The old FASHIONS of love

Something about weddings and marriage remind me of the church where i grew up. Every now and again when i return to visit, the place looks smaller and the sermons sound familiar. The seniors also look older and i wonder if they shrunk overnight because now they are less- threatening and less like the no - nonsense people i used to know. Age passes the baton of exuberance between generations, relieving one and appointing the next.

There is just an unapologetic charm in quaint chapels like mine. It’s the same quaintness of wedding into married life. It has little to do with the good quality of the music, the fashion sense of the majority or the sohisticated order of the service, which may sometimes be lacking. The secret lies in that sense of belonging which exudes to newcomer and old timer alike. The appeal is in the state of harmony where oddity blends with antiquity to form a mosaic of many picturesque moments!

In my chapel, it’s the familiarity that changes what could be considered uncouth between strangers into fodder for hearty laughter among friends. It’s the unburied fights between the disapproving older generation and the defensive younger generation. They have never quite gotten over your unforgivable, adolescent disregard for their preferences in music and fashion! They will never understand why you like to wear your skirts a bit shorter or your make-up a little bolder, neither will they ever decipher your preference for trousers over skirts!

These sentiments are a few of the elements which add an intangible value to the tradditional church where i come from. When i am there, i am received like i never went away. I realise i am still plugged into the lingo, the in- house jokes and all of the favours bequeathed to me as a reward for being a part of it’s history. That history has also become a defining part of my cornucopia of life’s experiences. For this communual feeling which i cannot find within the walls of any mega- church, i go back to the good, old - fashioned chapel from time to time!

But that is not all. There is something old - fashioned too about weddings. Something old - fashioned about love. Old - fashioned as our ancestors who came before us and inexhaustible as eternity to come and eternity before us! (did you get the pun?). And it is not common that an old love is reincarnated so that two young people share in modern millennia, a love that is pure and wise and true and unselfish; one reminiscent of the old fashions of love. I attended a wedding that joined in matrimony a very old - fashioned love between two discerningly wise, young and
“new- fashion” people.

“What does old - fashioned love look like?” you ask me. I’ll tell you.

If you have loved before then you must know that love is spiritual. Something about the free- giving and free- receiving of hearts bears resemblance to a human being laying down or giving up his/her life for a friend. Divine. This is how you can discern it: If your love does not need to unburden the truth or shower with abundance the undeserving or run up a debt of forgiveness or sacrifice self to preserve it or worship God for the very gift of having it , then you are experiencing an inferior form of it. If your love isnt brazen enough to fulfill itself in the way your heart has taught it to you, but you have to look in the books of others first to adapt it, you haven’t found it!

Between those two leaf- loves (a type of songbird) getting married, there where a thousand words but their quiet submission to God and each other was the sum of them all. Selah!

The old fashions of love remain. Pure, simple and unclaimed for every heart sincere enough to reach it. Love never needed an adjective to qualify it. It never needed to be differentiated into true love, real love, erotic love, pure love or one love! It was just this plain, old - fashioned thing called: love. Although it manifests in and is made evident by many things, and although many things bear it witness, love itself is only one thing.

I promised you tales of frills and laces, pinks and beige, feathers and roses... fail you i dare not! It’s the wedding series people!

The WEDDING series (LOL , this is going to be hilarious...)!

I love weddings when i have one to attend and i always allow myself be swept into the wispy, misty , fairy tale aura they create. What all that “hinglish” there means is that i just cooperate with the atmosphere and let it teach me what to feel... ( if only people did that often they’d be more blessed in church, look more empathetic to their friends and family and have more romantic moments multiplied unto them in their relationships lol).

Weddings indeed give us rare moments to savor . They are the only events where every generation in the family can participate and enjoy each others role amicably. The younger generation get the chance to “bugey” and be exuberant while the Uncles and Aunties watch admiring their energy and creativity and the older generation get to sway to more laid back music thrilling the young with their more deliberate and calculated moves. Even the children are admired for their dexterity on the dance floor and are permitted to steal the spot light from time to time. Also at weddings, we regain our familiarity with solemn moments which thereafter fade into the drab and drag of our daily grind.

At weddings i scan for those soft and subtle moments that pass by you, their signals so tiny on your emotion’o’meter that you almost miss them if you aren’t tuned into the magic that is possible in that atmosphere. My favorite part is the exchange of vows between the couple. Something about the hush as the couples say to each other words of ardent devotion, sets into motion the goose bumps that travel up every inch of skin on my body, transporting teardrops into my eyes! I lie not! (They are called goose tears!)

Some things never escape me like the nervous look of the bride when the Minister says in heightened suspense, ”you may kiss the bride” or the tender look of the couple’s parents as they witness a replay of their own joining or the oohs and aahs of the single ladies hanging on to their seats in excitement as they watch their fantasies jump to life straight out of the pages of a romance novel! (or straight out of the cob webs of their over used fantasies which are frequently rehearsed , reviewed and reused at the slightest excuse of a romantic desire, untill all passing thought is followed in hot pursuit by their wedding day dreams!) Seriously some people are hooked on the idea of a marriage ceremony and they need to be checked into the “ the wedding day dreamer rehab centre”!

This year a number of my friends donned the sacrificial white dress and took unhastened steps to vow at the sacred altar, where in a ceremonial gathering of traditional witnesses, they were sworn into a marital union! (LOLLLLL! Did i have to make it sound eerie like that?). Well i have memoirs from each wedding which i tell here in a series of epistles! Join me as we go through the maze of emotions to capture from the delicate threads of memory, wedding tales of laces and frills, dames and maids, brides and bridezillas... and i’ll tell you everything. I promise...

To be continued.....lolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!