Wedding Bells

I returned from a wonderful holiday (in which I got some good reading done) just in time for a wedding this afternoon. Dieuwke Kramer, who most of you will know from Redeemer or know of at least, is now Mrs. Dieukwe Thornton (or Thorton, I forget). Although I showed up late, about 15 minutes into the service, and had to enter at the front of the church just before the vows were read (and my tires were embarassingly loud on the tiled floor of the church), I'm glad I made it. Congrats Dieuwke and Jim, and God's blessing on your life together.

Two weeks ago today my brother Stu was also married. For those of you who don't know Stu, he's a big geek and he likes philosophy & theology. He's such a geek that in the little program on the tables at his and Sherri's wedding dinner one of the "Rules of the Wedding" was Kant's categorical imperative. What follows is the text of the speech I delivered that night. For those of you who know Stu, perhaps it will prove entertaining:

Wedding Speech: Stu & Sherri, July 17, 2004

I had hoped writing this speech would be a breeze. After all, I know Stu better than most people. From the early days of playing Lego versus G.I. Joe and “guns” together in St. Mary’s, to entire days of watching T.V. side by side when the parents were away, to more recent philosophical/theological investigations, we’ve been relatively inseparable for the past two decades. However, I encountered a problem: the Stu I knew, a Stu of old-fashioned suits and odd belt buckles, of trench coats and fedoras, the geeky eccentric who thought, or at least proclaimed, that he was headed for permanent bachelorhood, that Stu has all but disappeared. And good riddance. But his disappearance has left me speechless. He has been replaced by someone rather different: a Stu who wears blue jeans and goes swimming! A Stu who, although you may not believe it, regularly visits Tim Hortons! A Stu who snuggles with a girl, smooches even! This new Stu leaves me with much less to work with; I barely know who the guy is!

For inspiration that would hopefully cure my writer’s block I turned to the great speeches of history. Once I understood what made those speeches great, I began my original masterwork, entitled “The Orangeville Address.” It had a great opening: fourscore and seven years ago I had a dream, a dream that black children and white children would fight them on the beaches and would fight them in the streets and would never give up…but after that it kind of fizzled out.

I decided the best way to write this speech would be to find a theme, some element shared by Stu and Sherri that could tie this speech together. They have somewhat similar tastes in humour, music, cinema, but none of these would give a speech any spark. Then I hit upon it: fantasy and fairy tale! For you see, Sherri is an avid reader of fantasy books and Stu’s life is a fantasy, a fantasy in which regular employment is some shadowy Sauron far away. In fact, I think I’ve even read Stu & Sherri’s fairy tale: if I remember correctly, it was called “Beauty and the Beast.”

You might think Stu and Sherri are not your typical, blond princess and dark, handsome knight fairy tale couple and you’d be half right: Stu is definitely not a bold knight. If you want proof toss a spider at him. Their story also does not have a conventional fairy tale villain, no cruel stepsisters or witch, unless there’s something I don’t know about Lisa or Leanne. But a modern, original fairy tale needn’t copy every element from the Brothers Grimm. I think Stu and Sherri’s fairy tale would fit perfectly into a contemporary genre called magic realism. Such stories contain elements of magic and the highly unusual that are treated as ordinary occurrences. In this fairy tale, the shocking magic element treated as ordinary would have to be the fact that Stu is married. To a girl. A great girl even.

But here we’ve come to a new problem: the fairy tale is now over. What happens at the end of every fairy tale of this sort? The comely lass is wed to the dashing prince or hero. Beauty has wed Beast, so I guess this is The End. And yet, a final line may serve to end a fairy tale: “And they lived happily ever after ‘til the end of their days.” Stu, Sherri, welcome to your new life together. Even though the fairy tale is over, there are still a few pages to be written, I think. Wherever your story may come to be set, whatever the plot has in store for you, wherever the Author leads, may it all be “happily ever after.”