spirituality & the city A moment of Grace
Marlon & John Hello, we are Marlon and John. We have been together for nearly 18 years. Like any other long-standing relationship, we have experienced different stages that have defined our union overall. Some of them have been good, great actually, and some of them have been challenging, too. Ultimately, some of them have been full of grace. It is important to say that all of them have been conditioned by love. A moment of grace can be described as “the freely given, unmerited favour and love of God”. We bow to differ on the “unmerited” because when a union is powerfully sealed by the wonders of love, a moment of grace is not “unmerited”, it is absolutely earthly deserved. © PHOTO: UNA WILLIAMS
Aidan and Lexi It was probably the shooting star that flew over our heads from the heavens when I said, ‘I love you’ for the first time. Or maybe it was when we did a ceremony under the moon on our ‘first date’ and a seal start singing. It could’ve been when she told me she was pregnant, and there was joy in our hearts and the sound of laughter in the air. There are many magical moments but for me there are moments of grace every night when we express gratitude and pray in each other’s arms.
For us, that moment of grace became a loving reality when we got married on March 18th, 2016, after the same-sex marriage referendum passed. At that stage, we had been civil partners for five years, and we decided to avail of the legislation that fully, legally consolidated our union. That moment of grace brought us much closer together, which is why that moment of grace is always echoed every time we say “we are married”. And it is even further echoed every time we hold hands as a symbol of the beauty that is getting old together to the end of time.
