Rites

Another friend from my Wednesday night men's group got married on Sunday. That makes five weddings over the years in an evolving group of eight - not the same eight men for the entire twelve years, as some have left and some have joined, but still, that's quite a track record. And there's a sixth one coming up next spring. Is there something in the water on Weisheimer Road?

Bearing in mind that this is not a random or representative sample of all red-blooded American men, or for that matter all middle-class midwestern straight white males, or even all Unitarian-Universalist introverts (but we're getting warmer), it's still remarkable. Skewing the probability is the fact that some people join this kind of spiritually focused street gang partly because of marital issues: recently divorced, widowed, or just searching. What I find remarkable is the degree to which they found what they were looking for.

There is no template that all six of these guys fit. A common thread that does link each of them is that other major changes have accompanied their courtships and marriages, but that phenomenon isn't unique to this group, just more dramatic: moving to another part of the country (Washington, New Mexico, Chicago and then Michigan, pretty soon Arizona); career changes (preparing for retirement, earning tenure, going to seminary); family upheaval (birth of daughters, death of a son, death of brothers, death of parents).

I'm not claiming that anything spooky happens when you join a group, or that these dangerous liaisons somehow sprang from our Wednesday night alchemy. That would make a much better story. I'm just saying it's been extremely cool to witness the unfolding story lines of a circle of strangers who have become friends by confiding a tiny bit of their story every week.