Sometimes a moment changes a lifetime

When a couple commits to marriage, their lives reorient themselves. Two separate individuals who are accustomed to personal independence and successful careers now readjust their thinking and their lifestyle to make room for another. Their marriage creates an alliance, a partnership — their lives mutual, no longer single.

My Christian tradition doesn’t have a religious ceremony to mark a couple’s wedding engagement, only a marriage commitment service. So when I was invited to be a guest a Hindu engagement ceremony, I was especially interested to witness it. It was short, perhaps only ten to fifteen minutes long. The Brahmin conducted the ceremony, chanting or singing most of it, and it was not in English.

The couple mounted a dais or platform and sat in the chairs of honor before the gathered guests and relatives. The Brahmin sat on the floor of the platform next to their chairs. The parents of each of the couples brought presents to the platform and blessed the man and woman. The parent couples also blessed one another. One of the presents, a coconut, will be brought to the wedding, scheduled for Spring 2010, and will be part of the ceremonies then, linking this event to the wedding to come.

The assembly sat at our round banquet tables during this little ceremony. Unlike the religious services I generally attend, this one wasn’t conducted in front of a silent assembly. Many chatted quietly with their neighbors and took photos of the proceedings. At the end of the short service, the D.J. presented the couple to us, and we clapped our approval.

Thirty important seconds of the service are in the video just below. The Brahmin ties an identical string bracelet on the wrist of the man and the woman. They are to wear that bracelet as a sign of their commitment; they must not take it off. It will be their constant companion until the fibers fail and the bracelet falls off on its own. You will hear the Brahmin’s chanting in this short clip and you’ll hear the murmur of the guests’ quiet visiting. I believe that as the woman returns her wrist to her lap that I can see for an instant the realization of the solemnity of the moment settle upon the woman, a response to the enormity of the step to which they have just committed.

The additional beauty of a commitment ceremony like this is that it calls us all to revisit our own life commitment moment. This news report may not be earth shaking, but the moment it considers is life-changing — in every culture.

I gratefully acknowledge the permission of the couple to allow me to share the images of their engagement service here.

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