This is the aisle.
Couples have been mindfully traveling its heady path for a hundred years.
I think it is significant that the couple travels in both directions. First, they walk toward the altar. The Lord anticipates their approach. Each step brings a bride and groom nearer and nearer to Him. Their kinsmen and friends are links in the procession, pounding into their soles the muscle memory that God is where marriage begins.
For an oasis in time, they linger. Circled by the people who cheered the loudest when they were first engaged. One or two little girls dressed like fairies wait in the wings, fingers unable to keep from stirring their basket of pink petals. A burnished ring peals from the breast pocket of the very best man, in a frequency that is not picked up by the microphones.
Questions. Promises. Tears. A kiss.
Then a wink in eternity later, they twirl and sashay the other way. This time the husband and wife are facing throngs of friends who have chosen to gather in this cathedral, to witness the transformation from he and she into we. In regarding the congregation, they are imprinted with the faces of the persons their marriage is born to serve.
