A bit of personal news!
Ron and I were married on May 22 and celebrated our 10th anniversary with friends and family after the ceremony.
Todd read the first reading: A passage from the book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, by Harriet Jacobs, first published in 1861…
Why does the slave ever love? Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be wrenched away by the hand of violence? When separations come by the hand of death, the pious soul can bow in resignation, and say, Not my will, but thine be done, O Lord! But when the ruthless hand of man strikes the blow, regardless of the misery he causes, it is hard to be submissive. I did not reason thus when I was a young girl. Youth will be youth. I loved, and I indulged the hope that the dark clouds around me would turn out a bright lining. I forgot that in the land of my birth the shadows are too dense for light to penetrate, a land,
Where laughter is not mirth; nor the thought the mind;
Nor words are language; nor [are] men mankind.
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell.
Donna read the second reading: “Please Call Me By My True Names” by Thich Nhat Hanh…
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow-
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.
I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.
Luke read the third reading: A passage from “The Power of Myth” with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. This passage is Joseph Campbell as he responds to a question by Bill Moyers on how to experience the meaning of myth…
Read the myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people’s myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts – but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what it is. It’s the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one. You are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is. It’s different from a love affair. It has nothing to do with that. It is another mythological plane of experience. When people get married because they think it’s a long-time love affair, they’ll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity. If we live a proper life, if our minds are on the right qualities in regarding the person [we marry], we will find our proper . . . counterpart. But if we are distracted by certain sensuous interests we marry the wrong person. By marrying the right person, we reconstruct the image of the incarnate God, and that’s what marriage is.
Sandy read the fourth reading: “From the Gospel According to John,” after the washing of his disciples’ feet and at the Last Supper, Jesus says to his disciples…
I loved you in the same way the Father loved me. Live in my love. If you observe my instructions, you will live in my love, just as I have observed my Father’s instructions and live in his love. I have told you all of this so you will be the source of my happiness and so you yourselves will be filled with happiness. This is my order to you: You are to love each other just as I loved you. No one can love to greater extent than to give up life for friends. You are my friends if you follow my orders. I no longer call you slaves, since a slave does not know what his master is up to. I have called you friends, because I let you know everything I learned from my Father. . . . This I command you, to love one another.