Celebrating Boundless Love

After decades together, a member of my writing group announced she was getting married. It was the second gay wedding in our group in the last year and I was invited! On an overcast fall morning I joined friends and family as we gathered in a cozy room overlooking the Puget Sound.

Unlike exuberant wedding extravaganzas, there was a peaceful, easy, maybe even reverent joy in the room, grounded by this couple’s two decades together. There were other longtime gay couples there. Some had just tied the knot themselves. Despite the clouds outside, the room was warm and brimming with love.

Space was limited, so I felt especially honored to join the celebration. It reminded me that love, no matter how hard we try to corral or control it, is boundless. It cannot be contained by definitions, by prejudice, by ignorance, by our own imperfections, failings, or brokenness. Thank goodness!

The enormity of the moment was beginning to sink in. There’s no way for me to truly know what it’s like to risk so much to simply be yourself, to love another person and, then, be denied the basic rights straight individuals and couples enjoy.

The love I felt watching my friend and her soon-to-be wife, recite their vows was as seemingly infinite as the water that stretched out behind them (and the tears that welled up in my eyes). As the couple danced off, literally, into their married life, the sun came out and we celebrated into late afternoon.

Looking at my friend and her wife embrace, I was reminded that cultivating love is about shedding borders, not creating them. The more we open to love and allow its expression, the more we experience it, and the more it spills over any borders we thought might contain it.

Roselle Kovitz, a member of Fetzer’s social media team, lives in Seattle.