Intriguing Nuptials

Back from Los Angeles, and it was good to be back at the Manor and to get at some correspondence that had been left hanging. I needed to check something, so headed for the Manor library. There I discovered some missing texts. I was in the process of writing a brief epistle to an author who had, in my opinion, completely misconstrued a point William James had made in his work, Varieties of Religious Experience. I wanted to be certain of my facts, but where the book should have been, well, it wasn't. I wondered who among my staff was suddenly interested in James, and his rather unique world-view.

Turned out it was Ahmed, my handyman. This was odd, for I had him pegged as an fairly strict Muslim. I discovered the missing text while searching in Ahmed's workroom for some industrial Vaseline (don't ask -- you really don't want to know). While there, I also spotted my copy of John Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. What was going on? These are not books that are high in the Muslim canon; indeed, I doubt that they appear at all. A little conversation with Ahmed was in order.

I found Ahmed doing something obscure to the John Deere tractor snow/plow that my gardener, Consuela, so loved to drive. Indeed, Consuela was hovering near his elbow, anxiety in her face.

"There," said Ahmed. "Just a loose clamp."

"Nothing more serious?" inquired Consuela. "It really felt -- oh, my Lady."

"Just wanted a word with Ahmed, Connie."

Ahmed put down a small wrench he was holding, and said "Well, my Lady, we sort of wanted a word with you." He reached for Consuela's hand, grasped it tightly. "I have proposed, and this beautiful one has accepted."

Hah! I thought. Ahmed's reading material was beginning to make sense. And indeed this was so, for I was informed of the following.

The two were in love -- not being deaf and blind, I had noticed this before -- but their religious backgrounds were severely at odds with each other. Ahmed took his Islam seriously, as did Consuela her Catholicism. How had they surmounted these barriers?

It had been Ahmed who had thought long and hard about this (as well as Consuela's undoubted charms) and had done some research. He had reached the conclusion, aided and abetted by James and Locke, among others, that yes, there was one God, and that the major theme behind that God was compassion and redemption, and that God should have no business in the grubby and all too human running of the state, or dress codes, or dietary edicts, or violence masquerading as religious fervour. Consuela had no problem with this interpretation, artfully quoting the Bible: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God, the things that are God's".

Well, well well.

They asked, and received, my blessing, and I offered them the small guest house adjacent to the tennis court. It needed some fixing up, but those two were more than capable of undertaking the task. As for the actual ceremony, they had asked several imams or priests to preside, and had been turned down flat. I stressed that they were asking a lot of these gentlemen (no women, note) and that if I have learned one thing thoroughly, it is that emotions and ideas follow beliefs, not the other way round. Purveyors of religion work hard to keep their beliefs tightly boxed, lest these beliefs get corrupted by the pervasive nature of human experience.

It was my butler, Irving, who suggested that a friend of his (from his Mossad days) could perform the ritual. This friend had studied to be a rabbi, but got caught in a nasty situation in the Gaza Strip, after which he had quit his studies, come to Canada, and was now a Justice of the Peace.

Perfect. I wished them both happiness, and turned my mind to arranging a small reception at the Manor.

Later, I pondered all this, particularly religious thought that appears to separate rather than bring together. And there is Nietzsche: "Two thousand years! And no new God!"

Selah.