Innerdialects

10 am., today in a tiny chapel, a newly installed bell rang out. We stepped in thru’ fresh cement front step; this place was being renovated. Padre TS was nervous, it was his first wedding in church English: he dropped his notes, his fingers shook. We all exchanged careful grins.

Light filtered in through monsoon cloud as it hung out in the altar and aisle! Outside white bougainvillea and bold red poinsettia filled this woody compound on Mercara town hill-

not your typical wedding. Back in Bangalore, they hooted: an Indian wedding and just 2 tiny gold chains, one bangle and ring?!

“Watch me,” I told Ms. Sheri. We had 80 people. “Cheh. Like a birthday party!” She gasped.

We forgot to take the best pictures. Our view from Valley View Hotel was hillsides swathed in white mist. Noel J. was more used to these stunning southern heights; I couldn’t handle it altogether in one breath + new wedded status, + cloud strolling in our aisle.

My veil was slippy. Between that and our dear Padre more nervous than us, it could’ve been funny. But today was different.

Today there was the Presence*, how else d’you describe the Voice that breathed o’er Eden, (wedding song), that was also this real Presence Whispering, “Breathe.”

“Y’all look like two sparrows!” A colleague said. (Why sparrows, but you get the picture). We were awkward around friendly advice and genuine wishes for posterity; oh the attention.

Wore garlands for the first time in our lives, my blue (reception) sari blouse is too tiny to fit into now, yeah we’ve grown. He used to be a day person, I – a night owl. Now we’ve reversed that, how’s that happen? (The years moved us into other cities, other mountain valleys and beaches, higher up on the Indian west coast).

I am the one with bookish reputation; he lined our shelves with paperback Bibles, hard bound, pocket sized, Translations, Commentaries. The Word of God – speaking in all kinds of ways, beyond the senses, logic, reason. His Still small Voice, almost too soft to understand: you must pause, look at life, then go back to His Page. His Word isn’t Simple, it reads us. It talks, startles, holds, tosses old nests into the skies where He waits, like an eagle dad, to take us higher, deeper into understanding human relativity with Himself.

🌾

Sometime after our first baby, I saw a Mathew Henry commentary sitting in fat red jacket, and had to see what he said. What he said took me back to that Voice breathing over our Lil Eden like never before.

God owns weddings. I know that. You can slosh thru high water and hell, but He’s the Tie that binds, cures, reasons, if we allow our Self- to hear Him.

This day, I celebrate the most precious human I have ever met, or will ever, my Noel J. Because there could be no other for me, but also because he’s the one that drew me, close, closer by each passing moment, to that throne of Grace from where all life sources.

Do I practice religion you ask. If you mean how we get nit- picky about what we do not understand, but righteously ignore the Good He writes into our pages? Then no. The ‘religion’ I practice comes from a Quiet Place that looks into the Light of Yeshua, who came in all Humility, to Serve with Love, not indifference, not self seeking,

looking beyond, into Eternal Perspective.