everyone got married last weekend

nathan, who understood my lectures better than most students, (probably because he was subjected to more of them) shared debate trips with me, made me laugh often, despite his claims to being "a wet blanket," regularly challenged me to think harder about ideas, and who also just happened to (like me) be a part of a group of family singers in his childhood, was united in holy matrimony with shannon.

nathan, it just occured to me that i don't know whether the clifton family singers wore matching outfits like the Rudd family singers. we always pulled a metal chair up next to the microphone so my two brothers could be the same height as me and my parents and we could all sing our gaither songs or our ron hamilton songs into just one microphone.

i liked our gigs, but i always fantasized about being the Murks.



but i digress...

lonette, who is not only a gifted performer, but also a gifted just about everything else. And my former student/ongoing friend married (the fabulous) Steve on the same day. These two are ridiculously in love. And cute (and i mean that in the *good* way) while being able to maintain a bit of an "oh please with the sentimentality" distance from their incredible cuteness...

and rob, who insists upon growing and developing as a person more than most people I've ever met (tae kwon do, the artists way, piano, law, rhetoric -- all just in a span of one year of knowing him) has the ability to _be present_ in a one on one conversation more intensely than anyone you've ever met. And I haven't met Monica (still!) because they, too, got married on the same day.

And JAN, for whom my daughter Jaelyn is named, an extradordinary friend/sister type to my wife -- and lucky me (not often that folks (me in particular) say this about our inlaws) as an extension of my wife. Got married on the same day. I took black and white candids during the whole wedding, which resulted in this wierd out-of-body-sensation during the whole time.

I was there. I was *busy* seeing....but I wasn't really there as a *person*. I didn't sit in the places I usually would have sat, dance as much as i usually would have danced, talk to as many people as I usually would have talked to.

But I liked it. Being distanced by technology was an insightful, enlightening experience as well as being an odd disembodied one...

it reminded me of how far i was from the other weddings of the people that i loved that day...

which reminded me of how odd it is to live in an era where often the people you love best live far away from you.

but because that very same odd world has given me the opportunity to know nathan and lonette and rob and jan. i'm grateful too...