MARRIAGES

MARRIAGES ARE OF GOD NOT OF FORM "Married" is subject to definition. Slaves "married" even when religion was illegal for them and black preachers were too! They "married" despite the uncertainty of sale or separation of they or their offspring, (that would be our forbears) which to them was like death. Slaves ' narratives recount stories of escaped slaves returning to rescue their spouses, families, friends . One noteworthy example of this was our saint "Harriet Tubman" (19 times) and a Virginia man named "Washington" who returned from Canada for his wife in Virginia, who had been sold away from the plantation. Shocked! he was then recaptured. While onboard the "Creole", a slave ship to New Orleans, in 1841, Washington led a slave revolt! After they took over the ship, they killed some of their captors; but they wisely saved enough expert sailors to navigate it the British Bahamas, where slavery was illegal. The 118 slaves who wanted off, got off. But there were five slave women who were "married," who had chosen to remain aboard with their white sailor-husbands, whom they had "married" aboard ship. The ship sailed on to New Orleans, after negotiations with the American government. Washington was not later heard of again in history! The point being "marriage" is spiritual, which ever forms it may assume, be it whatever. Ethiopians had six kinds of marriages, according to J. A. Rogers., who wrote of it in SEX AND RACE, a three-volume ancient-modern black history masterpiece, or his other books, like NATURE KNOWS NO COLOR LINE, AS NATURE LEADS, etc . The lawyer, stenographer and novelist, Charles Chesnutt in a great short story "The Wife of his Youth" writes of a light skinned man who had "married" a dark skinned wife, but who were lost to each other during the upheaval of the Civil War. Over the next forty years they had diligently searched for each other; then, one day they miraculously serendipitously meet, rejoice, rejoin. "Marriage" is variously defined, and practiced, but if God (love) is its glue, then all things are possible ! Amen 🙏