The Wayfarer's Chapel

Meeting, marriage, and the road home — a life begun after forgiveness was asked for in the wilderness.

Premise

This essay holds the meeting of my wife, our wedding at the Wayfarer’s Chapel, and the journey to our home. It is mercy begun — not completed — the domestic and covenant life that followed the instruction to forgive. The chapel’s glass and redwoods frame a vow; the road afterward is the keeping of it.

What the essay will hold

• How and when we met — and the recognition that came first: a face already known to be the right one, because the light in it had been seen before. The seeing belongs to Love of the Beautiful; this essay holds what was done about it.
• The Wayfarer’s Chapel — place, rite, and what a glass church by the sea meant then. A sanctuary with nothing between the light and the people standing in it.
• The vows: sun coming straight through the glass into her face, and her blinded by it and still trying to look at me. (Beats placed — the prose is Stephen’s.)
• The rhyme, if it is left unglossed: sun full in the face once before, as a child, lying in the car on the way to the hospital
• The journey toward home after the wedding
• Forgiveness of mother as the desert fathers instructed — the door that opened onto this life (jurisdiction voice: speak only to one’s own portion)
• The life built afterward — without prosecuting anyone, without closing the wound that still belongs elsewhere
• How this panel rhymes with Quest: a word of hope spoken toward a hearing that has not yet fully come

Series position

Part of the Identity sequence of creative nonfiction. This panel belongs with Quest: mercy begun, a household and a chronicle kept in hope.