Wedding Readings

Reading 1 – We are all Unique

No human relationship gives one possession of another.
Every two persons are absolutely different.
In friendship or in love, the two, side by side, raise hands together, to find what one can not reach alone.
Learn to see the greatness and the loveliness in one another.
Tell one another of it, when you see it.
If you accept sunshine and warmth, also accept thunder and lightning.
The surest basis for partnership is friendship.
The sharing of real interests – the ability to work on ideas together and to understand each other’s thoughts and dreams.

Reading 2 – Corinthians 13

Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous.
Love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish.
It does not take offense, and it is not resentful.
Love takes no pleasure in other people’s faults; but delights in the truth.
It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope.
It is always ready to endure whatever comes.
True love does not come to an end.

Reading 3 – The Art of Partnership

Happiness in marriage is not something that just happens.
A good marriage must be created.
In marriage the little things are the big things.
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say "I love you" at least once a day.
It is never going to sleep angry.
It is at no time taking the other for granted; the courtship should not end with the honeymoon, it should continue through all the years.
It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
It is standing together facing the world.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.
It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy.
It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is not looking for perfection in each other.
It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding and a sense of humor.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal, dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal. It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

Reading 4 - Letters to a Young Poet

Marriage is in many ways a simplification of life, and it naturally combines the strengths and wills of two young people so that, together, they seem to reach farther into the future than they did before. Above all, marriage is a new task and a new seriousness, -- a new demand on the strength and generosity of each partner, and a great danger for both.

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person. It is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is great demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.

Reading 5 – A Marriage Promise

Promise each other all your love as a husband, as a wife –
To walk together side by side throughout your married life.
Know there are hills and valleys
To be met and traveled through.
But no walk is too hard for you.

At times you each may want to stop or take a different path;
Or race on independently for life is passing fast.
But the road you choose is meant for two
This you surely know.
So, together you will go.

For love grows freely along the way,
Free to gather and give each day;
This the love you promise to give –
This is the life you promise to live, together.

Reading 7 - From “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” by Louis de Bernieres

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 that is what love is.
Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement
It is not the promulgation of eternal passion.
That is just being ‘in love’ which any fool can do.
Love itself is what is left when being in love has burned away,
And that 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 blossom have fallen from their branches,
They find that they are one tree and not two

Reading 8 - Love is ~ Author Unknown ~

Love is a friendship that has caught fire.
It is quiet understanding,
mutual confidence,
sharing and forgiving.
It is loyalty through good and bad.
It settles for less than perfection,
and makes allowances for human weakness.
Love is content with the present.
It hopes for the future and it doesn't brood over the past.
It's the day-in and day-out chronicle of irritations, problems, compromises,
small disappointments, big victories, and working toward common goals.

If you have love in your life,
it can make up for a great many things you lack.
If you don't have it,
no matter what else there is,
it is not enough,
so search for it, ask God for it,
and share it!

An excerpt from "The Prophet" by Khalil Gabran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of 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.

Another excerpt from "The Prophet" by Kahil Gibran

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.

An excerpt from "The Master Speed" by Robert Frost

Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

"He Wishes For Cloths of Heaven" by W B Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

From "The Irrational Season" by Madeleine L'Engle

But 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 "Gift From The Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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, not 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.

An excerpt from "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway

At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.

From Plato's Symposium

Humans have never understood the power of Love, for if they had they would surely have built noble temples and altars and offered solemn sacrifices; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done, since Love is our best friend, our helper, and the healer of the ills which prevent us from being happy.

To understand the power of Love, we must understand that our original human nature was not like it is now, but different. Human beings each had two sets of arms, two sets of legs, and two faces looking in opposite directions. There were three sexes then: one comprised of two men called the children of the Sun, one made of two women called the children of the Earth, and a third made of a man and a woman, called the children of the Moon. Due to the power and might of these original humans, the Gods began to fear that their reign might be threatened. They sought for a way to end the humans’ insolence without destroying them.

It was at this point that Zeus divided the humans in half. After the division the two parts of each desiring their other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one. So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of humankind.

Each of us when separated, having one side only, is but the indenture of a person, and we are always looking for our other half. Those whose original nature lies with the children of the Sun are men who are drawn to other men, those from the children of the Earth are women who love other women, and those from the children of the Moon are men and women drawn to one another. And when one of us meets our other half, we are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight even for a moment. We pass our whole lives together, desiring that we should be melted into one, to spend our lives as one person instead of two, and so that after our death there will be one departed soul instead of two; this is the very expression of our ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.

Maybe...

Maybe we are supposed to meet the wrong people before we meet the right one so when they finally arrive we are truly grateful for the gift we have been given.
Maybe its true that we don't know what we have lost until we lose it but it is also true that we don't know what we're missing until it arrives.
Maybe the happiest of people don't have the best of everything, but make the best of everything that comes their way. Maybe the best kind of love is the kind where you sit on the sofa together, not saying a word, and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had.
Maybe once in a lifetime you find someone who not only touches your heart but also your soul, someone who loves you for who you are and not what you could be. Maybe the art of true love is not about finding the perfect person, but about seeing an imperfect person perfectly.
and also
When you met, you both had no idea how each of your lives were about to be changed. . . . . .
. . . . . . . But then, how could you have known ?
A love like yours happens once in a lfetime. You are a miracle to each other. The one who was everything you had ever dreamed of.
The one you thought existed only in your imagination.
And when you came into each others lives, you realised that what you had always thought was happiness, couldn’t compare to the joy of the love you brought together.
Together, you are part of everything you think and do and feel .
And by each others side, you believe that anything is possible.
Today is your chance to give thanks for the miracle of you. . .
You are and always will be, the love of each others lives.