I Do

I marry people. I guess I have married more people than most. Whoppi Goldberg and I marched in the National March on Washington for AIDS and I married ten thousand lesbians and gay men there on the steps of the I.R.S.. Since then, I suppose have officiated at 30-40 more weddings of both gay and straight people. I don’t do it for strangers. I do it for people I love, but mostly, I do it for me. It’s a step away from indifference. It gives me hope.

There are other best times in life that are filled with hope; a graduation, a birth, a new business, a promotion, an engagement, holidays and family gatherings. These are our moments of happiness. They hold the joy we seek. They are sought after moments, long-awaited and planned. What about the rest of life? When did we lose the passion and verve for the fact that we are still here, still breathing, putting our arms around the people we love? When did we disconnect from the self that signed up to be here and who insisted on this particular life? When did we stop relishing the small, the ordinary and the grand canyon size, mind blowing wake up calls and experiences?

When did we turn into taxpayers, forclosees, blue states, red states, managers, wives, husbands, partners, CEO’s, citizens and stop being precious human beings fully in the muck and joy this amazing spiritual experiment? When did we start being defined by categories and numbers instead of principled passion and beauty? 75% of us in this country feel as if no one has our back because we are so disconnected. Have apathied ourselves all the way to beige?

We are hungry for passion and beauty. We seek it everywhere, in our clothes in our lovers, in our gardens. It is as if we have been fasting from ferocity and feeling. We are not comfortable anymore. We know anything can happen. Are we so afraid about the future that we have handed it over to resignation?

Rumi says, “Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Have we been in crisis, or on our cell phones and computers so long that we lost our reverence for life? People in a Netscape Poll recently said their loss of passion was due to a "lack of intimacy. Job stress, financial issues and growing older were the next highest reasons cited.

Isn’t the truth really that our loss of passion is all about attitude? Yes, of course, you’re a citizen and a person, but you are also unique and unlike any other person. You bring gifts that no one else but you can bring and if you withhold them, no one benefits. No one has had your experiences, or your memory or your perspective. We need you. We need you to get off the couch or out from behind the T.V. or computer and choose. Choose your destiny. Choose your place to make a difference. Choose how you will contribute. Choose to be an optimist. Choose to be a believe
in truth and ethics. Choose to be a heretic. Choose to be in your life with the voracity of a gale wind touching profoundly everyone and everything on your way. Choose to invent who you are. But choose.

Sometimes it is necessary to shout and sometimes it is necessary to sit in the silence and regain your equilibrium. Sometimes it is necessary to march or fight for freedom and sometimes just holding sacred space is enough to create the healing.

No one is asking that you become Gandhi. We just want you to be the truth of who you are. Here is your invitation to dive beneath the shallowness and get to what connects us as human beings, as spiritual people. This is an invitation to see the beauty in each other and even though it may be only here for a moment, it begs to be honored, in you and in me. Say I do to life!