Readings

Introduction to Reader:
...would like to offer a special reading chosen by...
(Beloved 1 &2) (families name) for you today. 

Unanimous

Unshared joy is an unlighted candle.

 

All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while
let your senses and bodies stretch out

like a welcomed season
onto the meadows and shores and hills

open up to the roof.
make a new watermark on your excitement, on your love

like a blooming night flower,
bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
and giving
upon our intimate assembly

change rooms in your mind for a day.

all the hemispheres in existence
lie beside the equator 
in your heart.

greet yourself
in your thousand other forms
as you mount the hidden tide and travel 
back home.

all the hemispheres in heaven
are sitting around a fire
chatting

while stitching themselves together
into the great circle inside of
you.

 

Rilke

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you
like an inheritance,
And have faith that in this love there is a strength
And a blessing so large that you can travel as far
as you wish without having to step outside it. 

 

Rumi

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, 
Not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

 

Robert Creeley

Love comes quietly,
finally, drops about me,
on me, in the old ways.

What did I know
thinking myself able to
go alone all the way.

 

The Day Sky

Let us be like
two falling stars in the day sky.

Let no one know of our sublime beauty
as we hold hands with god
and burn

into a sacred existence that defies
that surpasses

every description of ecstasy
and love.

 

Hafiz 13th century Persian Poet

 

It Happens All The Time In Heaven 

It happens all the time in heaven,
and some day

it will begin to happen
again on earth

That men and women who are married,
and men and men who are lovers,

and women and women 
who give each other light,

often will get down on their knees

and while so tenderly 
holding their lover's hand,

with tears in their eyes,
will sincerely speak, saying,

"My dear,
how can I be more loving to you;
how can I be more
kind?"
 

 

Hafiz ~ 13th century Persian Poet

 

I want both of us

To start talking about this great love

As if you, I and the sun were all married

And living in a tiny room,

Helping each other to cook,

Do the wash,

Weave and sew,

Care for our beautiful Animals.

 

We all leave each morning

To labor on the earth’s field.

No one does not lift a great pack.

 

I want both of us to start singing like two

Traveling minstrels

About this extraordinary existence

We share,

As if

You, I, and God were all married

And living in 

A tiny Room.

 

Hafiz

 

What

Is the

Root of all these

Words?

One thing: Love

But a love so deep and sweet

It needs to express itself

with scents, sounds, colors

That never before 

Existed.

​

​

The Subject Tonight is Love

The subject tonight is love and for tomorrow night as well,
as a matter of fact
I know of no better topic
for us to discuss
until we all
die!


 

My Friend 
Roy Croft


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 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.

 

Roberta Flack

The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
to the dark and the end of the skies.

The first time ever I kissed your mouth
I felt the earth move in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command...my love.

The first time ever I lay with you
And felt your heart so close to mine
And I knew our joy would fill the earth
And last 'til the end of time...my love.

The first time ever I saw your face
Your face, your face, your face

​

 

Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh

 

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

​

 

In the words of Jack Kornfield

 

The present moment is really all that we have. The only place you can really love another person is in the present.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, 
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out,
just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take
and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the 
breath of kindness blow the rest away. 
 

 

Joan Borysenko

We drop like pebbles into the ponds of each other’s souls,
and the orbit of our ripples continues to expand intersecting
with countless others.
 

 

Simone Signoret

Chains do not hold a marriage together.
It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads
which sew people together through the years.
 

 

Gibran

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 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.

Paul L'Herrou

The hand, which you each offer
to the other
is an extension of yourselves;
just as is the warmth and love 
which you express to each other.
Cherish the touch, for you are touching life.
Be sensitive to it's pulse,
and try to understand and respect its flow and rhythm,
just as you do your own.

Sir Hugh Walpole

The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe is the discovery of another human being
with whom ones relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness
of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately
wishing for it. It is a divine accident.

 

Scripture

 

John 12:35

"The light is with you."

Colossians 3:12-14

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, Holy and beloved, compassion,
kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another, and,
if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord 
has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these put on 
love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

 

1 John 4:15

"So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them" 

 

The Serenity Prayer

By Reinhold Niebuhr

 

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,

Courage to change the things we can, 

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Amen
 

Hindu Poem

You have become mine forever.
Yes, we have become partners.
I have become yours,
hereafter, I cannot live without you.
Do not live without me.
Let us share the joys.
We are the word and meaning, united
you are the thought and I am the sound.

May the nights be honey-sweet for us.
May the morning be honey-sweet for us.


Ross Snyder

Love is sensing the other as a presence.
Love is receiving the feelings, thoughts
intentions of the other into your
own understanding.
Love is fidelity over the long haul.
Without fidelity love is a puff of wind, a gust of emotion.
Love is talking together about insignificant
things and significant things
until a few important things, words,
people, have similar meanings for
both of you, and you both know that this is so.
Love is listening together to the pulse of what it means to
be alive, to be human, to glorify that which is sacred and enjoy it.

Wendell Berry

Sometimes our life reminds me 
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its way
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

 

Song of the Open Road
Walt Whitman

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
healthy, free, the world before me,
the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose,
henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
strong and content I travel the open road.
I inhale great draughts of space.
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought.
I did not know I held so much goodness.
Comrade, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious then money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life,
to strengthen each other in all labor, 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? 

 

Hawaiian Song

Here all seeking is over,
the lost has been found,
a mate has been found
to share the chills of winter
now love asks that you be united.
Here is a place to rest,
a place to sleep,
a place in heaven.
Now two are becoming one,
the black night is scattered,
the eastern sky grows bright.
At last the great day has come!

 

Apache Blessing

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 loneliness for you;
now there is no more loneliness.

Now you are two bodies,
but there is only one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place
to enter into your days together.,

and may your days be good
and long on the earth.