DEEP, DEEP, DOWN
A Wedding Meditation
for
Lyn J. and Rod L.
© 1991 James M. Truxell
Deep, deep down
In the hidden, unseen heart of things
A Word is spoken,
Even now it sings!
And the hearing of it brings
You to the beauty of this place;
For the confession of your hearts --
Each to each, and
Face to face --
For the joining of hands, and souls,
And hopes
That you will always bend
To the music of the Spirit,
And the life that never ends. . .
Which is here. . .
Now. . .
In this moment, and always:
Deep, deep down.
Deep, deep down
All of us who're married know this norm:
The partnership exposes each
To life in heightened, concentrated form:
The sunshine is more all-pervading,
And so's the storm.
Not for the first time are you here,
But again, in faith, you join in the dance:
By turns a sensuous tango,
A magnifying trance
Of stillness and thunder,
Of tedium,
And, finally,
Wonder
At all the varied notes that
Deep, deep down
Life sings.
Sometimes we lose the Singer's tune;
Can't feel the deep down rhythms anymore;
So we step on one another's feet
As we move about the floor.
And the marriage starts to stumble
As we pronounce or mumble
Its seven last words,
Less or more:
"I never did things this way before,"
"We'll be okay if you'll just change," and
"You realize, of course, this means war!"
And to make things even worse,
(Though it sounds a bit perverse)
A part of us really means it
Deep, deep down.
How then we need the healing meaning
Of the Psalms that we've been reading
About that puzzling deep-down nature of us all!
It's a tale, not yet of mangers,
But of wide-eyed wandering strangers:
Survivors of a tragic, distant Fall.
This is the verse that says we're dust:
Fleeting, minute specks just
Blowing East of Eden along with Cain
To rust.
In time, even all the best
Are as dried leaves or faces pressed
Between the Testaments --
Tintypes --
The names, long lost,
And never guessed.
No warrant here for viewing me and you
Through the lens of Narcissus' eye.
For dust is powerless to make the
Mountains form and reach the sky.
Derivative, bounded, mortal are we:
Creatures,
You and I.
And yet, rejoice! for to this dirge of Adam's curse,
The Psalms add one more brightly-colored verse,
Revealing workings of a startling grace:
For in our own we dimly trace
The very Image of the Singer's face!
The dust we are is precious dust,
Transformed by breath to fertile loam,
And planted there
Deep, deep down within
A seed of restlessness:
For each other. . .
And for
Home!
And so our coupled dance, to last,
Must be, it's said,
An altared state:
Of consciousness
That, in the ordinary married midst
Of simple fare --
Of screw-capped wine and daily bread --
The Mysterious Holy One by whom we're fed
Is there! --
Deep, deep down --
Holding us:
The people of His pasture,
The sheep of His hand,
Bringing us back from
Where'er we're caught
To be once more,
Where we ought:
Enfolded. . .
With each other.
So hear again the music of
The deep, deep down;
On your hearts let the Singer write its score.
Clap your hands and stamp your feet
To its rhythm and its beat
As it sends you whirling in
And out the door.
Hold each other,
Loose and tight;
Dance the day and
Dance the night;
'Til you dance at last
The last deep-down dance,
Forever more!
NOTE: I was asked to celebrate the wedding of two friends and colleagues who are marriage and family counselors. I happily and immediately agreed to do so. That's when my troubles began, for what do you say in a wedding homily for such a couple . . . especially since this was the second marriage for each? Every attempt at a more conventional meditation was flat and pedantic. I complained loudly and frequently that I just couldn't do it until, two days before the wedding, my wife encouraged me to go upstairs and sleep on it. I couldn't blame her if she said that to put me out of her misery as much as anything else!
But it was a useful suggestion. Literally, as my head sank into the pillow, I heard the phrase "deep, deep, down." A few moments later came the next phrase: 'deep, deep down in the hidden, unseen heart of things." When "a Word was spoken, even now it sings" came into my mind, I knew I had to get to my computer and write it down. The words continued to pour out. Forty-five minutes later it was finished. I was both relieved and shaken. That's what happens, I think, when we fall into Mystery's hands.
I am noted as its author, and so I am. And yet . . . . ~ JMT
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