Pas à Pas (Step by Step): Marriage as the journey of becoming
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| Bruder-Klaus-Kapelle, Schwägalp, Switzerland |
A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Gathering of Mindful Meditation, Music & Conversation
(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece)
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Next weekend I will not be with you because I shall be in Switzerland co-conducting the wedding of two of our members with a Swiss Reformed minister. Then, on the Friday of the following week, I will conduct another wedding in this church (in Cambridge) of another member who is to marry their partner. I shall, of course, send your love and best wishes to them all.
Now, I almost never give a sermon in wedding services or blessings because I am of the strong opinion that the service, if written well with the couple themselves fully involved, is itself the sermon—and I’m certainly not giving a sermon in either of the two, upcoming weddings! But that does not mean I do not have something to say about marriage, or indeed, about a civil partnership entered into by a couple, and what follows here is a revision of one of the very few wedding sermons I have ever given, way back in 2015 . . .
It goes without saying that love plays the central role in every couple’s decision about whether to unite or not but, because it goes without saying, rarely does anyone say anything about why love is so important in any marriage or civil partnership. So, by employing one of the traditional, romantic languages of love, French, I’d like, very briefly, to say something about this.
Most of you will know that, in French, the word “pas” has two meanings. The first meaning is straightforwardly a “step”, as in taking a step forward. But it also has the meaning of “not” as in “Je n’avance pas.” Which literally means “I do not move forward, not even a step.”
An interesting and very accessible contemporary philosopher, John D. Caputo, notes about this that the word “pas” simultaneously means “step/not”; it means to take a step but then again not to, to be following in someone’s steps but then again not to. It is also important to see that steps cannot be insulated in an absolute way from missteps and sidesteps, and paths cannot be protected from dead-ends. This means that to take steps in a certain direction, to be en route, to follow in someone’s steps, cannot be protected absolutely from detours, road blocks, misleading road signs, false steps and impasses.
All very well, you may say, but what on earth has this to do with love, and with the marriage or civil partnership between two people?
Well, we begin to see this clearly when we consider taking steps towards another person. This is because the relationship we have with them is always a journey we can never fully complete because in life, because until the very end, we are always becoming who we will be and, in our becoming someone, alongside all the many steps we will take, many of which we will feel are right, there will always be many steps we take that feel like missteps and sidesteps.
This is nowhere better seen than in marriage, because when a couple makes their vows and commitments to their belovéd, they make them not simply to their belovéd standing before them in that moment, but to whomsoever or whatever this person is to become, which is unknowable and unforeseeable to them both. It is vitally important to see that this risk is constitutive of the vows and commitments of marriage, and without this risk the vows — as the traditional words have it — “to love each other from this day forward, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, till death us do part”, would mean nothing.
As Caputo says, all this begins to show us how deeply “not” is embedded in all our “steps”, how deeply the “impasse” is embedded in the “pass”, how deeply the “impossible” is embedded in the “possible”.
The thing to grasp is that, although the moment of marriage or civil partnership is something full of joy and excitement, no matter how well it is prepared for beforehand, it cannot be insulated in any absolute way from the regret and sadness of missteps and sidesteps, and paths cannot be protected from dead-ends. In other words, there is no such thing as “a marriage” or “a civil partnership”, there is only “a marriage or civil partnership as a joint journey of becoming”.
And this is why love is so vital. Only love provides the courage to make a vow, not simply to the person standing before you on your wedding day, but to the unforeseeable person they are yet to become. And it is only through love that we can accept how those inevitable missteps, sidesteps, and dead-ends—so difficult to navigate in the moment—are not failures of the journey, but the very steps required to forge a deep, enduring, and genuinely joyful life together.
John Caputo’s words and insights come from his book, What would Jesus Deconstruct (Baker Academic, Michigan, 2007).
Now, I almost never give a sermon in wedding services or blessings because I am of the strong opinion that the service, if written well with the couple themselves fully involved, is itself the sermon—and I’m certainly not giving a sermon in either of the two, upcoming weddings! But that does not mean I do not have something to say about marriage, or indeed, about a civil partnership entered into by a couple, and what follows here is a revision of one of the very few wedding sermons I have ever given, way back in 2015 . . .
It goes without saying that love plays the central role in every couple’s decision about whether to unite or not but, because it goes without saying, rarely does anyone say anything about why love is so important in any marriage or civil partnership. So, by employing one of the traditional, romantic languages of love, French, I’d like, very briefly, to say something about this.
Most of you will know that, in French, the word “pas” has two meanings. The first meaning is straightforwardly a “step”, as in taking a step forward. But it also has the meaning of “not” as in “Je n’avance pas.” Which literally means “I do not move forward, not even a step.”
An interesting and very accessible contemporary philosopher, John D. Caputo, notes about this that the word “pas” simultaneously means “step/not”; it means to take a step but then again not to, to be following in someone’s steps but then again not to. It is also important to see that steps cannot be insulated in an absolute way from missteps and sidesteps, and paths cannot be protected from dead-ends. This means that to take steps in a certain direction, to be en route, to follow in someone’s steps, cannot be protected absolutely from detours, road blocks, misleading road signs, false steps and impasses.
All very well, you may say, but what on earth has this to do with love, and with the marriage or civil partnership between two people?
Well, we begin to see this clearly when we consider taking steps towards another person. This is because the relationship we have with them is always a journey we can never fully complete because in life, because until the very end, we are always becoming who we will be and, in our becoming someone, alongside all the many steps we will take, many of which we will feel are right, there will always be many steps we take that feel like missteps and sidesteps.
This is nowhere better seen than in marriage, because when a couple makes their vows and commitments to their belovéd, they make them not simply to their belovéd standing before them in that moment, but to whomsoever or whatever this person is to become, which is unknowable and unforeseeable to them both. It is vitally important to see that this risk is constitutive of the vows and commitments of marriage, and without this risk the vows — as the traditional words have it — “to love each other from this day forward, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, till death us do part”, would mean nothing.
As Caputo says, all this begins to show us how deeply “not” is embedded in all our “steps”, how deeply the “impasse” is embedded in the “pass”, how deeply the “impossible” is embedded in the “possible”.
The thing to grasp is that, although the moment of marriage or civil partnership is something full of joy and excitement, no matter how well it is prepared for beforehand, it cannot be insulated in any absolute way from the regret and sadness of missteps and sidesteps, and paths cannot be protected from dead-ends. In other words, there is no such thing as “a marriage” or “a civil partnership”, there is only “a marriage or civil partnership as a joint journey of becoming”.
And this is why love is so vital. Only love provides the courage to make a vow, not simply to the person standing before you on your wedding day, but to the unforeseeable person they are yet to become. And it is only through love that we can accept how those inevitable missteps, sidesteps, and dead-ends—so difficult to navigate in the moment—are not failures of the journey, but the very steps required to forge a deep, enduring, and genuinely joyful life together.
John Caputo’s words and insights come from his book, What would Jesus Deconstruct (Baker Academic, Michigan, 2007).
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