more than words

Are actions just actions? Do the things that happen to us everyday simply happen, or do they leave prints, marks, pocks, holes, or lumps on our soul? If not our soul-maybe our mind, our heart? I am talking about more than just the effect of memory on us.
One African-American studies theorist claims that a "bottom-line blackness" links every black person, but not just sociologically- physically. Such that a black man, seeing a black woman raped, would feel a physical effect in his own body that a white person couldn't experience. Not to say a white person would feel nothing; just a different feeling, one that comes from a different place.
If everyday actions don't have an effect on us, what about the milemarkers of our lives? Specifically, marriage. The holy union between a man and a woman is more than just words, more than just a civil law. While non-Christians may protest that they have no more use for "religious" marriages, I refuse to believe that marriage is something that has been reduced to just a convenience, tradition, or legal necessity.
Vows of marriage link two souls, forming a connection, a union, that is not just of man. How much is life cheapened when marriage can be viewed so trivially, as something that can be called off with the touch of a button. I hate billboards that advertise cheap divorce rates. Marriage is as close as many people come to Jesus Christ. Something dies when you get married, but this sacrifice that scares so many people promises abundant blessings, as one of my friends reminds me. After this sacrifice, there is a rebirth. Just as Christ rose from the dead, a new spirit rises up between husband and wife. When they go on to have children, this spirit is manifested tangibly. It's amazing. It's important. It's unchangeable, even if it is broken from our human view.
Love. Is amazing.