What is love ? - a question you might say for a sage far wiser than I. Saint Paul told the people of the early church in Corinth that love was patient and kind. It did not put on airs. It was not boastful or proud. If you have been at a marriage ceremony in any mainstream or even new age church you have probably heard the reading many times.  It give one a truly idealistic look at love. Love in the highest form. What the ancient Greeks called Agape. It never mentions on the human level love is often a challenge to accept. To accept some as they are rather than attempt to change them. It dose not speak of love as bidding someone farewell out of live rather than enabling their unhealthy or negative life patterns. Love is an ever evolving life experience. It is the positive interaction between two people's affection, a binding of human and spiritual ideals, the forming of a union or spiritual partnership. Sounds simple, well for some the sharing of their love and affection is no easy task in our society.

If you have read a newspaper or watched TV News you know that we are in the middle of a national debate. We are witnessing a fight from Hawaii to Vermont for the legalization of same sex marriages, offering the same right to all of our citizens. I will not venture to say if the law will change any time soon, I am after all a theologian not a lawyer.  What I would like to look at here is the idea of marriage from the stand point of the church, or at least from the standpoint of our church.  For many mainstream churches the issue of same sex weddings is out of the question. For us here in the Universal Church Of Christian Spiritualism it is as natural to ritually celebrate the love of two men or two women as it is to celebrate that of a man and a woman.  Through the reincarnational  process we grow in our human and spiritual development to a place where  our love for the spirit of ones soul is no longer hindered by a gender specific reality.  To tell en evolved soul he or she can only love based on gender would be to deny the very process of their evolution and growth.

When any couple comes tome as the pastor of the church I ask them the same questions - questions about their commitment to each other and to the integrity of their love and support for each other. While the physical intimacy of their relationship is important it will take a second place to the ability to endure in hard times. It there for hold far less importance to the couples ability to love and be loved than who they are as individual spiritual beings.  It is no different if the couple is male and female or if they share the commonality of the same gender. In may many years of public ministry I have been blessed to officiate at the ritual of many couples sharing their vows to grow together in love and faith. To share the spiritual path they walk each with the other. And, Yes, some of those couples shared the commonality of gender. They also shared the same love St. Paul calls the Blessing Of God. 

I don't know when or if the political climate of the world will ever embrace same sex marriages, as for me, i will continue to officiate at such ritual ceremonies. I will continue to send all of the paperwork to the city, even though they will not accept it as valid, Since i answer to a higher law, they will just have to forgive me - that is until such time as the laws of our current human reality catch up with the reality of the cosmos.