The forecast is partly cloudy. Must be the weather-maker can’t make up her mind. Or perhaps it is we who are confused, unable to understand a thing as it is, but only as what it is not, not wholly sunny, not wholly cloudy.

But why must a bluebird day be cloudless? Why can’t a cerulean sky decorated here and there and there with cotton ball clouds be considered perfect in itself, whole in itself, not part this or part that?

August 17 was such a day, a playful breeze rustling skirts and tussling hair as we gathered on the roof of the Harmac in downtown Cedar Rapids, a perfect day, a perfect day for a wedding, bright sun warming our foreheads and sparkling on shirts and dresses and ties, blue and red, yellow and purple, a kaleidoscope of bright colors worn per the bride’s request, all of us sharing her joy, all of us sharing their joy, as huge puffy clouds drifted overhead.

As he said, “I give myself to you to be your husband,” and as she said, “I give myself to you to be your wife,” the day, wind and sun and cloud, gave itself to us, not in part, but in whole, imprinting that time-stilling moment indelibly, not only on our minds and on our hearts, but on our skin, too.

There is little in this world that is all this or all that, but much in this world that is beautiful, beautiful as it is, at any given moment and in any given place an amalgam of this and that, of feeling and color, of sense and mystery, of change and stillness, of sun and cloud.

“Now, to what can I compare the people of this day?,” Jesus said. “They are like children sitting in the marketplace. One group shouts to the other, ‘We played wedding music for you, but you wouldn’t dance! We sang funeral songs, but you wouldn’t cry!’” But you, perhaps neither dancing nor crying, are as you are, and that is whole, that is good, that is perfect, and that is what we must see and love.