Soul Mates & Sopaipillas

A mellow evening welcomes us as the sun sets slowly over the Sandia Mountains. We're winding our way through Old Town Albuquerque toward one of our favorite restaurants, Monica's El Portal. We're in search of some delicious oxymoronic food: Old New Mexican.

The byway is busy with peds like us: The chatter of children is everywhere, mostly in Spanish. We window-shop --- pottery and beads, turquoise and silver, images and icons. Hand-crafted by artisans and reasonably priced; our slender sales resistance weakens and wanes. Eventually we reach Monica's, seat ourselves by a window with lace curtains, and wait for our first basket of fresh chips. You can have any salsa you'd like, as long as it's Monica's. It's hot, about an 8 on a fire scale of 10, yet you can still taste the delicate edge of cilantro.

We nosh on chips and salsa (complementary), carne adovado (a house specialty), frijoles refritos (crispy out, soft in), and sopaipillas (five of them, all complementary, perched next to a squeeze bottle of honey). Our total indulgence, including tip, will run about $20 this evening. We'll be sated and stuffed as we wander back through Old Town after dinner.

Soul-mates. That's what we are this evening, as a perfect fall day in New Mexico yields gradually to the risen moon. Sharply outlined peaks tower over us. The chatter of children has moved indoors, now joined by the clink of dinner dishes. We are lazy and well-fed with no schedule to keep, thirty years together and much in love. Why did we approach our grandparenting years before figuring out life/work balance? Are we slow learners?

We have another book releasing soon, "The Soul-Mate Marriage," and we'll be busy promoting it, traveling to speak and work, but that is for another day. Tonight we are merely soul-mates, not authors or speakers. Tonight we are full up on sopaipillas, carbed out on comfort food and feelin' no pain. Nondescript and anonymous, we are just two more tourists here.

But tonight, if we could be anywhere on earth, it would be just down the street from Monica's El Portal, talking softly and walking side-by-side through Old Town. We linger, savor, sample, stop, celebrate. Far up above --- la luna, semi-circular and self-satisfied, whispers to us and we can almost hear it.

Goodnight, moon.

(This encore edition post originally published in October, 2008.)

400 Weddings & My Funeral

After I die, someone will discover among my personal effects this item: a small wooden plaque with a brass plate. The plaque congratulates “Dave & Lisa Frisbie” for exploring all 65 Minnesota State Parks. My wife and I earned that plaque over a ten year time span from 1990 to 2000, purchasing a passport from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, then having that passport stamped and validated as we camped and hiked our way through Minnesota’s state park system.

We loved that process, and along the way we earned patches, badges and I believe also a baseball cap. The culmination (if you explored every single state park) was the aforementioned plaque. That plaque doesn’t matter to any living persons except Lisa and I --- for us, it has a value that is beyond priceless. Instantly, that little plaque reminds us of our lakeside campsite at Father Hennepin, our hikes along the shores of Lake Superior, and an early August snowfall as we tent-camped near Fergus Falls. That little wooden plaque on the wall holds a decade of happy memories for us: We love camping!

The plaque represents a milestone in our lives together. In much the same way, we celebrated a major milestone recently as I performed my 400^th wedding. Far from being “just a number” every wedding I’ve shared in has been designed as uniquely personal, about the bride and the groom, never a generic or standard service. Each wedding has been personalized and meaningful --- at least to us! And for us, reaching 400 weddings is a milestone we treasure.

The bride in this milestone was Abigail Stranz, radiant and beautiful on the day of her wedding. (See photo above left.) I had the privilege of preaching the wedding of Abigail’s parents, Barry and Pam, back in 1983. At that time I was not yet ordained and could not yet legally sign a marriage license. But apparently Barry and Pam thought I could preach: they asked me to do so. They sang to each other, someone else signed the license, and I crafted the best sermon I could think of (literally).

This I did again for Wedding Number 400 --- and every wedding I’ve ever done. I’m sure there are busy little wedding chapels in Las Vegas that do 400 weddings on a summer weekend --- but for me, it’s taken a lifetime of learning and sharing, listening and counseling, speaking and teaching. And although I can’t claim to remember every single detail of every wedding experience, I certainly remember the brides and the grooms and the parents and the relatives and many of the friends. People matter.

Since weddings tend to involve people, weddings end up mattering too. I loved doing Wedding # 400 and the next few are already getting scheduled. If I die before Wedding Number 401, no worries. You can make me a little plaque for my gravesite which reads “He performed 400 weddings” and no one will read it or care, but thank you anyway. Or if you prefer, you can put the following on my tombstone, after you cremate my remains. You can just put “He was my friend.” It will be a true statement.