While readings are optional, they always add some timeless wisdom to a
ceremony. Traditionally, couples may choose
2-3 readings, but some may wish for extra readings to be incorporated as a
blessing or as part of my wedding blessing.
Choose the readings that speak to you both personalizes and grounds the
ceremony. Readings might come from your
favorite book, a set of song lyrics, or holy scripture. Wherever you find them, be sure to pare them
down to speak your truth.
Here are some recent, personal favorites for your consideration:
From Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet:
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 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.
From Madeleine L’Engle's The Irrational Season:
Ultimately there comes a moment 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, so that, together we
become a new creature.
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, and which implies such risk that it is
often rejected.
From Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets:
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.
From Anne Morrow Lindbergh's The Gift From the Sea:
When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly
the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie
to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so
little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at
the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never
return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only
continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in
freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass,
but partners in the same pattern.
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding
or expecting, mot in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in
looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread
or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it
is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they
are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by
the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.
From Rainier Maria Rilke's Letter to a Young Poet:
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing
down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each
partner appoints the other to be the guardian of their solitude, and thus they
show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an
impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual
consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and
development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest
people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side by side can grow up
for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them
the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense
sky.
That is why this too must be the criterion for rejection or choice: whether you are willing to stand guard over someone else's solitude, and whether you are able to set this same person at the gate of your own depths, which he learns of only through what steps forth, in holiday clothing, out of the great darkness.
Life is self-transformation, and human relationships, which are an
extract of life, are the most changeable of all, they rise and fall from minute
to minute, and lovers are those for whom no moment is like any another. People
between whom nothing habitual ever takes place, nothing that has already
existed, but just what is new, unexpected, unprecedented. There are such
connections, which must be a very great, an almost unbearable happiness, but
they can occur only between very rich beings, between those who have become,
each for his own sake, rich, calm, and concentrated; only if two worlds are
wide and deep and individual can they be combined....
...For the more we are, the richer everything we experience is. And
those who want to have a deep love in their lives must collect and save for it,
and gather honey.
From Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Love:
Love. What a small word we use for an idea so immense and powerful. It
has altered the flow
of history, calmed monsters, kindled works of art, cheered the forlorn,
turned tough guys to
mush, consoled the enslaved, driven strong women mad, glorified the
humble, fueled national
scandals, bankrupted robber barons, and made mincemeat of kings. How
can love's
spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable? Love
is an ancient delirium,
a desire older than civilization, with taproots spreading into deep and
mysterious days. The
heart is a living museum. In each of its galleries, no matter how narrow
or dimly lit, preserved
forever like wondrous diatoms, are our moments of loving, and being
loved.
In Lak Ech, from Luis Valdez’s
“Pensamiento Serpentino”:
Tú eres mi otro yo
You are my other me.
Si te hago daño a ti
If I do harm to you,
Me hago daño a mí mismo
I do harm to myself;
Sí te amo y respeto
If I love and respect you,
Me amo y respeto yo
I love and respect myself.
James Dillet Freeman's "Blessing For A Marriage":
May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage
should bring,
and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding.
May you always need one another -
not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you to know your
fullness.
A mountain needs a valley to be complete;
the valley does not make the mountain less, but more;
and the valley is more a valley because it has a mountain towering over
it.
So let it be with you and you.
May you need one another, but not out of weakness.
May you want one another, but not out of lack.
May you entice one another, but not compel one another.
May you embrace one another, but not out encircle one another.
May you succeed in all important ways with one another, and not fail in
the little graces.
May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you!"
and take no notice of small faults.
If you have quarrels that push you apart,
may both of you hope to have good sense enough to take the first step
back.
May you enter into the mystery which is the awareness of one another's
presence -
no more physical than spiritual, warm and near when you are side by
side,
and warm and near when you are in separate rooms or even distant
cities.
May you have happiness, and may you find it making one another happy.
May you have love, and may you find it loving one another!
From Victor Hugo's Les Miserables:
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The
great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts
of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love.
Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely
again. And great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved
for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves.
Jane Hirshfield's A Blessing for Wedding:
Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears
Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes
Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you
Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days
Jane Hirshfield's A Blessing for Wedding:
Today when persimmons ripenToday when fox-kits come out of their den into snow
Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song
Today when the maple sets down its red leaves
Today when windows keep their promise to open
Today when fire keeps its promise to warm
Today when someone you love has died
or someone you never met has died
Today when someone you love has been born
or someone you will not meet has been born
Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness
Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired
Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow
Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace
Today, let this light bless you
With these friends let it bless you
With snow-scent and lavender bless you
Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and whollyToday when the spotted egg releases its wren song
Today when the maple sets down its red leaves
Today when windows keep their promise to open
Today when fire keeps its promise to warm
Today when someone you love has died
or someone you never met has died
Today when someone you love has been born
or someone you will not meet has been born
Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness
Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired
Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow
Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace
Today, let this light bless you
With these friends let it bless you
With snow-scent and lavender bless you
Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears
Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes
Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you
Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days
From Jeannette Winterson:
You don't fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It's like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else's planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colors people wear. It's a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signaled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else's orbit and after awhile you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)
And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favorite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don't want to be without. That's it.
PS. You have to be brave.
May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade
like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcomes the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe
how spirit mingles in this marriage.
Other great online collections for finding great readings include:
Other Musings on Love
