do and would adjust their interpretations of her behavior accordingly. Probably in a more generous and forgiving way. But since she has to say that she is in the middle of a bad break-up, people say they're sorry, might ask what they can do and adjust their interpretations of her behavior in a way that expects her to pretty much function the way she always has since it's just a boyfriend, right?

Divorce is crazy-making. I remember looking up at the girl who was ringing up my purchase and realizing that she was staring at me oddly. Though I tried as hard as I could, I could not remember what I had said or done to elicit such a look, but I also couldn't remember what else I was doing in the previous two minutes so I have no doubt I said something really weird. For the two years after my divorce, I overreacted to small conflicts, cried very easily, talked endlessly about the very minute details of the proceedings and personal injustices and yelled at far too many people who didn't deserve it.

But they forgave me, often before I knew that I needed forgiving, because I was recovering from a divorce.

Would they have let me streamroll them quite as often if I were just breaking up with my boyfriend?

At a BBQ this past weekend, someone asked me what was the strangest ritual in my brother's Hindu wedding ceremony. Honestly, none of them were. Human nature is apparently so universal that everything made sense. Their hands were tied together. They walked around a fire. They fed each other something sweet. Vows of fidelity were exchanged. They threw grains for future prosperity. They gave each other flower garlands that symbolized their hearts. I was a little afraid before the wedding that I wouldn't feel like they were really married since the ritual wouldn't be familiar. But that never became an issue.Is there any doubt in your mind that these two people have just committed to spend their lives together, supporting each other when life is good and when life is really really hard?

Because a community of people witnessed this ceremony and agreed with it, there is no doubt that they are married, regardless of culture. Everyone that was there believes it. What's more, everyone who hears about the event from those witnesses believes that my brother and Meena are married. The people that hear about the event from the people that heard about the event from the people that were there will believe that my Daniel and his wife constitute a family. As an extension of this community, the government requires that institutions and organizations provide certain benefits to spouses.

Marriage is about communities. We create these elaborate and ultimately simple symbolic gestures so that the truth is indelibly written in our very visual memories. The truth is that these two people have a specific kind of relationship that has deeply spiritual consequences. The relationship is greater than the sum of its parts and what fills that gap between what it is and what it is made up of is a total mystery.

So, when something happens to a marriage - divorce, illness or death - because we, as a community, have witnessed its beginning, we can grieve its ending. We have a frame of reference for what the survivors of the tragedy might possibly be feeling. Armed with this social knowledge, we are more inclined to forgive and be generous. Our government recognizes this loss by requiring the enforcement of the original contract in the form of survivor's benefits and kin rights. If someone has just broken up with a boyfriend, we do not feel such a great loss because we do not quite believe that the relationship ever had a spiritual element to begin with. No one in the community has witnessed it.

I believe in marriage. I believe in marriage for all people, whether they love people of the opposite sex or people of the same sex. I think that when we encourage long-term committed relationships to exist without a community/governmental blessing, we are actually threatening the institution of marriage because as a society we begin to believe that there is no difference between being married and living together.

But the difference is that one couple's marriage is integrated in community and the other's isn't. Other people in the community will be able to love the individual members of the couple more fully and appropriately if they are accurately aware of the actual status of the relationship and the best way to do this is a marriage ceremony and contract, whether officiated at City Hall with two friends, a judge and a clerk for witnesses or whether in a temple with 200 people throwing flower petals.