Metanoia

Geeezzzhh! I don't know whats wrong with me tonight. I have moved from one emo wreck after another. After posting my last post "Heart Wrenching" I blog hopped to latest posts in my blogrolls, and my heart got wrenched one more time. Not just wrenched. Metanoia, no less. Bakla ako's latest blog post talked about Proposition No. 8. At first I was wary. Just another blog on gay marriages. But boy, was I wrong! Read his blog here.

Okay, I confess. To be very honest, when I am asked about my stand on gay marriage, I usually give a non-nonchalant or a noncommittant answer. I have nothing against it of course, but I am not for it either. I usually add that marriage, after all, is not for everyone. I really honestly think that marriage (the ceremony) is merely a socio-religious contraption steeped in commercialist materialism and sprinkled with much frivolous grandiose festivity , and as our culture pushes the limits further, ostentatious display of usually tacky, crappy and soppy romanticism. I plead guilty to being a hopeless romantic but my concepts of romance and crap are put to a screeching halt when marriage pops the bubble.


I have been to countless weddings, from the whole shiznits of the big white dress to the casual afternoon tie-ups, with countless roles from ring bearer to host/commentator, or even documentor and I do not entirely enjoy the showiness of it all. For me, love defines convention, and marriage is a social convention. Yeah yeah, I hear you! Im a boar! Not entirely discounting my own 'almost marriage,' with an ex-girlfriend who fried my brains off when she told me I impregnated her... only to be homicidal later, after arranging of course, to meet her parents, and tell mine so we can go visit hers and ask for her hand in the traditional "pamalayi" or "pamamanhikan," thinggie, to be told by her, with fawning eyes, that she was not really pregnant. She was just 'testing' me. WTF! I detested that moment and right there and then, broke up with her (one of the rare times that I do the breaking up) and vowed to never talk to her or ever wanting to see her convoluted, scheming, face.



So, what do I have against marriage, you ask. Again, I do not have anything against it, but I am not all for it either. I would usually teasingly add that maybe, I have not found the right reason or person yet to convince me that it is worth all the fuss. Maybe he/she has the right reason or just might be IS the right person; try convincing me. I remember a few relationships I had with people who were zoned in to the whole tie the knot thing. Later I got a convenient solution when badgered about it. I would suggest hand fasting.




Hand fasting is the traditional Wiccan or Celtic ceremony of binding together two persons in the bonds of marriage between the Wiccan Sabbat of Beltane and the Summer Solstice. Since I practice modern Wicca, I am eligible to handfast. Best of all, Wiccan handfasting do not discriminate. Two males or two females may be handfasted. What's more, Wicca has a ceremony called handparting. This is the Wiccan counterpart of divorce or legal separation. Speaking of legal, when I got into law school, I, all the more, became wary of marriage. As friendster would put it, it's complicated! So I usually shrug my shoulders about marriage, and offer handfasting as an alternative. Not until tonight!

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate… this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

This! This statement hit me like a ten wheeler truck and I am floored! I can not think of anything to counter or anything to justify my mid-ground position. I struck me where it matters most: my heart! As it has always been my waterloo, when my heart is attacked by arguments geared towards the romantic and emotional, I become a mushy mess! Now you know my secret. I really am a Mentos: Hard and crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside!

Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don’t want to deny you yours. They don’t want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them—no. You can’t have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don’t cause too much trouble. You’ll even give them all the same legal rights—even as you’re taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can’t marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn’t marry?

Although I am not entirely guilty of opposing it, I really do not actively indorse it or strongly believe in it. It's just not for everyone. Although this sentence remain true for me, that it is not for everyone, but now, it has become a sentence for a closing rejoinder instead of an opening arguments!

You don’t have to help it, you don’t have it applaud it, you don’t have to fight for it. Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know and you don’t understand and maybe you don’t even want to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

That is what I am exactly doing. Not applauding it nor fighting for it. But tonight, I have seen the light! Illumination! Epiphany! I am all for it! For love! For a chance! That chance at forever and permanence! After all, I always say that for a shot at happiness, everything is worth it. How dumb could I be? And how true! There is so much hate in the world and so much meaningless divisions, why indeed do I not see that there are people who would like to take that shot at oneness? At complete and total unification. One! For all our lives! Till death do us part. The romanticist in me leaps with great joy in my enlightenment and epiphany! How stupid could I get? How bigoted! To think that the above statement comes from a heterosexual guy, and yet, he fights for the rights of people who are not even like him as far as sexual preference is concerned! I am ashamed of myself, but no, not anymore. I have seen the light! Thank you Keith Olbermann. Thank you Baklaako.com.



Now after my Metanoia, for sure, I am more than willing, and in fact looking forward to the very moment when I myself would say "I do!"
Celebrate with me my enlightenment, my epiphany, my metanoia...
Marry me!

Photo Credits:

http://deepwidemedia.net/
http://www.culture-war.info/
http://wiki.wiccanweb.ca/
http://www.new-age.co.uk/
http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/
http://evilbeetgossip.film.com/
http://forums.myspace.com/