Post-Wedding Reflections; Having Another Go Against Chaos

Shortly before my last post about my son’s approaching wedding, I wrote a post titled “Grappling With Chaos:”

https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/grappling-with-chaos

In reading it again, I can see that the heart of my struggle was captured by the sentences below:

So for me, as a rationalist, I look at good fortune that comes my way and I disassociate it from religion. I believe that some portion of good fortune comes from our own efforts, but so much of it, most in fact, arrives by chance, out of the chaos of a million contingencies.

But there’s a fragility to this mindset. If the wheel turns, and I’m visited by misfortune, how do I prepare for that? In my current spiritual state, I would not have the “patience of Job.” I’m afraid I might crumble in the face of severe adversity.

I’m aware that I’ve positioned acquiring a belief in God in terms one might use to describe an insurance policy. My “premium” is faith, and my “payout” would be a measure of comfort should tragedy strike.

Can a rational motivation be the genesis of a non-rational belief?

I call it non-rational, not “irrational,” because the reason the universe exists, and the reason I exist, have always been mysteries to me with no satisfactory answers. I reject “everything happens for a reason,” as a surrender of common sense, but at the same time I’m horrified by the thought of absolute randomness, absolute purposelessness. I’ve had existential crises before, and they’re not fun! Ask my wife.

So as I search to find my faith, search for that “low door in the wall” (as Evelyn Waugh called finding love in “Brideshead Revisited,¹”)  my son’s wedding last weekend gave me some clues.

It was a Jewish wedding, and from the moment I saw my son under the chuppah waiting for his bride, the onslaught of intense emotion began. As the first Hebrew prayers rang out, tears formed. When the groom and bride exchanged their deeply felt and personal vows, I really wished I’d brought a  handkerchief.

The four parents were called up to drape a prayer shawl over the couple. The image that comes back to me so strongly was looking into the rabbi’s eyes and seeing him blink away his own tears and seeing how his eyes were shining and how his face was aglow.

After the ceremony was over, I was emotionally stunned. For many minutes after, I didn’t feel capable of having a conversation. It was perhaps the closest I’ve ever come to some sort of trance. It felt good, but at the same time strange, thus difficult to describe. I’m sure, however, that the religious traditions of the ceremony were important ingredients to the depth of my feelings.

In my wedding toast I spoke about the ancestors of the bride and groom. I’d been thinking about all the sacrifices made and contingencies that led to this marriage. The bride’s mother arrived in America from Iran in the 1970,’s alone as a teenager and with her husband built a wonderful family. My great grandfather (Sam Rottenberg) came to America in the 1880s, also alone and young, and carved out a large presence in the Brooklyn Jewish community.

These stories are not necessarily unusual. But incorporating them into my thoughts showed me that the wedding was a celebration of tradition triumphing over adversity, of ancestral faith rewarded.

Here’s what I said:

It would be wondrous if these ancestors were somehow aware of what they created. If somehow they could see what was happening in this room tonight. Regardless, parts of them, large and small, are here with us. We carry their spirit in our memories. You carry parts of their genetic code in every cell of your bodies. It is a legacy to be honored and the two of you are ideally suited and matched to honor it brilliantly.

Yes, my “regardless” was a hedge against believing in the “wondrous” presence of those no longer alive. But on the wedding night, I edged closer to faith and belief, with an admittedly long way to go.

The key to that “low door” for me may be a sense of ancestral and familial religious tradition. Being a link in a chain by keeping faith with those who came before and those who come after. Especially knowing that many of those ancestral lives endured and prevailed over much greater challenges than I’ve ever had to confront.

There’s a purpose in being a link in a great chain, perhaps even a great purpose. A way to confront the chaos. And maybe in time, embracing the meaning of that purpose can make my eyes shine and my face glow with true belief. And encourage me to always have a handkerchief at the ready. Because I really do want to cry more.

1. “But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”