Today, we have a guest column from Joseph Kinnebrew at Guesthouse at the Quarry in Mount Vernon, Washington, a great place to get married.

We are in the ceremony business because we have a very private and gracious venue in Washington north of Seattle. We know a lot about ceremony and tradition. They benefit us and plague us but we can’t escape them. The fact that practices very so widely complicates peoples understanding of them and like various belief systems frequently retards our progress as we are repeatedly challenged by change in all forms including social change. Reflecting on past societal norms we find that nostalgia is a dangerous mistress if not a treacherous one. She has drawn endless numbers of sailors to her shallow water and watched them perish in their own ill-considered curiosity and blind infatuation.

The danger of nostalgia is that it is an impossible reality. It is not a fantasy but a delusional nightmare. Thus as we try to change societies perceptions and adapt to the world as it is now we are repelled by those who remain stuck in the long departed past and its often misguided notions of how the cosmos works. Today most have failed to catch up to the present on the one hand and misunderstood the basic concepts of the past that represented real change and human progress. Social change seems particularly difficult and painfully slow.

We live in a democracy… or at least say we do. Equality is theoretically offered to all but after nearly 250 years we have failed to realize our goal. It remains a worthy objective. Many still use the age-old weapons of judgment and the suspicion against those who are not like them. They feel that their right to speak and act is one only offered to some but not all.

Today more than ever, to stay tuned into a rapidly changing world, we need a greater sense of unity that will bring the understanding and acceptance of all manner of things. Instead we live in a time of entitlement to some and not to others. Many think and act as though their citizenship grants them the individual right to liberties not granted to all. They employ their self-defined truths to justify their accusations, judgments and verdicts.

The tradition of ceremony is not a universal one in their eyes. For them it is an exclusive one granted only to those self appointed and self anointed. Thus the dream of equality goes unrealized. The screech of their own kind whose ignorance cannot recognize the difference between hateful bigotry and human progress blinds others to the hypocrisy of one of our founding principles.

The denial of basic rights to all seems still to not have permeated into the national psyche. The voice of freedom has not blended with that of compassion and empathy. Power and money still govern our most basic decisions. The Greeks did us no favors by bringing us logic and reason. It may have brought us computers, iPhones and drone aircraft but all at the expense of poetry one of languages greatest achievements. The logic of being able to define those who are not like us also brought us the weaponry of disenfranchisement. It is the poetry of human emotion that can return us to the balance so desperately needed as we come to recognize the Singularity has begun and technology will only increase the challenges to not only the human brain but also the human heart.

Fundamentalism always peaks when people feel insecure, threatened and afraid. Fundamentalism is based upon nostalgia… a return to the past. It is not a return to basic tenants as others would have us believe. It is a weapon of fear. Basic tenant if they are worthwhile and enduring change with the times and their worth is validated by continued to be relevancy. Relevancy is related to context and the context we need to press for is one of the real world we live in not the imaginary one of yesterday.

Denying the traditional ceremonies to some and not others is to cut them away from the history that belongs to all people. No one has such a right. Ceremonies are not to rekindle the past but to confirm our presence in the present and celebrate our long and arduous journey geting to this point in time. They are the celebration of progress. Tradition is a reminder of the struggle humans have endured to get better, be even more human and better than before.

When we embrace diversity we recognize the greater capacity of our humanness. When we ceremonially participate in age-old traditions we confirm our progress and challenge the future on our better terms not those that are the worst. Zealots and those who would deny basic rights to some, history tells us will loose. Perhaps not today but certainly one day they will loose to the reality of the present. They cannot sustain the past because it is the past and we will not go back there. Best we all learn that we are in this great human adventure together. I suggest it is not a question of if, just one of when. It is painful for those who pursue virtue and the goodness in all people but that is in part what the story of progress. That is the ceremony and celebration of tradition.

At The Quarry we host ceremonies regularly. We, like others, hope for more change and acceptance. We feel strongly about the rights of happiness and the celebration of mutual commitment. In many ways we try to advance the understanding of diversity and the untold benefits to all when all people accept the bonds of commitment and the shared happiness that emanates from it. What ever we can do to help others in this quest is important to us.