TODAY I HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF GIVING THE WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS AT THE MARRIAGE OF MICHAEL LINDSAY AND MANUEL QUENTERO. I took the picture above a few days ago. Below is my "officiating" introduction, followed by a picture of Manuel and Michael after the ceremony. All celebrations of marriages should be as joyful as this one was. Guests included many children and their families. Chairs for guests were arranged in a spiral. Michael, Manuel, and I sat in the first three chairs in the center and guests spiraled out from the center. We entered the spiral through a chorus of drums. I began by asking people to visualize the scene...
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Consider where you are at this very moment. Look around you. With your mind’s eye, rise up above where we are and look down on yourself... on yourself in relation to others...the friends and family of Manuel and Michael. Here we are in what the Medieval mathematician Fibonacci called a naturally occurring outwardly spiraling pattern. It is perhaps the most common arrangement of parts in nature. This outwardly spiraling arrangement of parts is all about strength. There are some ferns growing in planters around this place. Notice the fiddle head spirals. Look at a nautilus shell or a common garden snail and you find the spiral... If we could see out into the darkness of space billions and billions of light years, we would see, as the Hubble Telescope does, billions of galaxies... spiraling out billions of light years into space... arranged in exactly the same sequence of numbers, known now as the Fibonacci sequence, the same as the spiraling of the tiniest snail you might pick up at the water’s edge or clinging to a boat out there... or that you find in this arrangement of friends of Michael and Manuel.

Life is a kind of spiraling. I love the story of how you two met. That moment was the beginning of a spiraling relationship... that now includes all of us who are sitting here with you. This evening with Manuel and Michael is a celebration of the fact that they found each other... a celebration of their relationship... their marriage. A celebration of their commitment to each other... to their families... and to all of us who are their friends. In accepting the invitation to celebrate with them, we are committing to doing whatever it is we can do to make their relationship strong and their commitment to each other firm.

Michael and Manuel, let me say a couple of things just to you... with friends and family listening. You are both wise, so you aren’t fooled into thinking that because the two of you have become one family that you have completely solved for all time the problem of your aloneness, the aloneness inherent in being human... the aloneness with which each of us lives. You’ve made a great start. Of course, you must continue to work at keeping strong the arrangement of parts in your relationship.

You may have read Richard Bach’s The Bridge Across Forever. I like this part:

"A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life."

HERE MAY BE ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING IT... I won’t ask you to repeat these statements... but I want your friends to know that this is What I SENSE YOU ARE SAYING TO EACH OTHER when I listen and watch you two together... I think you are saying to each other...

"I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I think you are saying to each other... I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but also for what you are making of me. I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me good, and more than any fate could have done to make me happy. You have done it without a touch, without a word, without a sign. You have done it by being yourself. Michael and Manual, that’s the impression I have of your relationship."

May it ever be so.