Sandwiched as I am between two weddings, the sermon before, helping a tiny bit with the food later, one wedding and then another, every morning I've been hammering away on the piano at the hymn that launched me my own self down the aisle, coming as it is on nigh thirteen years as the days run so swiftly by. I tried to find a YouTube version of it but apparently no one sings it, as well they should not, because what you sing at your wedding does have the potential to bring itself to pass. Singing Love Divine All Loves Excelling is pretty safe. It's all about God and everything and so that's nice. Matt really wanted A Mighty Fortress is Our God but I held firm. I didn't want a whole verse about Satan anywhere in the course of the morning, even though every Christian marriage is going to be beset by that evil person at all times and in all places. Maybe we should have had it.

No, we had Lift High the Cross and King of Glory King of Peace and also my whole family sang a beautiful old shape note hymn. But the clincher is that I walked down the aisle to Not Here for High or Holy Things, which, as Matt points out reproachfully at least once a year, may be pretty but is all about work, and boy didn't that come to be.

Not here for high and holy things

we render thanks to thee,

but for the common things of earth,

the purple pageantry

of dawning and of dying days,

the splendor of the sea,

the royal robes of autumn moors,

the golden gates of spring,

the velvet of soft summer nights,

the silver glistering

of all the million million stars,

the silent song they sing,

of faith and hope and love undimmed,

undying still through death,

the resurrection of the world,

what time there comes the breath

of dawn that rustles through the trees,

and that clear voice that saith:

Awake, awake to love and work!

The lark is in the sky,

the fields are wet with diamond dew,

the worlds awake to cry

their blessings on the Lord of life,

as he goes meekly by.

Come, let thy voice be one with theirs,

shout with their shout of praise;

see how the giant sun soars up,

great lord of years and days!

So let the love of Jesus come

and set thy soul ablaze,

to give and give, and give again,

what God hath given thee;

to spend thyself nor count the cost;

to serve right gloriously

the God who gave all worlds that are,

and all that are to be.

Words: Geoffrey Anketel Studdert-Kennedy Music: Morning Song

It's that last line, don't you see, that turned out to be so true. To give and give and give again. And then a little bit more. Just when you think you've given all you have and there isn't any left, but turns out the opportunity to give didn't go away and so you might as well get out of your chair and give one more time again, all the while, in defiance of Jesus, bitterly counting the cost and not doing it right gloriously. More like giving with your teeth gritted and hoping someone goes to sleep now before the holiness just goes completely out the window all together. Nobody really wants to “spend the self”, “to give and give and give again.” One wants, or hopes very much, in marriage as in all things, to be bulstered up in the self and to get and get and get and get without ever worrying about giving at all. Maybe the whole world is better than me and none of you even know what I'm talking about. But I think this is one of the whole tapestry of reasons why marriage is turning out to be such a failure in the west as an institution and why I feel sorry for so many same sex oriented people who think they've won some great prize by getting the state to give it to them. They did “get” it but they can't have it because marriage is about dying to yourself for someone who isn't even a little bit like you. As Jesus died for us who aren't even a little bit like him, so holy and perfect as he is. Marriage, at its core, is giving, not taking. Everything else is idolotry.

So, yay me, here I get up to give a little bit more and work on not counting the cost but also saying sorry for not spending myself. And to all you contemplating marriage, be careful of those hymns and scripture portions!