COMMENTARY: Time to leave the nest

SONOMA, Calif. (RNS) Histories flowed like Sonoma Valley wine at our son’s wedding here, as more than 100 people descended on this lovely town in perfect weather. There were parents, aunts and uncles and cousins, some of them recently married. Friends from childhood, friends from college, friends and colleagues from young careers. Histories that began […]

SONOMA, Calif. (RNS) Histories flowed like Sonoma Valley wine at our son’s wedding here, as more than 100 people descended on this lovely town in perfect weather.

There were parents, aunts and uncles and cousins, some of them recently married. Friends from childhood, friends from college, friends and colleagues from young careers.

Histories that began decades ago came together in the heart of this region’s fabled vineyards. Some of those histories found new common ground as cousins connected across family lines. Some histories didn’t connect at all, as always happens when families merge.


In my brief homily on a broad lawn beside acres of vines, I told family and friends that our job now was to let go. We have raised and encouraged and befriended the bride and groom for three decades and now we must let them fly away. Even for as solid a virtue as family, we must not clip their wings. We didn’t raise them to replicate us, but to be whatever they choose to become.

Then I told the bride and groom that their work now was to fly. As far away as they choose to fly, as freely as they can manage, with the Spirit of God lifting them higher and their eyes set on the future.

As I spoke, guests told me later, a broad-winged hawk sailed aloft and then soared into the distance.

Yes, we hope to be a part of their lives for as long as breath shall last. Yes, they love their extended circles of family and friends and are steadfastly loyal to them. But the measure for all of us will be their freedom. A future cannot be built on constraint and conformity.

In these perilous times, freedom is under assault. Too many people have decided that freedom is dangerous, that some people simply don’t deserve to have opinions or to voice them or to cast ballots. Others say they don’t deserve the right to see God, nation, family and reality with their own eyes.

Rigid thought police scrutinize politicians for conformity, guaranteeing dysfunction in a government where the only conceivable way to govern effectively is to see reality and to compromise.


Rigid doctrine police attack any wavering from religious conformity, guaranteeing intolerance in a world where tolerance and acceptance bear the seeds of hope.

Untethered from the lessons of history, unpersuaded by reality, unconcerned about truth, and uninterested in people’s actual needs, the powerful chip away at any freedom that stands in their way.

Into this desert of constraint, where the noise carries more weight than truth, two young people launch a life together. I hope it will be an inspiration to us all, and we must not pass on our vengeance, our blood feuds, our failed dreams or our frustrations with life. We see too much of that already.

Instead, we must deny ourselves and let them pick up whatever future they and God want.

On wedding day, we were their cheering section. Then we need to go home, and they need to fly into a tomorrow of their own making.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)


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