The Luminous Feast

Yesterday, I got to attend a wedding.  I love weddings.  I love the receptions.  They carry within them 1000 familiar stories, all beautiful and aching, because they are true.  There is the wistful woman sitting at the table, watching the dance floor.  There are the three beautiful girls dancing together, laughing louder than the music, and all four of them are trying to will through the loneliness they sometimes find unbearable, away.  

The men and women dance, there are couples who know how, and moments, when it is so beautiful, one wonders why we do not stop and watch such wonderfulness more often.  The best dancer finds all those sitting at the table, and brings them onto the floor, and the joy is contagious.  Some of us are dancing fools, and it does not matter the song.

There are the couples dancing cheek to cheek, even when it isn't a slow song, because the wedding feast never ended.   At least three families bring along their children, and everyone else delights in seeing them on the dance floor, especially the shy girl who wonders what happened to every adult she's ever known when the songs start playing.  At the back table is a group of family or friends, who once upon a time, saw each other weekly, if not daily.  Now, they sit and the years slip away as the minutes do, and they laugh and do not move from the golden joy of good memories and good food and presence, beautiful presence with each other.  

I watched the bride and groom, and it didn't matter where either went, their eyes were on each other's. Whenever their eyes met, their faces broke into smiles.   The best man beamed with joy, and the sister and brother of the bride burst with pride.  The father watched his daughter and you could see his heart, both bursting with joy and breaking, at the end of an era of his life.

The touches of joy lit the room like candles.  There is no mystery more luminous than love.