This Year's Theme: Marriage
We had completed the first cycle of Harvest Home Concerts--one focusing on each of the four themes: Family, Feast, Harvest and Home. In the midst of an internal debate about whether 2011 should be a final "best of" program or whether we should consider another four-year cycle, one of my singers asked me when the concert was going to be. She was concerned because there was a family wedding the weekend before Thanksgiving and she worried that she and her husband would not be able to sing this year.
As it turned out, the wedding couple had faithfully attended the Harvest Home Concerts since year one, even sending copies of the CD when the groom-to-be was serving overseas. When we last focused on Family, I chose to sing about parent-child relationships but I knew at the time that if we ever did a second concert on Family I would focus on marriage and spousal relationships. This casual conversation confirmed for me that the concerts still had an enthusiastic audience and that 2011's theme would indeed be marriage...
...which is only mildly ironic because I am single, never married. But I have witnessed the strength of marriages in my family and among my friends, and I am happy to celebrate it.
Even though half of the marriages these days seem to end in divorce, even though families, churches or the state may challenge it, even though remaining single is more acceptable now than ever before, people still want to marry. The national debate over who can marry has reminded us how fundamental to human society this relationship is; the impulse to declare one's love for another publicly in the presence of the community, and to declare one's intent to live in a committed, exclusive relationship with that person.
The specific meaning of marriage may differ from one religious denomination to another--in some traditions it is a sacrament, in others not--even as it does within secular society, but this year's concert will reflect on some of the themes common to most models of marriage:
- That it's all a little out of our control, that you sometimes are surprised by the person that you end up with. There clearly are other forces at play.
- That a wedding doesn't make a marriage, but simply declares the intent to be married. The marriage is made over time through a shared life together.
- That marriage rituals reflect the specific culture in which they occur.
- That marriage represents a union, physical and spiritual.
- That marriage is of long-duration, traditionally life-long and even transcending the death of a spouse.
- That marriage brings benefit not only to the couple but to the larger community, and not only when the marriage produces children.
- That love is at its core, persisting and persevering.
Whether it's your own marriage or your friends'...whether it's your first anniversary or your fiftieth...we invite you to join us in celebrating marriage and family.