Tomorrow is our 15th wedding anniversary. I want to write about this occasion but I find it very difficult to put into words. This morning as I wrestled with words, trying to pull the right ones from the verbal soup in my head, one of my favorite songs starts to play on the car radio, "Hallelujah" written by Leonard Cohen.
My head struggles to really understand this song. It is more complex than it first seems. . . "the baffled king composing, Hallelujah." The baffled king is the fallible, King David. It is also me. David has always been my kind of hero. As a young boy, he is the shepherd who fights Goliath and wins. David is chosen by God. Saul plots his death but the love of Jonathan, Saul's son, and the people warn David and he escapes with his life. As an adult, David is a man that sends the husband of his lover who is pregnant with David's child into battle to be abandoned in the battlefield and killed. David is larger than life. So are his problems and triumphs.
David suffers the consequences of his sins. He also remains blessed by God. I think of my own life and relationships. How I help and sometimes hinder others. How they help and sometimes hinder me. I hear this song this morning and it captures how I feel about our anniversary and our marriage. How can I put that into words? ". . . the baffled king composing Hallelujah." What my head doesn't know and can not describe is known and understood by my heart.
The music rises and falls. It dances in smooth graceful circles. The sound is melancholy, repentent and yet heavy with poignant memories. This morning the words of the song show me the sacred in the profane and the profanity within the sacred. This morning it knows how I feel even when I do not. . . "from his lips a broken Hallelujah."
These last few years have been almost biblical. I often feel more like Job than David but today, I am David. I am conqueror. I am victim. I am sinner. I am God's chosen. All these things are true at once.
My thoughts and memories rise and fall with the music. They reach a crescendo of feeling that spills into my day and eventually onto this page. . . "from my lips falls a broken Hallelujah." These last 15 years have been quite a ride. Our lives have not been dull. Sometimes we stumble through life together and sometimes apart even though we remain side by side. Marriage has shown me the heart of paradox. It has broken me open in ways, I would never have anticipated. I have shed tears because of it. I have known the greatest joy because of it. Life provides me with constant opportunities to decide how I will live out my commitment. Each day, I say, "I do" again.
Years ago, I saw this statute when the Vatican Art Exhibit toured North America. If marble could breathe, this David would have. If it could talk, what tales would it tell. I stood before it that day filled with feeling and very few words. Within the statutes presence, the museum goers spoke in hushed tones. We were in the presence of something sacred, something that could not be captured in words or fully contained within marble. Life, art, touched those who stopped to take it in. I too have been touched and sculpted by this marriage of 15 years. I say, I do again. "Hallelujah, Hallelujah."
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