Readings (Page 1)
READING NO: 1
Everyday you live, Walter Pinder

Everyday you live, learn how to receive love with as much
understanding as you give it.
Find things within yourself, then you can share them with
each other.
Do not fear this love.
Have an open heart and a sincere mind.
Be sincerely interested in each other’s happiness.  
Be constant and consistent in your love.  
From this comes security and strength.  
All that we love deeply becomes a part of us on this day of
your marriage.  
Try to commit yourselves fully and freely to each other.


READING NO: 2
1 Corinthians 13  (Shortened version)

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 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 NO: 3
Remember the word of Kahlil Gibran:

Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of our
souls.
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.
Stand together but not too near together.  For the pillars of
the temple
stand apart and the oak and the cypress grow not in each
other’s shadow.

READING NO: 4
Marriage is love, Gloria Matthew

If two are caring as they are sharing life’s hopes and fears. If
the music of laughter outweighs sadness and tears.
Marriage is togetherness.
If both derive pleasure from the mere presence of each
other, yet when parted no jealousies restrict, worry or
smother. Marriage is freedom.
If achievements mean more when they benefit two and
consideration is shown with each point of view. Marriage is
respect.
And if togetherness, freedom and respect are combined with
a joy that words can never fully define, then Marriage is love.


READING NO: 5
Love is the reason

Love is the reason why this day was chosen by you both to
begin your lives together and love is the reason why you
both will give with all hearts for the good of each other.
Love is the reason that together you will become one; one in
hope; one in believing in life; one in sharing the coming
years.


READING NO: 6
Two Lives

Two lives, two people, so very different, yet so similar.
Together we stand as one, sharing our future as it comes.
The past is that -- past.
Buds are yet to blossom, with care and trust, the best is yet
to be revealed.
Honesty and kindness, are the fruits of love.
Lord bless this day and always to enrich us so our love will
never end.


READING NO: 7
1 Corinthians 13

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and
have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a
tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and all knowledge;
and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains,
and have not charity, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it
profiteth me nothing.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not;
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own, is not
easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things,
endureth all things.
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they
shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease;
whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in
part shall be done away.
When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
childish things.
For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to
face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I
am known.
And now abideth, faith, hope, charity, and the greatest of
these is charity.

READING NO: 8
Colossians 3:12-14

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and loved,
compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience,
fore bearing 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 bore all, put on love, which
binds everything together in perfect harmony.


READING NO: 9
Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds.
Admit impediments; love is not love.
Which alters when it alteration finds.
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark.
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with its brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


READING NO: 10
There we are one

When I go to the place in me that is Love
And you go into that place in you that is Love
There we are ONE.

READING NO: 11
In Love Made Visible, May Swenson

In love are we made visible
As in a magic bath
are unpeeled
to the sharp pit
so long concealed

With love's alertness
we recognize the soundless whimper
of the soul behind the eyes
A shaft opens, and the timid thing
at last leaps to surface with full-spread wing
The fingertips of love discover more than the body's
smoothness
They uncover a hidden conduit
for the transfusion
of empathy’s that circumvent
the mind's intrusion

In love are we set free
Objective bone
and flesh no longer insulate us
to ourselves alone
We are released
and flow into each other's cup
Our two frail vials pierced
drink each other up

READING NO: 12
A Vision, Denise Levertov

Two angels among the throng of angels paused in the
upward abyss, facing angel to angel. Blue and green glowed
the wing feathers of one angel, from red to gold the sheen of
the other's. These two, so far as angels may dispute, were
poised on the brink of dispute, brink of fall from angelic
stature, for these tall ones, angels whose wingspan
encompasses entire earthly villages, whose heads if their
feet touched earth would top pines or redwoods, live by their
vision's harmony which sees at one glance the dark and
light of the moon.

These two hovered dazed before one another, for one saw
the sea feathered, peacock breakered crests of the other
angel's magnificence, different from his own, and the other's
eyes flickered with vision of flame petallings, cream-gold
grainfeather glitterings, the wings of his fellow, and both in
immortal danger of dwindling, of dropping into the remote
forms of a lesser being.

But as these angels, the only halted ones among the many
who passed and repassed, trod air as swimmers tread water,
each gazing on the angelic wings of the other, the
intelligence proper to great angels flew into their wings, the
intelligence called intellectual love, which, understanding the
perfection’s of scarlet, leapt up among blues and greens
strong shafted, and among amber down illumined the
sapphire bloom, so that each angel was iridescent with the
strange newly-seen hues he watched; and their discovering
pause and the speech their silent interchange of perfection
was never became a shrinking to opposites, and they
remained free in the heavenly chasm, remained angels, but
dreaming angels, each imbued with the mysteries of the
other.


READING NO: 13
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the
pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, woods, or steepy
mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed
their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing
madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant
posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of
myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs
we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest
gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber
studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me,
and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing For thy delight
each
May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live
with me and be my love.


READING NO: 14
From Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can
reach,
when feeling out of sight  
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's  Most quiet need, by
sun and
candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old grief’s, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears,
of all my
life!-and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after
death.
Hudson Valley Ceremonies