Alice and I were the first of our friends to get married. This means that as we’ve gotten a bit older and more and more of our friends and families have had their own weddings, we’ve had the gift of seeing the whole thing over and over from the other side:  as a married couple seeing two people we love enter into marriage together.

It’s no news that marriage isn’t always easy. So I’ve always appreciated one of the prayers during our marriage service. After a long litany of prayers for the couple being married, for their health and happiness and growth together in love, we turn aside for a final petition: “Grant that all married persons who have witnessed these vows may find their lives strengthened and their loyalties confirmed.” (BCP p. 430) I have always loved this prayer, but even when it’s not being said I find it’s true: Episcopal or not, Christian or not, every wedding ceremony I attend reminds me of the beauty and love at the center of my own relationship in the midst of all life’s quotidian stresses.

I’m in this state of mind because this weekend, I’ll have the gift of marrying two dear friends of ours, right here at St. John’s, friends who’ve been a part of Alice’s and my life since the day we met. But it points to a deeper truth, one that’s not about marriage alone. This is the reason we have a church. This is the reason we don’t sit at home and pray alone, or go for a walk in the woods and feel God’s presence there. We need each other. We love each other. And we inspire each other.

It’s one of the greatest gifts of a truly multi-generational church like St. John’s. We really do have members from six months old into their nineties. We really do have members who’ve been in Charlestown for eighty years, and some who move in next week. (Yikes.) And that means that whoever you are, at whatever stage of life you are, there is someone who has walked that path before. And it goes both ways: whatever you have done, whatever the happiest parts of your life have been, there is someone else living that right now. We support each other as mentors as friends. We inspire each other as pioneers. And we, like all those who find themselves moved by someone else’s wedding, find our lives strengthened and our loyalties confirmed by one another’s love of God and neighbor.