Gathered Together for Holy Disunion : * In unorthodox ceremony, couple end their marriage at an Irvine church before loved ones. They ask for forgiveness and bid each other a fond farewell.

The invitation read: “Paul Courry and Larkette Lein request the honor of your presence at the commemoration of the end of their marriage. . . .

“We invite you to help us celebrate the good things we shared, to bring closure to what is now past, and to send each other into the future in peace. . . .”

About two dozen friends and relatives gathered on a recent Sunday to watch the couple untie the knot in an unusual, custom-made ceremony at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Irvine.

The divorce won’t be final until March, but Courry, 37, and Lein, 38, will always remember Oct. 13 as the day their marriage of nearly seven years officially ended.

Standing before the Rev. Leland Jones, who helped them write the ceremony, they confessed their shortcomings as marriage partners and asked for forgiveness, gave thanks for the beautiful memories they had made together and expressed their future hopes for each other.

Then they embraced, kissed and joined their guests at an informal reception where Vietnamese spring rolls and champagne were served.

Those who are close to Courry and Lein weren’t surprised that the couple, who have no children, would choose such an unorthodox--and public--way to end their marriage.

Both are outspoken Orange County activists on the front lines of the gay rights and abortion-rights movements. They have been arrested during demonstrations--most recently at a Garden Grove protest against Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of a gay rights bill--and they’ve been the target of homophobic insults from people who wrongly assumed that they were gay.

Even death threats haven’t driven them away from the controversial causes with which they have aligned themselves. So they didn’t shrink from the possibility that their divorce ceremony might upset some of their fellow church members.

According to their pastor, it did.

Jones said a number of members of his congregation and the church at large expressed concerns when they heard about the ceremony, saying that the church shouldn’t be “blessing a divorce” or helping couples break the sacrament of marriage.

The Rev. David Anderson, rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach, said he and other religious leaders are “perplexed” about why the ceremony was performed: “I don’t see why the church would be involved in something like this.”

Even some of those who attended the ceremony declined to be interviewed because they didn’t want to fuel any controversy.

Courry and Lein acknowledged in their invitation that the ceremony was designed to “continue our tradition of thought-provoking public action.”

In this case, they explained during a recent interview, they were challenging the church to be flexible in responding to people in need.

“You can be the best Christians in the world, but that doesn’t mean you have a marriage made in heaven,” Lein said. “There will be failures, and the church should be there to help you heal.”

Jones made it clear at the start of the ceremony that it was not intended to be “sacramental, legal or profound.” He told those who attended that the service was being “offered in the hope that others may find something in it that may strengthen their own relationships or perhaps help to heal old griefs.”

At the risk of being misunderstood, Jones agreed to help Courry and Lein with the service because, he explained: “I thought it was a very positive thing for two people who had worked very hard at trying to stay married to be willing to ask each other’s forgiveness, to ask God’s forgiveness and to do it in a way that also ministered to their friends.”

Courry and Lein had already decided on divorce when they came to Jones for help with the ceremony, and he said he felt it was the church’s obligation to respond to their need to find an affirmative way to carry out that decision.

“It’s not our job to minister only to people who make the ‘right’ choice,” he said.

He hoped that the ceremony would help others see that divorce is not an easy answer.

“We have this idealized view that divorce is going to be such a relief, but there’s a lot of pain,” he said.

The pain of Courry and Lein’s divorce was evident throughout the tearful ceremony--particularly when they confessed their failures to each other.

Lein told Courry: “Paul, you loved me before we married, you loved me faithfully and unconditionally while we were married, and you have loved me yet. But I have not been able to return that love.

“The relationship we had has fallen short of that union in heart, body and mind which characterizes a true marriage. . . . Your hurt has been real, your needs unmet, your dreams unfulfilled. For all that should have been, but never could be, and for all the wrongs, deep and petty, great and small, I ask your forgiveness, and God’s forgiveness.”

And Courry told Lein: “Larkette, I’ll have to admit I’ve not been the easiest person to live with, and that in more than one way I have been, and still am, a dysfunctional person, although you have seen me progress further and further in my recovery.

