In praise of... short engagements

Prince William and Kate Middleton are to get married on Friday 29th April, within six months of announcing their engagement. For all else that will be written about this particular match, let me say that I'm a fan of short engagements (six months or less). Barring unusual circumstances (e.g. one partner being called off to war), short engagements have two great benefits. The first is relational, the second practical.

Relationally, engagement is an unstable time. Prior to engagement, only loose expectations form the relational bond. Both parties know that they can end the relationship for a variety of good reasons (there are, of course, also plenty of bad reasons, but the point is that good reasons exist). After marriage, lifelong promises bind the couple in a security that allows difficult issues to be faced with confidence that the other has publicly promised to keep holding and loving in whatever circumstances or difficulties arise. But during engagement, there exists the somewhat strange circumstance of a private promise that a public promise will be made. There exists during this period a rapidly closing door out of the relationship and this itself can bring added stress and uncertainty to the relationship. Limiting this stressful period to a definite (and relatively brief) period of time is healthy. Open-ended engagements seem either somewhat pointless or somewhat cruel. Once the decision to get married has been made, then all that is required is some time to prepare for the solemnity of the promises to be undertaken and to arrange the details of a wedding - which brings us to the second benefit of brief engagements.

Practically, the wedding preparation will expand to fill the time available. The longer that is given to this process, the more likely the celebration will grow into an all-consuming beast. Better to acknowledge that, while a day of great seriousness and great joy, a wedding is but another day that the Lord has made, and doesn't require great debts to be shouldered or unrealistic expectations (from whatever source) to be appeased. If present finances are insufficient to pay for the scale of expenses expected, then it is far better to humble one's expectations than delay the date. The point of the day is the making and celebrating of promises. All else is optional.

That said, I doubt the Prince and his family are accustomed to too much humbling of expectations. Yet humility befits even (perhaps especially) a future king.
Image by Scott Callaghan.

Running from the past: Breakfast with Jesus I

An Easter sermon from John 21: part I
Introduction: Sweeping it under the carpet
From here, Britain is on the other side of the world, about as far from home as it's possible to go without joining NASA or using illegal substances. And up the very top of Britain is Scotland. Near the north-eastern corner of Scotland is the grey, cold city of Aberdeen (no points for this picture!).

If you go even further north from Aberdeen you’ll eventually come to a little town called Mintlaw. North of Mintlaw is the village of Strichen, where the accents are nearly incomprehensible and the food nearly inedible. A good drive outside Strichen is a byroad through the middle of nowhere. On a sidebranch of that byroad is a little house. And that is where my friend lives – about as far from Sydney as it is physically possible to get.*

Here we are in the local pub when we visited him two years ago. On the table is the food: deep-fried, plastered with pastry and washed down with Scottish ale. Also on the table is a map so that we wouldn’t get lost while driving from this obscure village to my friend's even more obscure house.

Although I love him, I’m not showing my friend’s face, because this man is on the run.

He hasn’t always lived in the backwaters of Scotland. For years he lived in Australia, and had a life and friends and a future all here. He proposed to a lovely local girl and she accepted and they were planning a wedding, a marriage, a life together. But sadly, it didn’t work out. Just weeks out from the big day, it was all called off. Having had a few friends go through this situation, I know something of how messy, painful, embarrassing, confusing and awful it can be.

And so, as far as I can tell, my friend ran away. He left his broken engagement, his confused friends and family, his once bright future here and went about as far as it’s possible to run into the obscurity of rural Scotland. He started a new life elsewhere and didn’t want to talk about his old life, the failed engagement or the girl who had once filled his life with promise and hope. The bitter disappointment was too much, and it’s easier sometimes to sweep it under the carpet, to move on.**

It's a common phenomenon. Although my friend's flight from his past was obvious and extreme, in more subtle ways I’ve done it myself over many things. Faced with a mess, with a mistake, with a hurt, it’s easier to cover it up, deny it happened, avoid the topic, avoid the person, avoid the whole situation, to walk away and start again elsewhere with a clean slate. Have you ever done this?
*Some details changed.
**At least, this was how his actions appeared to me. I could be wrong on this. He may have had other excellent reasons for the move. NB I preached this sermon before I knew I was going to Edinburgh myself. Unsurprisingly, a few parishioners have since asked me what I'm running from.
Series: I; II: III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX.