In Other's Words (Readings, etc.)
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In various times and places men and women have wirtten about love and marriage that others who followed found inspired. In reading what these poets, artists, thinkers, and also some everyday and unassuming souls had recorded, many recognized the words which they knew were hidden in their own hearts, but found themselves unable to bring to the surface and express.
The writings below are divided into three sections: "Quotations" are the shortest of the three; oftentimes they may be composed of just a line or two. "Readings" are more extended pieces; the selection might even be a complete work and stand on its own. "Prayers / Blessings" are as their heading describes. You are invited to peruse through them and see if any resonate with you and your loved one. If you two do find something you like, or perhaps you already have your own favorite penned by someone you personally admire, Mobile Reverend will be happy to incorporate it into your ceremony.
Mobile Reverend is now on Facebook! You are sincerely invited to "Like" him!
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The writings below are divided into three sections: "Quotations" are the shortest of the three; oftentimes they may be composed of just a line or two. "Readings" are more extended pieces; the selection might even be a complete work and stand on its own. "Prayers / Blessings" are as their heading describes. You are invited to peruse through them and see if any resonate with you and your loved one. If you two do find something you like, or perhaps you already have your own favorite penned by someone you personally admire, Mobile Reverend will be happy to incorporate it into your ceremony.
Mobile Reverend is now on Facebook! You are sincerely invited to "Like" him!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reserve Your Wedding HERE
Quotations
Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile. --- Franklin P. Jones
Come live with me,
and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks. -- John Donne, The Bait I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox. -- Woody Allen When the one man loves the one woman and the one woman loves the one man, the very angels desert heaven and sit in that hour and sing for joy. -- Braham Sutra Marriage is the union of two divinities that a third might be born on earth. It is the union of two souls in a strong love for the abolishment of separateness. It is that higher unity which fuses the separate unities within the two spirits. It is the golden ring in a chain whose beginning is a glance, and whose ending is Eternity. It is the pure rain that falls from an unblemished sky to fructify and bless the fields of divine Nature. -- Kahlil Gibran, Words of the Master I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever. -- Rabindranath Tagore Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. – Aristotle Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one. -- Friedrich Halm Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. -- Peter Ustinov If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you. -- A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life -- to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? -- George Eliot, Adam Bede When two people are one in their inmost hearts, They shatter even the strength of iron or of bronze. And when two people understand each other in their inmost hearts, Their words are sweet and strong, like the fragrance of orchids. -- I Ching, When Two People Are at One Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. -- Robert Browning Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses. -- Lao Tzu Readings (continued) Conjunction, assemblage, congress, union: Life isn’t meant to be lived alone. A life apart is a desperate fiction. Life is an intermediate business: a field of light bordered by love a sea of desire stretched between shores. Marriage is the strength of union. Marriage is the harmonic blend. Marriage is the elegant dialectic of counterpoint. Marriage is the faultless, fragile logic of ecology: A reasonable process of give and take unfolding through cyclical and linear time. A wedding is the conjoining of systems in which Neither loses its single splendor and both are completely transformed. As, for example, The dawn is the wedding of the Night and the Day, and is neither, and both, and is, in itself, the most beautiful time, abundant artless beauty, free and careless magnificence. Tony Kushner, Vows (from Epithamalion).............. Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two. Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin............................... |
Readings
I love you
Not only for what you are, But for what I am When I am with you. I love you, Not only for what You have made of yourself, But for what You are making of me. I love you For the part of me That you bring out; I love you For putting your hand Into my heaped-up heart And passing over All the foolish, weak things That you can't help Dimly seeing there, And for drawing out Into the light All the beautiful belongings That no one else had looked Quite far enough to find I love you because you Are helping me to make Of the lumber of my life Not a tavern But a temple. Out of the works Of my every day Not a reproach But a song. I love you Because you have done More than any creed Could have done To make me good. And more than any fate Could have done To make me happy. You have done it Without a touch, Without a word, Without a sign. You have done it By being yourself. Perhaps that is what Being a friend means, After all. Roy Croft, Love.................. What is a vow, but an intention spoken out before the world so that the world, in hearing, might take part in aspirations of the willing heart? In our coming here today to join and bless the joy of your becoming wed, may we enter in the truth of the words you've said, "I do." Maureen Tolman Flannery, Entering the Vow................ Then Almitra spoke again and said, “And what of Marriage, master?” And he answered saying: “You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow." Khalil Gibran, The Prophet........................ I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII.......................... Ultimately there comes a time when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling. Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season........ Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116......................... |
Prayers / Blessings
Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth for the other. Now there is no more loneliness, for each of you will be companion for the other. Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you. Go now to your dwelling place to begin the days of your life together. May your days together be good and long upon the earth. Apache Blessing May your mornings bring joy and your evenings bring peace.
May your troubles grow few as your blessings increase. May the saddest day of your future Be no worse than the happiest day of your past. May your hands be forever clasped in friendship And your hearts joined forever in love. Your lives are very special, God has touched you in many ways. May his blessings rest upon you And fill all your coming days. Irish Wedding Blessing Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life.
We thank you, also, for consecrating the union of man and woman in his Name. By the power of your Holy Spirit, pour out the abundance of your blessing upon this man and this woman. Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into all peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death. Finally, in your mercy, bring them to that table where your saints feast for ever in your heavenly home; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, forever and ever. Amen. Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (1979) Readings (continued) If all geniuses were shallow And if dullards were deep, And our walking lives were but Somebody's dreams who couldn't sleep. And all nonsense bore repeating And repeating didn't bore, I would love you yet, and say so Many times times many more. And if all the world ran backwards I would love you deeply still, Till the rivers ran downriver And the mountains ran uphill. Yes, I love you to the point where Logic and illogic meet, And adduce as proof these sentiments Regarding you my sweet: If subjunctives were, in fact, and Counterfactuals could be; Hypothetical did happen, Say; conditionals ran free, And the straight lines went all wavy, And the circles hunkered square, And if milquetoasts went out roistering When rowdies didn't dare, Still I'd love you, sure as A is A And as long as B is B-- Longer still, should they suspend the Laws of self-identity. Should that happen I would yet know Certain certain certainties: A) That B could then be not-B; B) That B's could then be C's; C) I'd know that I'd still love you Even when I wasn't me; Whom I then was would no doubt be Too confused to disagree. So if -- given that all me's would have My present attitude -- These subjunctives are indicative, I'll never change my mood. Aye, my love's ad infinitum; Ab initio as well; As ad hominem as always, Thou dear dearest dear, thou swell; I out love all if's that are, were, Might be, and that aren't, too, For I love as I'd love you If I loved you as I do. And I love you madly, madly, Past the point of making sense, And I offer the foregoing In the way of evidence. Yes I love you deeply, darling. But if depth leaves you perplexed, This tractatus I retract and Shall try shallow trifles next. Ethan Coen, I Love You Deeply, Darling............................... |