Reflections from a 10-hour wedding

A 'non-religious' affair that was the most spiritual ceremony I've ever been to

This is an experiment!

• I’m short on time but long on reflections after traveling for a wedding last week and having some out-of-the-office commitments this week.

• I decided to record my reflections in the above video, and below is a transcript of the audio (side note, AI is awesome - I asked ChatGPT to clean this up).

• I’d love some feedback on this format - did you watch the video, listen to the audio, or read the transcript? Was this better, worse, or the same for you than a typical email from me?

Transcript, adapted by ChatGPT

I went to a wedding last weekend that lasted 10 hours and there were no cell phones, and it was the most ceremonial affair that I have ever been to. And it was simultaneously not religious affiliated, but also more deeply spiritual and connected to the divine than any Christian or boilerplate wedding that I've ever been to. And I've been thinking about it all week and wanted to share a little bit of reflections and thoughts coming out of it.

Background on Thomas Doochin

This was Thomas Doochin's wedding. Thomas founded Daymaker, which was the company that I ran previously. I've known Thomas for about a decade now, and he's always been a blessedly alternative spirit who is in uncompromising pursuit of truth. And I think about the poles from normalcy to an extreme. Thomas is a pole, and he has always been a beacon out there for me and many others. He challenges the way that I see the world and the way I do things and being with him always causes me to examine my life, which is often uncomfortable, but always helpful.

He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and he's a neighbor to an intentional living community called Earth Haven, where many residents live off the grid completely and they're really connected in with nature and living in community in a way that looks very different than probably most of you watching this (and certainly my day-to-day existence here in Atlanta).

Reverence and spirituality

And I was talking to my brother telling the story of this wedding, and he asked, what do they believe religiously? What did it look like? And that's a nice lens through which to convey the wedding. And then some of my reflections there. So when I think about what they believe, and this is me articulating it, Thomas probably would say it differently, but I would say they have a reverence for God the most high, the spirit, the giver and sustainer of life. And it is a love and a worship and a reverence for life itself and for the gift of love.

And it's a pursuit of perpetuating life and being in harmony with nature and our rightful place in things. Pursuit of nonviolence. A gratitude for beauty. A consistent recognition of the sacredness of things and their divinity, both ourselves, animals, nature, those around us. A capacity to appreciate the presence of the spirits and our ancestors.

And so practically some of the ways that that plays out and then the ways that they touched into the wedding is one, that way of living has a deep familial reverence and an outsized amount of time devoted to child rearing. And being with family in hard times, death, our elders, there's a deep, deep family and community connection. I think there's inherently a slower pace and less hurry on a day-to-day basis associated with that.

And then there's a real intentional prayerful life of thanksgiving for the day-to-day gifts and the more broad gifts. So, even during the wedding we were thanking Mother Earth for comprehensively, providing every single thing that we need to be sustained in our existence. And we were thanking father sun for coming up every single day without us doing anything to earn that. And then for co-mingling with Mother Earth to create the exact circumstances that we need for plants to grow and for life on earth to thrive and for us to be literally alive and sustained.

And so that consistent prayerful life of Thanksgiving is there. And then with that, there's a natural connection into things that you would do if you're in reverence and worship and gratitude of life and love itself. So singing and dancing and taking care of yourself and trying to eat and drink well and not be to excess. And so, you know, we sang a prayer before we ate the meal. We sang a couple songs during the wedding, there was plenty of dancing as there is, at many weddings that's not unique. But I think it's more a part of a day-to-day life and a day-to-day rhythm there than it is for maybe folks here.

Then I think lastly, an intention for everything that you do and everything associated with a wedding, nothing was random, without a part, without a place, without a backstory.

A good example is the food. So it doesn't necessarily mean abstaining from eating meat or any kind of animal product, but it is about knowing who raised the pig, celebrating the land that the pig was raised on, giving gratitude for the pig for giving us life, allowing us to eat it, and commending the person who cooked it, telling their story and how they fit in. Every single thing had that level of intention.

Always available, yet sadly inaccessible

What was striking to me is the holiness of the affair and the reverence, the intention, and the way of being associated with that which Thomas has always inspired in me. I saw in every detail of that wedding, the ceremony, the ritual, the pace, the way of being, which frankly feels inaccessible to my busy life in Atlanta and my community and how we often do things. It feels sad to me.

It feels like we are missing out on gifts that we have been given in the way that we can live and how we can approach things. Especially when I think about ritual and ceremony and adding more meaning into our day to day, our week to week, and our month to month.

When I think about our ceremonies and our holidays, a lot of them have been co-opted by consumerism. We're supposed to buy things on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. We're supposed to eat a lot, watch football, and then drink ourselves into a nap on the couch. We say a prayer, we get together, but is it a deep true reverential thanksgiving? Do we take those opportunities to be grateful, to fall into worship and thanks, and deep emotional connection with those around us and the gift of just getting to be alive? Again, it feels sad, it feels like we're missing something.

Disordered Inclinations

I'm reading the book right now, "The Call for Discernment in Troubled Times" by Dean Brackley, and he's got words for this. He says that the presence of the enemy or the devil in our lives is about disordering our inclinations, literally getting our priorities out of order. It made me think of a lot of the things that we might want, or we're told we should want, those might be disordered inclinations compared to what's more natural and fulfilling.

And to be clear, I don't want to go live off the grid. I don't want to burn it down. I don't want to get out of Atlanta or change my general way of living. But I do want to ask myself how I can incorporate more of those reverential principles into my day-to-day experience. I want to be alongside people who are asking those same questions and trying to do the same thing.

It feels there is more fullness within our grasp if we search for it and take advantage of it. That's what I've been trying to think of. My wife and I had a great discussion about this on our drive home after the wedding. And then it was back to work on Monday, back to the grind. And just thinking about how to integrate it, the pace and otherwise.

Technology makes a reverential pace harder

The tie into technology is about pace. Technological acceleration just makes this harder. It makes it harder for us to slow down when we can be reached on teams, Zoom, and Instagram and every other app commanding our attention. We can do more faster. There's just more demanding our attention daily, making it harder to protect ourselves and our time. The companies vying for our attention with their algorithms are using increasingly sophisticated tools, spending billions of dollars thinking, how do I manipulate psychology and the nervous system to make us feel inadequate, to want and buy more?

They're competing for our attention. And when we say we need to shift our attention towards holiness or life, it's becoming counter-cultural and increasingly difficult. We need a community to reinforce that if we're going to seek it, we need people to help us in the pursuit of a way of being that is holy, natural, and reverential, worshipping this gift of life.

So that's a journey I want to be on, and I invite you to share with me. If you're reading this and want to participate, I invite those conversations, reminders, nudges, and callbacks. If you see me veering off, push me back. We need to go together. That's how we're going to do well.

Thank you for listening. Let me know what you think of this format. I've been busy with work and travel and had less time for writing. So I wanted to share this way. I'm grateful for you. Remember that you're filled with the breath of life. You've got love, and you can share it. Thanks for walking with me if you're watching this, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks.

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