Our marriage certificate is one of the first things I see every day when I wake up, and I often stand in front of it – occasionally reading the text, but far more often it is the signatures which capture my attention. I trace the scribble of young cousin around a year old. His father was afraid to let him sign it because he might spoil it. What he didn’t know was that the scribbles of the youngest present are often the most precious on a Friends marriage certificate. That scribble is almost as precious as the giant four year old signature of our daughter, the first signature on the document, after our own.

And sometimes I read the names of my wife’s’ aunts and uncles. Each of them, devout Catholics, chose to attend, in part because some of my spouse's siblings could not lay aside their own spiritual or moral concerns to be present. Her father’s siblings wanted us to be surrounded by family. One of their signatures is missing. Although he had made peace with being present, he felt he could not sign the certificate. I love that he came, and also that he had wrestled with, and was clear about, how far his own faith would let him go. And I read through the names of loved ones who are no longer here – including a minister from my youth, an openly gay man serving a small Friends church in rural Nebraska in the early seventies. In his lifetime he journeyed from founding a group which dared not use the word “gay” in its name to witnessing the legalization of the first same gender marriages before he died a little over a year ago