The Wedding of the World

I was up, showered at 6:00 a.m. yesterday and plugged into the omnipresent television to watch the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markel.  Usually, my attention to human spectacle of the ultra rich with salivating commoners outside who can only wish they were born into it too, is looked on by me with skepticism and chagrin as spectacles like that are not always what they appear to be if one looks beyond on their surface to what is beneath.  Each adulation of humans is fraught with disappointment, as Shakespeare said, "... subject to the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."

This wedding, however, I thought was, indeed, different.  I was, instead of eschewing tradition, applauding it because the tradition progressed into something partially new. I was applauding it in front of the TV where only two people and one cat sat watching the pomp Americans say they eschew but many secretly love.  The cat was sleeping through it, of course, oblivious to the human culturally Everest event that was playing out before the world.  Humans, after all, are cultural beings.  We cry, we laugh, and do so many other things making our species different from all others.  Sometimes that difference is for good and sometimes, sadly, for evil.  Within the space of two days I was both crying from the happiness of a biracial royal wedding and, crying from the sadness of the Santa Fe High School massacre in Texas, as the cultural milieu in which we exist lives on a seesaw of good and evil.

The wedding was a gorgeous spectacle of a usually entirely white occurrence to a mixture of biracial beauty.  Everything to me was beautiful -- the bride, her gown, a happy Harry, the Episcopal historic church surrounding a magnificent castle of Windsor and the beautiful ceremony.  There was, however, something else even more profoundly beautiful.  There were so many persons of color who occupied roles of prominence none ever has had at a royal wedding.  The bride was a gorgeous mixture of race with her mother sitting with happiness gleaned from a daughter blessed with talent, humane values, beauty and, indeed, was an American.  In spirit I, an American, was invited to this wedding.  I cheered from our living room when Reverend Curry, a person of color, too, gave his MLKesque sermon not of some of the Bible's harsh dictates but to its simplest message of love.  He delivered it in black charismatic style that made me cry.  I loved the black chorus singing "Stand by Me," an American song, I loved Reverend Michael Curry and his profoundly moving sermon of love and I loved the dark skinned cellist who played in beautiful classical style while the bride and groom signed their pledge to each other out of the sight of all.

The royal wedding gave its viewers its usual classical elegance while giving us also the inclusive elegance of the others who make up our global populace.  To say the wedding for me was a treat is to give it understatement.  It spoke to the divisions of man; yes, to our divisions led by a president who was happily not invited because he capitalizes on the simmering hate of our nation threatening to kill it.  Harry and Meaghan's wedding teaches us is does not have to be that way; it teaches us we can include others who, historically, have suffered, as again Shakespeare would say, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

Harry and Meaghan, you showed to billions what could be the beginning of a new age.  The moral and ethical among us yearn for us to love one another, to care for one another, to empathize with one another and to help one another.  We can sow peace where there is war, we can sow love where there is hate and we can sow justice where there is none.  Jesus is alleged to have said of his disciples, "Love one another as you have loved me." I am not Christian but the beauty of some of the New Testament words sing to me a song of peace, love and brotherhood we can all achieve if we simply imagine and try.  I wish Harry and Meghan a life of good health and a life of love.  Now, go and teach our global multitudes to sin no more.