A Happy God

Last night I had the great privilege and honor of attending a wedding that encompassed the union of a member of one of my favorite families to an incredibly lovely lady. The bride and the groom are both high achievers, clever and otherwise fantastic people.

Getting to that wedding was a whole adventure. It included a train-ride, a frantic dash, a bus to another bus and the bus-driver dropping us off half-a-mile away from the correct stop, another frantic dash only to arrive literally 2 minutes before the chuppah started. But we made it. As for my ride back, a couple was kind enough to drop me off by 59th Street Station and so I rode the 1 train home.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about.

I wanted to talk about the wedding. Because there was so much love and emotion in the air. It was simple and beautiful simultaneously. The groom was lucky enough to have his father, who is a Rav, as the mesader kiddushin. I think there's something so special about being able to have one's father act as person who ties the two of you together. But what I perhaps enjoyed most was the speech under the chuppah by one of the honored guests. He spoke about light and how the two people who were to be wed were so filled with light, even overflowing with light. I liked the image of light shining from the souls of the happy couple.

I also liked that after he broke the glass they paused and gave hugs to all of their family members under the chuppah. Only afterwards were they danced off to the yichud room.

There was something really wholesome about this wedding- you could see that it had been created without disagreement of any kind. In fact, the father of the groom spoke about what a pleasure it had been to work with his mechutanim to create the affair and how smoothly it had gone. I think the simplicity mixed with the redolent aroma of that fragrance from Gan Eden, the Besamim, was what I felt there. I also loved that the father of the groom wished his children the ability to create a miniature Gan Eden, a little paradise, in their house.

The father of the bride also spoke from his heart. It's rare to be at a wedding where people are not loading you up on pleasantries and flattering expressions but really saying what they mean. Short, sweet and real.

(I happen to love the couple's attitude in general. Earlier they had told me that they had a completely empty apartment at the moment- either it was with naught but a bed or they were hoping a bed would arrive before they had to move into it. I suppose as gifts arrive, they shall have unpacking frenzies! In any case, they seemed quite all right with this state of affairs. I'm a fan of people who are not excitable when it comes to these trivialities.)

And I was totally and entirely and truly happy at this wedding. And I felt like God saw everything and rejoiced. A happy God.