Looking
for a ceremony reading or blessing? Here are five of my
favorites. Which ones are missing from the list? Share with
us your favorite wedding readings!
To
Love is Not to Possess
By James Kavanaugh
To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose
one's self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To
walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That
lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be
able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish
dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in
silence,
It is to be perfectly one's self
And perfectly
joined in permanent commitment
To another--and to one's
inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like
waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or
moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon's own predictable
harmony,
Because finally, despite a child's scars
Or an
adult's deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they
really are--and always secretly were,
In the very core of
their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.
Somewhere
I Have Never Traveled
by e.e. cummings
omewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond
any
experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most
frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I
cannot touch because they are too near
our slightest look easily will unclose me
though I have
closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal
myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously)
her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut
very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this
flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the
power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me
with the color of its countries,
rendering death and
forever with each breathing
(I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;
only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is
deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such
small hands
Blessing
of the Apaches
Now you will feel no rain,
For each of you will be shelter
to the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
For each of you
will be warmth to the other.
Now there is no more
loneliness,
For each of you will be companion to the
other.
Now you are two bodies,
But there is one life before
you.
Go now to your dwelling place,
To enter into the days
of your togetherness.
And may your days be good and long
upon the earth.
Pathways
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
Understand, I'll slip quietly
away from the noisy
crowd
when I see the pale
stars rising, blooming, over the
oaks.
I'll pursue solitary pathways
through the pale twilit
meadows,
with only this one dream:
You come too.
Thoughts
on Marriage
By Mark Twain
A
marriage...makes of two fractional
lives a whole;
it gives
to two purposeless lives
a work, and doubles the
strength
of each to perform it;
it gives to two
questioning
natures
a reason for living,
and something to live for;
it
will give a new gladness
to the sunshine,
a new fragrance
to the flowers,
a new beauty to the earth,
and a new
mystery to life.