Wedding sermon for Josh and April

[I gave this sermon as officiant of Josh and April's wedding, July 20^th 2012.]

Marriage, as an institution, predates any reliable recorded human history. Despite its impenetrably obscure origins, societies around the world still find meaning in believing something about where it came from. It is incontestably one of the most important features of our lives. It is far greater than any event, as it's not merely an event it's a stage of life—a condition of life, the means by which our species ensure our security and rear our young.

Obviously, this is something we worry over a lot. We must get this right! Over time, our cultures evolve mores and beliefs about the proper marriage, to help us along a well-tread, tried and true path. Therefore, it doesn't matter so much where the institution of marriage came from, so much as where we think it came from. Is it nature? Is it divinity? Where we place the cornerstone can dramatically alter the course of our marriages. Lives are long, and we agree that marriages should last for the rest of them. Our beliefs about what it is we are doing here today, right now, will shape how you go about resolving the various challenges to a successful marriage and embrace its opportunities.

We naturalists like to point out that nature selects only for the fittest, the greatest opportunist in the face of change. And change is the only constant in life. Some religious scholars contend that if we forget marriage is part of God's plan, then we become soft, and buffet along with the whims of life's ups and downs, temptations from outside, boredom, the sickness, and old age. A society that forgets this, they argue, is doomed to unravel in a libidinous tempest of sin. Oh, but we cannot forget what we have learned. Such stories may have been a persuasive, and even healthy, influence on peoples of the past. But what do we, children of the Enlightenment, we whose universes have been illuminated by the light reason and science, who have not discovered under the light any evidence of God, or a plan? It's just us, a thin film of organic, self-reflecting life clinging to a ball of rock hurling through space. Some may disparage, and either cling with fierce and unforgiving dogmatism to the old ways, while others remain lost, libertine lives, slaves to their desires and alone in the end.

But I say do not disparage. The French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault, was once faced with the question, "what can we do in the face of this existential crisis?" To which he replied with exuberant optimism, "we may create ourselves, like art, every day." The creation of art is the creation of meaning in our lives. I say, remember these words. Make your marriage like art, every day. Every day! As I give you my closing words, I harken the first words. Marriage is not an event, it is a stage of life. In the same way, 'love' is not just an event defined by a momentary feeling, that is 'falling in love'. 'Love' is a verb. It's something you do, actively. You may 'choose' to love your partner, even when you don't particularly feel like it at that very moment. Love is not a thing, which episodically sweeps us off our feet in a fit, but the product of 'free will!". So, I say, do not forget this. Remember this, as the cornerstone of the institution you are building. Love each other, every day.

Josh, are you prepared to make this commitment? Will you vow it? April, are you prepared to make this commitment? Will you vow it?

[Congratulations, you two. And thank you for allowing me the honor of officiating this important event in your lives].