Making things happen

... with integrity

Monday December 29, 2003 Volume V Number 52

ohn and Brenda celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary a couple

years back with a recommitment ceremony in a friend’s back yard.  Brenda carried a colorful bouquet of pink roses and John wore a gray suit and tie.  I played the role of videographer and this weekend, two years later, I reviewed the film.

This is, perhaps, the very reason I’m hooked on picture-taking.  It freezes a moment in time that would otherwise be lost.  Some moments are worth keeping.  These are moments to cherish.  To savor.  To ponder.  You want to be sure these moments become a part of your identity, woven into the tapestry.  We were created with a magical capacity for recall.  We not only possess the ability to call up the images, but we remember the scent and the weather and the color and the emotion – all wrapped up in little packages we call memories.  Just the thought of it causes one to realize how far science has to go.  How do you explain the technology of packing all this information in the gray matter resting comfortably, temperature controlled, in a precise chemical solution right there beneath your scalp and between your ears?  Integrated circuits can “remember” in a complex mosaic of binary code, but how big a chip is required for seven, eight or nine decades of human experience?  Staggering thought.  My octogenarian father-in-law routinely calls up details more than a half-century old in ordinary conversation.  How do you explain that?

Good photos, now with full motion and synchronized sound, can cement those memories into one’s consciousness and while you aren’t really there, it seems like it.

So when John and Brenda walked through the patio doors into the sunshine approaching Pastor Bill who was also dressed in a gray suit and tie and the troubadours strummed their guitars and sang romantic songs and a whole new church family stood around them in a way they had never known before, Bill talked about their new life of faith – and the baptism that recently announced to the world that they have taken a stand – together.

And now, twenty-five years and two children and two grandchildren later, they recognize the good hand of God in what they once called coincidences.  Now they know about grace and mercy and redemption, and a community of faith, and ties that bind hearts together in a purpose that is, well, divine.  And when Bill invited guests to talk to John and Brenda about what their journey meant to them, about the self-less serving and sacrifice and giving, about their openness to a new life in Christ, there was no end.  One after another addressed them with brimming emotion and as the words fell together into affirmations and affection and love, there was laughter and there were tears and when you walked away that afternoon, you had a strong sense that this is the way it should be and all too rarely is.

And I got the whole thing on film.

“Do you still take Brenda as your wedded wife?” Bill asked John.

He couldn’t help but snicker at the question – as though there were any other answer.  Like that wonderful scene in Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye asks Golde – “Do you love me?”  Golde’s classic response – “Do I WHAT?” 

“Do you love me?” repeats Tevye.

“Do you still take Brenda?” asks Pastor Bill.

“I do,” John says – looking directly into Brenda’s eyes.

Reviewing the film this week, and reflecting back on a breezy summer day with friends and flowers and sweet music out there on the patio at the edge of the orange grove it’s difficult now not to view this event through the filter of a smoky October Sunday morning just several short weeks ago when the same pair sat barefoot on the church door-step as evacuees of the terrible Paradise Fire of 2003 that took their house – and everything in it.

Back then on their twenty-fifth anniversary, we thought that the challenges were pretty much behind them.  But the toughest challenge of all was yet to come.

* * * * * *

It’s Monday morning, you are a leader.

This week, we are closing out another year.  You will be drawn to the retrospectives, the year in photos, the memories.  The breaking stories.

After a tumultuous year of yet more surprises, it’s good to close it out with the words of US Chief Administrator of Iraq Paul Bremmer when he announced to the world, “We got him.”  It’s satisfying when cowards are exposed for what they really are.  When good trumps evil. 

But better still, to hear the words caught on tape, “I do.”  I still do.  When the promise made in the sunshine of today still holds true in the dark and smoldering and fearful darkness of tomorrow.

Those same people who affirmed John and Brenda on their anniversary will gather again this week to shower John on his fiftieth birthday with gifts, many of which will replace the tools and the gadgets and the clothing lost to the flames a couple of months ago.  The gifts will come from the heart, just as promised on the patio as the scent of orange blossoms filled the air that sunny day.

And I’ll replay the video.

Just in case they forgot.

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