don't just do something: stand there

Last month, I officiated the wedding of dear friends, one of whom I’ve known since childhood. It snowed on their wedding day — their late June wedding day. Lake Tahoe saw lightning, thunder, and summer solstice snowflakes that sent the day into a tailspin. The ski resort venue couldn’t run the gondola to bring guests or vendors up the mountain to the wedding site. No one was dressed properly. Temperatures plunged and we braced ourselves against the chill, the flurries, and the potential that the day would take a wildly different shape than the sunsoaked summer Saturday the bride and groom planned for. We shivered our way through proposed contingency plans and huddled beneath trash bags in between photos to keep our hair dry. At the last possible minute, just as we were loading into vans to take us as far up the mountain as they could manage, the clouds shifted, and the lightning stopped, and the gondola opened and ferried us to the summit, where heaps of snow melted in the sun. Five minutes before the ceremony’s scheduled start, the guests rallied together to unfold and wipe down chairs, assembling the ceremony site that had been moved inside. Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, a miraculous convergence of nature and people and trust and humor and love came together to pull heaven a little closer to earth (and given the altitude, we were already pretty close!).

I hope I never forget peeking out the window to see guests in suits and high heels lining up chairs and wiping down seats, and turning back to see the bride and groom tearing up at the sight of love made real in such a simple, memorable, tender way.

Our world aches for more of this. My own days ache for more of this.

I’m no authority on love. I’m far from qualified to speak meaningfully about marriage. But I do know enough to know that when I’m trusted to stand on a threshold with someone and bless the moment, the best I can do is pause to notice the enduring and dynamic holiness at work around us, to point towards the embers of grace I see burning, and invite others to huddle close and be warmed by that light. The late Jesuit peace activist and poet, Daniel Berrigan, was reputedly fond of saying: “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” What an honor to stand there, script before me, tissues in my pocket, thin air, thin place, and notice something sacred happening between and for and because of two people I love.

I share below some notes from my remarks that day.

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Friends, you made it.

You are here. We are here: on this special day, in this gorgeous place, surrounded by love, buoyed in hope, and eager to celebrate the life you’ve chosen to build together.

This moment is not the beginning of your story: a blind date was where this all began, of course.

So we are here to mark a deepening, a renewal of this union. Today is a holy pause to honor the life you’re creating and to step with intention into all that lies ahead.

Marriage is not about perfection or ease: it’s about choosing each other, again and again, in every season. And this choice is a bold one. Any story of love is a story of risk: we consent to the contingency of reality, we surrender to the whims of the world swirling around us, relying only on the steadiness of one hand holding another’s.

Nothing is more vulnerable.

And nothing is more meaningful.

You already know this. You’ve practiced this. And today, you promise to keep practicing it—together.

Love is a decision; love is a revelation.

We, gathered here today on this gorgeous afternoon, are bearing witness to a revelation: love between these two people revealed in vows, and rings, and joy. We bear this witness with hope for all the love between these two will bear and bring forth in the decades to come.

This revelation, this revealing, this realization, is but a glimpse of the grander vision of the love and life our beloved couple will share. It is a flash of light, a beacon beckoning us to imagine the greater horizon toward which their life together will traverse, a moment of pause at the dawn.

And yet, this revelation is simply that: a dawn. What remains before us is the fullness of the day that is their life together. And it is harnessing the power of the revelation shared this day that we can live into the grandest dream of life for these two beloved people, supporting them, encouraging them, protecting them, accompanying them, holding, embracing, loving them.

Love is a revelation. It is infatuation, desire, and awe. It is the exhale of relief in realizing we are not alone.

It is the power of this revelation of love this day that enables and emboldens us to enter into love as a decision, to choose love, even when it is difficult.

To choose gentleness over self-righteousness, to choose to meet one another in wonder and humility, recognizing the ever-evolving beauty and frailty of the person before you, to choose patience and kindness when there is yet another nuisance that disrupts our day, and to choose to surrender bravely and boldly to the vast mystery of life and love that stretches before you now, clinging not to familiarity or the trappings of convenience, but clinging to one another as you commit to exploring together all the years ahead will surely offer.

And may we, those who have loved this couple and committed ourselves to their highest good and their deepest love, choose their flourishing and their joy, buoyed by the revelation of their delight on this day.

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And may we, those reading this, both notice love revealed and commit to the demands of love chosen — in snow squalls and summer sunshine; among heartbreaking headlines and across pulsing, sticky, luminous wedding reception dance floors; in the trivial, mundane, obnoxious, beautiful, marvelous, miraculous everyday. Don’t just do something: stand there and notice love. Don’t just do something: stand there, and love.