Ceremony Readings

[Brandonsgirl]

I've been looking for readings that will be done during our ceremony, and I have a few ideas but not too many. So I was wondering what were the ones you used or some that you've heard. I'm trying to find one bible verse and another reading.

Thanks!

[NovemberGal]

We had four readings, two Biblical, one secular, and one from a 14th-c monk. The Bible passages were from I Corinthians (often used) and Song of Songs. The others were Fra Giovanni's Salutation and an excerpt from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's A Gift from the Sea.

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Fra Giovanni's Salutation (1513 AD)

I salute you.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not,
but there is much that while I cannot give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take heaven.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take peace.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take joy.
And so at this time I greet you, with the prayer that for you,
now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

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From Anne Morrow Lindbergh's A Gift from the Sea

One recognizes the truth of St. Exupery's line: 'Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.' For in fact, man and woman are not only looking outward in the same direction, they are working outward. Here one forms ties, roots, a firm base....Here one makes oneself part of the community of men, of human society. Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language too, a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself.