On love and marriage and records

Last year I got to hear an illuminating presentation on the history of marriage. Many people talk of the current incarnation of marriage as if it’s a God-given institution enshrined in the Bible without realising that men in the Bible had many wives. As I understand it, the modern day concept of marriage is born out of a patriarchal requirement to record rights of ownership and linked to taxation and only in more recent times had anything to do with love.  

My partner is delving into lots of historical records at the moment and I’m dismayed at what we have thought worthy of recording and what is not. Whilst I concede that the date and location of our births and deaths potentially reveals something about us, I’m not convinced that if or who we marry should have any more significance than other facts about us. In our society we privilege romantic relationships over others when science shows that it is our connections that matter and that friendship and attachment to caregivers are crucial - a married relationship may or may not be one of those connections but why would it be viewed in isolation? We never know the full impact of any relationship we’re not in ourselves, but like any relationship between two people a marriage might be liberating and help us be our best selves, or it might be limiting or abusive. We are called to love one another, not to just love one. If people are looking for Biblical guidance, we’re told the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves - so that’s loving God, neighbours and ourselves. Being in a marriage maybe enable us to do those three things more fully, or it may not, but to my mind the key thing is the love.

It brings to mind again the song ‘seasons of love’ which asks: 

“How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?

In truths that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In bridges he burned
Or the way that she died

It's time now, to sing out
Though the story never ends
Let's celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends...

Remember the love
(Share love, give love, spread love)”

I’ve never watched Rent, the musical it’s from, I’ll try and remedy that. 

Fortunately I think the way people in the future will research our lives won’t be limited to just official records. Our prolific use of technology will mean anyone interested will hopefully be able to see what, and maybe who, mattered to us. It is our actions that reveal our love, not who we were born to, not if we married, and not how long we lived. The records that matter are stored in our hearts, and those of our neighbours and God. Unlike machines, those records can’t be accessed but to me at least they are the most important. As Beth Nielsen Chapman sings, 

"All that matters when we're gone 

All that mattered all along 

All we have that carries on - is how we love"