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.

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Quotations

Just Married, painting by
Gordon Johnson

Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.                                               --- Franklin P. Jones

The Wedding, painting by
Laurens Barnard Laubar

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...............................

Wedding, painting by Josip Generalic

Readings

Leap of Love, painting by Vickie Wade

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

The Marriage of the Princess Royal (detail), painting by John Phillip

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

Wedding, painting by Marc Chagall

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

Blessing of the Young Couple
Before Marriage, painting by
Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret

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...............................