"Let there be spaces in your togetherness." - Kahlil GibranSo most of you who I know about who read this are married, or have been to a wedding or two. I don't write about wedding planning very much as I know it bores a lot of people, but I need your help! I am looking for a wonderful wedding reading. We have already chosen two. One is by Robert Fulghum and the other is from a children's book (of course!) I need another one. Here is where you come in!
I have browsed every single wedding reading site out there, but I have failed to come up with the one that I want read over our tense about-to-be-married selves. Please, please, please, please, please - do you know of any fabulous pieces of writing that could be used for two people who love each other?
What I don't want:
- Kahlil Gibran (he's lovely but I read it at my brother's wedding - I want something different!)
- 1 Corinthians (I KNOW it's the thing to read but I want something different!!)
- Rumi (ditto on the something different!)
(I'm trying to make Mary Oliver fit but she's just not making it easy for me! giggle!)
So my dear creative, interesting, varied readers, please give it to me! Fill my comments with beauty and inspiration! I'm desperate here!
xo
Update: Look! Laini (my Sunday Scribblings cohort and writer extraordinaire) has been featured on the blog 'Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.' And if you look closely at the post, you will see MY little face there too!!!
AND SO HAS JESSIE!!!!! Look here!
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10 comments:
i need some time to think about it i think .. but the first thing that came to my mind is this little piece from "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" by Sir Walter Scott,
True love's the gift that god has given
to man alone beneath the heavens
It is not fantasy's hot fire
whose wishes, soon as granted
fly
It iveth not in fierce desire
with desire dead, it does not die
It is the secret sympathy,
the silver link - the silken tie
which heart to heart and mind to mind in body and in soul can bind"
I remember finding it incredibly romantic the first time I read it though i know that there are more interesting poems out there ... it would be so lovely to read a mary oliver poem or the 'what is real' excerpt from a velveteen rabbit :)
okay, i'll think on it and leaf through my poetry books at home tonight ...
don't worry, you'll find something you love, you probably already have something on the edges of your mind only you don't know it yet, xox
Megg.
I really like this one.
TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL
By Maya Angelou
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
James Dillett Freeman has some quotes and marriage readings,i came across one in Linda Goodman''s book ...Relationship Signs.... xx Carole xx
Have you tried Carol Ann Duffy? although maybe Rapture is too sensual? Hmmm, i'm not much help
but i did just do the flickr meme :-) love you FB xxo
I have a couple of poems you might like to use.
One is by e.e. cummings, called "i carry your heart with me":
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)
i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
and the other is by Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff, called "All Paths Lead to You":
All paths lead to you
Where e'er I stray,
You are the evening star
At the end of the day.
All paths lead to you
Hill-top or low,
You are the white birch
In the sun's glow.
All paths lead to you
Where e'er I roam.
You are the lark-song
Calling me home!
OOh Meg! I looked up a bunch of stuff for my sister's wedding last year, and I got some great recommendations:
-- I lovvvve this. The whole thing is a bit on the sexy side, but check out the last two stanzas!
Implications of One Plus One
Sometimes we collide, tectonic plates merging,
continents shoving, crumpling down into the molten
veins of fire deep in the earth and raising
tons of rock into jagged crests of Sierra.
Sometimes your hands drift on me, milkweed's
airy silk, wingtip's feathery caresses,
our lips grazing, a drift of desires gathering
like fog over warm water, thickening to rain.
Sometimes we go to it heartily, digging,
burrowing, grunting, tossing up covers
like loose earth, nosing into the other's
flesh with hot nozzles and wallowing there.
Sometimes we are kids making out, silly
in the quilt, tickling the xylophone spine,
blowing wet jokes, loud as a whole
slumber party bouncing till the bed breaks.
I go round and round you sometimes, scouting,
blundering, seeking a way in, the high boxwood
maze I penetrate running lungs bursting
toward the fountain of green fire at the heart.
Sometimes you open wide as cathedral doors
and yank me inside. Sometimes you slither
into me like a snake into its burrow.
Sometimes you march in with a brass band.
Ten years of fitting our bodies together
and still they sing wild songs in new keys.
It is more and less than love: timing,
chemistry, magic and will and luck.
One plus one equal one, unknowable except
in the moment, not convertible into words,
not explicable or philosophically interesting.
But it is. And it is. And it is. Amen.
Marge Piercy
--And this from The Velveteen Rabbit:
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
-- And Wendell Berry's The Country of Marriage:
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/3493/
-- and his Poetry & Marriage:
http://jessfine.com/rachelandchristopher/poetry.html
(and scroll down)
Both have some good stuff in them. Here's some good snippets:
-- "When you feel most alive, find out why. This is one guest you won't greet twice." -- Kabir
-- "Suddenly I realized that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom." -- James Wright
Good luck finding just the right thing!
Oh, and I meant to tell you your faces was up at 7-Imp, I just forgot! ;-) (Cool blog, no?)
I have a couple that are more prose rather than poetry, but let me know if you're interested. I spent a lot of time searching before our wedding for this very thing...I wanted something real and different and honest and still romantic. It is much more difficult than one would think:) The couple I am thinking of are rather long, so email me if you want them. And I, for one, am not bored at all by hearing of wedding plans:))
Sending love,
taradawn
ps - I finally blogged about the wedding and posted (ridiculously large) pics.
Megg - look through Corey Amaro's archives. Relatively unknown - she has beautiful and uplifting writings of her own. I have used quotes over and over (with her permission) in my encouraging artworks for freinds.
here the main link
http://willows95988.typepad.com/
dang, how could i out-do laini? her suggestion is awesome! laini, i wish i would have known you when vinny and i were planning our wedding!
whatever you decide to be a part of your wedding, meg, it is going to be powerfully awesome. wanna know why? because your love is going to fill up the room with so much light that people might not even notice the words! :)
love you, girl.
j.
*hugs*
reading all these beautiful suggestions has me thinking i want a re-do ;-)
i can't believe how fast your special day is coming!!!
i daresay i spied leaves beginning to turn the other day...goodness, it's going to be a glorious, glorious celebration of love.
xoxoxo
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