Catholic Sensibility

Still up to my elbows in kitchen renovation this week. One of the reasons why we didn't make it back to upstate New York for a friend's wedding tomorrow. But three certain weddings and an engagement are on my mind this week. Wedding this year: The bride's parents are good friends, and I have fond memories of playing with very little girls before I shipped off to the Great Liturgical Midwest in 1988. You parents know the routine, right? Single friend gets the kids hyper-excited just before it's time to put them to bed. Then friend shoves off and leaves the parents to clean up the mess and calm down the babes. Anyway, my young friend is getting married tomorrow. Her mom mentioned they're using a song I wrote for a wedding years ago ("That old song?"), which leads me to ... Wedding twenty years ago: a couple my age got married twenty years ago Wednesday. It seemed like weddings were breaking out all over in the mid-80's amongst my friends. I was away at summer liturgy school in Indiana, but I was asked to write a song. I think Agnes and Phil told me they wanted something based on Ruth 1:16, but different from Norbet's "Wherever You Go." At first, it was coming with great difficulty. Phil was heabily involved with the Catholic Worker movement, so I was intent on combining Scripture with a strong social justice sensibility. But the first few days of classes, reuniting with old chums and new, I found inspiration. I gathered a bunch of friends to make a tape to send back home. You get spoiled on those experiences: great musicians playing your music and making it sound pretty neat. I still have the tape, and my only regret is that we only put two songs on it. Exactly in between these two weddings, my great friends Brook and Carrie got married ... ten years ago today. That was a special wedding, of course. Mostly because it was when I proposed to Anita. I didn't write songs for that wedding or my own, though. July seems off the beaten path for weddings and accompanying events, but for me, the middle of July seems quite extraordinary. So I raise a thought and a prayer for my July wedding friends today: thinking of you six and wishing you the happiness and blessings of married life. Thanks for the example and inspiration you have been.