Thinking about weddings...

Andy and Sarah got married today at the Mount Timpanogos Temple and it has been a GREAT day ( I am actually being sincere, not using my default sarcastic tone)....

It has actually been a GREAT few days and I am sitting here while Travis packs for our 9:48am flight trying to get one last post in about our whirlwind trip...I won't spend lots of time relating the details of specific events (the rehearsal dinner on Tuesday at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, the temple this morning, the fun times preparing for the reception this afternoon or the beautimous reception itself---see, I slipped a few details in there anyway =) ). I am just going to let the pictures and a few captions speak for the past two days of awesomness....

I do, however wish to say a few things...I haven't wanted this blog to be a place to be poetic or creative (I do that profusely and pervasively in another form) but tonight I might end up saying something that leans on the sensitive/poety side.

Really all I want to say is this: Martha and I had a mini-discussion at the reception tonight about criticism of others etc... Martha made a very good point about how little we know about the deep down details of what it means to be another human being and therefore, when its all said and done, we are quite ill equipped to be critical of another.

Remember, this discussion is all taking place in the midst of a wedding reception--a place where the people gathered, obstensibly, know each other better than any others. We were all family and close friends--and of course, many new friends =)-- And we were all SO happy. So glad to be in each others company. And when it was over, and we all have to fly away to corners of the country and state, how sad we are to part...

It made me think that even in this intimate and joyful of a setting, with so many who know me so well... even here--I am still unknown completely, through and through to others, and they to me. Knowng this, I am still in awe of how thoroughly happy I am in this moment with my family and close friends... why?

And then I thought of something Scarlett Hanks Sobrowski said up at Old Mission this past week about marriage--she said it took her a long time to realize what marriage was--it wasn't finding the person you wanted to be with--it was accepting the person you were with for who they are and loving them just as they are and then becoming better together...

I find myself so humbled by how little I know right now--and so grateful for what I do know. So awake to how mysterious and unknowable another human being is, and enthralled with how simple it can be to just love others. How joyful it can and should be... I find myself (such an odd phrase to describe a realization) I find myself grateful for the idea of marriage, for the idea of two people taking responsibilty for the other, responsibilty for this unknowable being, taking responsibility for all of them. Through and through...unconditionally. I find myself grateful for those who have taken responsibility for me and I find myself wanting to expand and extend this loving circle of responsibility for each other to all those I see and know. To not criticize or find fault, but to just joyfully love and try to know what it means to be human. I am grateful for blogs that let me read what others think and wonder at how I think that way too--or not, for photographs that let me see another face and wonder at how much I look that way too--and not--for language and music that lets me hear others, and for the embraces that let me feel what it might be like, for just a moment, to know another human being as I know myself...

I think in the end, what I realize is that love is great. Being known is a gift, being touched and heard and touching and listening and all of that is really great!

So I haven't had much sleep and thats why this blog kind of got super cheesy and how the pieces started to not stick together so well toward the end--but--hey--its just a blog.....

love and peace and hope and forgiveness forever!!!