Love Always Wins

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the day S and I were finally given our legal right to marry, and thus began a 3 month flurry of activity to finally make our original wedding, planned and dated for 22 years previously, happen. So of course I have that on my mind and in my heart as a day of such joy and celebration.

When S and I stood side by side under that chuppah, having already embarked on our lifetime journey of togetherness but finally celebrating it publicly, legally, and with friends and family gathered to support us, we knew we were truly blessed. The ceremony itself was deeply meaningful and filled with blessings.

And then, in the last moments of the ceremony, I broke a glass underfoot to mark the still incomplete world we live in. A physical reminder that all is not as it should be. In the midst of our joy, there is still heartbreak and shattered dreams, pain and illness and oppression and darkness, all in the midst of joy and light.

When the glass was shattered and broken, we shouted “mazel tov!” which means, literally "good stars" or "good luck" but we know it as a shout of joy at something deeply good and right.

Seriously? Should this celebratory note not strike us as a little strange in that moment? Should we not be mourning the message that so much is still broken in our lives and in our world?

But no, we launch full on into celebration. Instead of driving a wedge between sadness and joy, we literally "marry" the two. And truly, is that not the very moment we should be shouting mazel tov, that we are able to build hope in a world so deeply fractured?

I have never been an either/or kind of person. Personally and as part of the Jewish people, we are a both/and sort of tribe. We know how to live in a world steeped in pain and at the same time hold onto hope. We don’t choose one over the other. We aren't even given that choice.

As Jews, we have a long history of dealing with shattered dreams. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, tablets in hand, he found a nation gone spiritually AWOL. Moses may have held G!d’s very words and wisdom in his hands, inscribed into those tablets, yet there we were, tired of waiting for Moses to come back down from the mountaintop, busily worshiping a golden calf, having panicked ourselves into thinking our leader was never coming back.

In his deep disappointment and anger, Moses smashed those tablets. We had fallen down on the job. We had been given a watch, and we had failed.

Fast forward 80 days of repentance and efforts to rebuild ourselves spiritually, and we are gifted a second set of tablets. A second chance at receiving the Divine here on earth.

What happened to that first set of tablets that Moses had thrown down and smashed in his anger and disappointment? Did the shards and crumbles get swept into the dust pile of eternity? Just like we do in the wedding ceremony of breaking the glass, tradition tells us we collected those broken pieces. And then we treasured them, carrying both the shattered and the whole tablets along our journey through the desert. Plan B only came about because of that initial breaking.

We are not meant to ignore the messy parts of our lives. We don’t need to pretend it’s all been perfect and gone as we wished it had. We don't have to try and force ourselves into some mold of perfection that is impossible to reach much less maintain. We get to bring the lessons of this-is-where-it-all-fell-apart with us. If we choose to collect the lessons of plan A, we get to live in the light of plan B.

The ability to carry the parts of ourselves that are still hurting while we dance hand in hand is the secret of the wedding celebration. We may toast the brides and grooms with sentimental words to match the flowers, but we all know life is made of more daily grind than fancy wedding sentiments. The biggest triumph is to shout “Mazel tov!” when all is not-yet-perfect. Life is not an either/or reality, it’s a both/and kind of world. The pain might be deeper, but the light is that much brighter when we make room for both the broken and the whole.

And maybe that’s the point: To live in a way where wrapped right into the pain is the celebration itself. The shattered pieces don’t belong in the garbage. They belong in there right alongside the moments of joy. The fractures are the very points where the Light breaks through, just like the artwork we so admire in crackled glass. More light reflects off crackled glass than smooth, perfect glass.

And that is our deepest soul work here on earth, brought out in visual metaphor during the wedding ceremony where we purposefully shatter glass and then bless and accept its brokenness into our hearts with shouts of "MAZEL TOV!" We affirm that this too, is good, and we accept that brokenness as part of our lives as a couple and as a family and as a community gathered to celebrate that LOVE ALWAYS WINS.

We are all fractured, yet that is our inherent beauty, to bring those fractures into the Light where they refract beauty in the midst of brokenness.

Mazel tov! May you come to know that Plan B just might be better than Plan A ever was!