off to Jon's wedding

I found a dress.
I have a black wrap to keep warm -- since it's going to be rainy and cool in St. Louis.
I've got an almost fully-formed sermon done.

And I'm very excited -- my little brother, getting married? Jon is three years younger than me. We were buddies, growing up: equal parts loving and annoying to each other. I was (just a little) bossy, and I liked to do things like make my sensitive little brother cry, or fake that my legs had become crippled one day after school, before our parents got home. Now that was bad. Damn acting skills. And yet, we walked to school together every day (in the city, where that is actually still possible), we watched cartoons together, we told jokes that only the other sibling ever understood.

And now my little brother is marrying a wonderful woman, who bosses him around (a little anyway, right Laurie?), laughs hysterically with him over their jokes -- they cook together, they throw parties, they play softball, they work out, they watch nutty TV shows, she goes to his band gigs, he goes babysitting with her... they're a wonderful couple. I'm glad Jon and I could be there for each other, growing up, and now I'm glad that Jon and Laurie can be there for each other, and that Adam and I can be there for each other.

Sometimes I think love is just all about luck. You can't earn a great partner, you can't go shopping for one at Sam's Club, you can be the best person ever and it doesn't mean that you'll have the luck to find another person to share your life with, or of course, even that your marriage will last forever. This is classically unfair.

But I give thanks for all the grace God gives, whether it's the grace of marriage, or the grace of a vocation, or the grace of friends, or the grace of a healthy body, or the grace of a talent or desire that can be fulfilled. And it makes me think of Herbert's poem -- since I'm Episcopalian, I often think of love or grace as like a table, set for us:

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.