Marriage is a Church We Build

For Chad & Mariann
Marriage is a church we build
to worship one another in
and like cathedrals put up over time
each day adds buttresses and vivid glass,
a beam shaved smooth,
or a lock rock dropped
in an arch’s apex, defying Physics,
making stone hang curved in empty space.

Marriage is full of miracles like that.

Marriage is a church we build
to worship one another in.
Great towers pointing up
we build by faith
in one another’s own best self
and by belief make spires
even angel architects can’t conceive.
We build our marriage stone by stone
to blueprints no one’s ever seen,
not even us.
Marriage is full of miracles like that.

Marriage is a church we build
to worship one another in.
We shape the stones with work
and hold them firm
against the world’s worst wind
with love,
mixed fresh each day
and carried aloft,
wind, hail, or lightning crack,
up scaffolding Physics says can never hold,
yet always does,
in quantities Science say we cannot lift,
yet always do.
Marriage is full of miracles like that.

Marriage is a church we build
to worship one another in;
love’s our religion and we make
our marriage holy
by the zeal with which we build,
knowing that though each day
we build it over from the first stone up
until it stands more magnificent than the day before,
the building’s never done.
Marriage is made of miracles like that.

©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS