Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Friday, September 3, 2010

Constructing the Ceremony

I grew up Catholic and the FI grew up congregationalist. We want to include faith in a God in our ceremony without having a wholly religious ceremony. Enter my FI's super fantastic aunt and uncle: They bought us this great book as an engagement congratulation:
So admittedly, the cover looks cheesy and why is it called "Into the Garden"? But the contents are great! They have wedding and love poems ranging from religious to sappy dappy to sexy! In the back of the book are examples of traditional wedding ceremonies. My favorite so far is the Zen-Unitarian-American - Traditional Ceremony. They also have Protestant, Judeo-Christian, Zen, Jewish etc. I highly recommend this book if you are going to use readings from the Bible, non-secular readings or are interested in reading some sweet, sappy poetry.

I was thinking, as an English teacher, it would be great if our readers picked a poem that they liked from this book or from somewhere else. Then I read one about burning desiring loins and I decided that leaving it up to someone else could be risky.

I am going to leave you with one of the poems from the text:

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
that all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

e.e. cummings

What books did you find helpful throughout planning the ceremony, reception, entire wedding? How are you putting together your ceremony? Any helpful hints?