Toast

All great stories start the same way…

…Once upon a time, two young people went to prom.
They didn’t go together, per se, but
they went to the same prom at the same time.

We have a picture to prove it.

Time knows its business.
Time bides.
Time passes.

Love recognizes its home.

That’s why when good couples are asked, “How did you know?”
they shrug, they say simply, “We just knew.”

S and K are a good couple.

I can’t speak to S’s experience, but I know that K’s road has been long, and it hasn’t always been easy, and at times, it has been unbelievably dark.

Time knows its business, and it grew those two young people who didn’t go to prom together into the couple we celebrate today.

I believe today is a testament to the endurance of faith and the power of love.

Time, and God, and faith
Time and faith and love
not just inside of and between K and S,
but the faith and love of the people they have been surrounded by, the people they have surrounded themselves with.

Time and faith and love
have brought us here today
18 years after that prom
to celebrate the beginning of S and K’s new life together.

Your Hands
[by Pablo Neruda]

When your hands go out,
love, toward mine,
what do they bring me flying?
Why did they stop
at my mouth, suddenly,
why do I recognize them
as if then, before,
I had touched them,
as if before they existed
they had passed over
my forehead, my waist?

Their softness came
flying over time,
over the sea, over the smoke,
over the spring,
and when you placed
your hands on my chest,
I recognized those golden
dove wings,
I recognized that clay
and that color of wheat.

All the years of my life
I walked around looking for them.
I went up the stairs,
I crossed the roads,
trains carried me,
waters brought me,
and in the skin of the grapes
I thought I touched you.
The wood suddenly brought me your touch,
the almond announced to me
your secret softness,
until your hands
closed on my chest
and there like two wings
they ended their journey.

To K and S, to their home in love. God bless.