Today, Alison Luterman, describes the wedding of two gay men, which, given its non-traditional nature, drew upon a variety of traditions:

But I didn’t have a lot of time to gawk at the family members
because I was a huppah holder at this gay Christian wedding, and our
routine was intricately choreographed.

The huppah, in the Jewish
tradition, is a canopy, often made from a prayer shawl, whose corners
are held up on poles by four people close to the wedding couple. But
these grooms, Randy and Michael, were Catholic — super Catholic in
fact. Michael had been a seminarian, preparing for the Jesuit
priesthood in a former life, and Randy a Benedictine monk, deeply
steeped in prayer, contemplation and service.

So why, as my
Brooklyn-raised father carefully asked, would they want a huppah? The
thing is, when you put “Catholic” and “gay wedding” together, you come
out with one inevitable conclusion: an extravaganza of rituals.

    To a reader of Confucius, like me, this is music to the ears.  "An extravaganza of rituals."  What matters here is the performance and, especially, the thought behind the performance, the ways in which the actions taken express the deep and genuine love of the people involved.  That is what Confucius meant by "ritual."  Not a mindless repetition of insignificant gestures, but a very mindful and careful physical enactment of social meaning.

    In the case of gay marriage (which I have blogged on before), "tradition" does not furnish specific rituals because tradition has usually denied its possibility.  Now that it is possible, new rituals have to be invented.  It may seem like a contradiction in terms, "new rituals," but ritual, if it is to have full meaning in the present, and not merely be a trace of the past, must always be reinvented. That is what Confucius did:

   The Master said: "Ritual calls for caps of linen, but now everyone uses black silk.  It’s more frugal, so I follow the common practice.
    "Ritual calls for bowing before ascending the stairs, but now everyone bows only at the top of the stairs.  That’s too presumptuous, so even though it violates the common practice, I bow before ascending. (9.3)

     Sometimes he accepts the "common practice," and sometimes he sticks with the old ways.  He makes his decisions based upon a clear notion of what the specific actions should be expressing: frugality, modesty.  What is most important is the mind behind the action that works to express the heart in the actions. 

     When it is done well, then, ritual helps forge our social selves with others in the present while linking us to the past.  The past is not determining our lives in the present, we are shaping our lives anew now with reference to the past.  That seems to be what happened in the marriage Luterman witnessed:

Together, we all marched onward and outward to bright sunlight and
chicken breasts in apricot sauce: the gay Catholics, the nominally
straight Jews, the Midwestern families who had traveled long distances
in more ways than one, the whole motley collection of pagans,
ex-priests, Buddhists, actors and singers, each of whom had absorbed
the ceremony in their way.

It wasn’t a legal wedding. Even so,
it made me think the Right is correct in fearing same-sex unions. There
is such power in this kind of brave and naked love that it may make the
walls of Jericho come tumbling down.