“You were patient with me, and even though there were many times when I needed a hug and you were not there for me, you stayed with me. And I wasn’t always as frugal or careful with our money as you wanted, and perhaps as would have been wise. And so, for all the times I have let you down, frustrated you or pestiferized you, I ask your forgiveness, and God’s forgiveness.”

Lein, who does research for an environmental consulting firm and lives in Fullerton, said the kiss Courry accidentally planted on her chin instead of her lips after the divorce ceremony captured the out-of-sync feeling that plagued their marriage from the start.

“It’s been a marriage that didn’t quite click. I was never able to give myself with the same abandon he gave to me,” she said. “I was holding him at arm’s length--literally and emotionally. He was always frustrated, and I was always guilty.”

Courry, who lives in Irvine, put it this way: “What we had was very good, but we could not define it as a marriage. It was missing physical and emotional intimacy and the sense that you could be vulnerable around each other.”

They met in the summer of 1976, when both were working as fire-watch volunteers and Courry delivered a supply of water to Lein’s tiny lookout station in a remote area of the San Jacinto Mountains.

They lost touch after that summer romance, and Lein married someone else. But when Courry learned through a mutual friend that she was divorced, he re-established contact.

The fact that Lein was out of a job and Courry, who works in the computer field, was able to support her probably escalated her decision to move in with him, she admits. Just three months after they started living together, they decided to make it legal because, Courry noted, neither felt comfortable “living in sin.”

They were married in a civil ceremony at the Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana on Dec. 21, 1984.

Both admit they knew then that their love affair was lopsided, with Courry having deeper feelings for Lein than she had for him. “I thought I had enough love for both of us,” Courry said. And Lein thought that, in time, her love for Courry would become more intimate.

Both were wrong.

Courry soon realized that his wife, who was living contentedly by herself in a 14-by-14-foot lookout station in the middle of nowhere when he first met her, was fiercely independent and wanted far more time to herself than he had expected.

They also clashed almost immediately over money. Courry was making enough to buy his wife expensive gifts and early in their marriage, he surprised her with a $350 briefcase. She refused it, telling him, “I can’t carry this; it’s against my principles. I’d rather give money to a good cause than spend it on a status symbol.”

Eventually, Courry moved closer to his wife’s attitude toward money. “She gave me a different way of looking at things,” he said. And together, they became steadily more involved in social causes.

After assessing where her efforts were most needed, Lein began devoting most of her spare time to the gay rights movement. Meanwhile, Courry, a former Catholic who objected to the church’s stand against abortion, became active in the abortion-rights movement.

They took turns going to each other’s protests, but, between the day-to-day demands of their jobs and social causes, they saw less and less of each other.

“We were ships passing in the night,” Courry said. “The only way she knew I was home at night was that her back got a little warmer.”

Differences that had been there from the start became more evident--and difficult to live with--as their needs clashed. For example, Courry said, “I’m a hopeless romantic; Larkette is as practical as they come.”

While she withdrew, feeling “suffocated” by her husband’s romantic gestures, he grew increasingly hungry for affection.

They finally acknowledged that their relationship had always been more of a friendship than a marriage, and in August, they decided the best way to preserve that friendship was to end the marriage.

“I still love her, but I agreed it was time to call it quits,” Courry said.

He suggested the divorce ceremony as a way of drawing strength from their church and friends--and letting those close to them know they didn’t have to take sides.

They still see each other once a week, however. They meet for dinner to “talk and plot,” Lein said.

During the divorce ceremony, she gave thanks for “a man who could stand beside me to defend a clinic door, kneel beside me amid a taunting crowd, walk beside me at a demonstration, and go with me even to face jail together.”

Courry and Lein said they’ll be able to continue working together as activists because they’ve managed to avoid the acrimony that so often accompanies divorce.

Their ceremony gave Lein a chance to say to Courry: “I wish for you the deep union, the mutual joy, and the abiding, growing strength of love that you desire. I pray God will lead you into a love that is complete and satisfying.”

And for Courry to tell Lein: “I wish for you independence, health, courage and friends. I loved you with everything I had and gave to you everything I owned. I ask that you take one more thing, the knowledge and experience we have gained over the past seven years. Larkette, go with God.”