“People say that what we’re all seeking si a meaning for life.. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will hve resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being a life. That’s what it’s all finally about, and that’s what these clues help us find within ourselves.” Dr. Joseph Campbell
Experience… That’s an interesting word.
In the context of culture, or rites of passage, we use another word.
Virginity: The state of being naive, innocent, or inexperienced in a particular context.”
We all, here, come from different cultures, different times, different wells of pain and joy, life and death.
We are, Simply, Human.
No matter the land of your birth, your station in life, or your conclusions of faith and perception of reality, we are…..
Human.
We all have shame, secrets, regrets that we wold rather not think about.
Rather not discuss
Rather not have those that we respect know about.
And so, from those that we love, we hide our shame.. our weakness.. the perceived or genuine defects of our souls, the limitations of our intellect, the hypocrisy festering at the heart of our faith, whatever that is.
We hide the true nature of ourselves in all our postulant beauty, in our secret profanity.
And so, we silo our lives with labels,
Work life
Private life
Creative life
Love life
Public Life
We hide pieces of ourselves, splitting up our souls and stashing the disfigured fragments, striving to exist in a way that no one dataset gives too much information about our Humanity.
We must not let “them” triangulate the place of our weakness, our flaws.
Our souls.
I stand before you naked, Vulnerable, stripped of my defenses.
Strewn about this hall are the relics of two lives… clues to the most intimate, challenging, silly, and profound moments.
More than enough data points.
It is a gift, an act of faith, a work of vulnerability.
I do not presume to understand the course of my life. At the end of the day, I am a battlefield chaplain, like my Father and his Father before him.
That is to say, I see you.
I feel you.
You cannot hide, for I know all the hiding places.
That is my craft.
To hunt the souls of the Worthy.
Of the perfect
Of the flawed, perfect humans that are you.
The avatars of the universe trying to understand itself.
My Bride approaches, we do this as an act of faith. Faith that, If we are vulnerable, than YOU will be vulnerable to each other.
So that, together we may experience what Joseph Campbell Devine’s.
So that you may carry the image of perfect love and perfect trust with you.
So that, as the light of Earendil, you will share your light in the darkness of the world. So that we may go forward as…
Human.
Open your eyes, unlock the bindings of your heart, and behold the radiant beauty that was, that is, and that will be.