Poems and Scriptures

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.

Walter Pinder

READING 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 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 4 Marriage is love

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.

Gloria Matthew

READING 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 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. Page 112

READING 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 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. Page 113

READING 9 Sonnet 116

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.

William Shakespeare

READING 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. Page 114

READING 11 In Love Made Visible

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