Rob Keithan - Minister
Order of Service for Laura and Ken's wedding
Wild Geese
from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
Read at ceremony by Beth Johnston (Ken's Mother)
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Reading #2 - Created as a collaboration of inspiring voices
Read at Ceremony by Kira Dietz (Laura's cousin)
A gathering of quotes from these authors revised by Laura Williams:
This is my simple religion. I sing the body electric. I celebrate the me yet to come. The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. For small creatures such as we are, the vastness is bearable only through love.
To see the world in a grain of sand, heaven in a wildflower. To hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour. It is only in the ordinary that we discover the extraordinary, and must realize deeply that the present moment is all we have. Then all of the moments of the past began to line up behind that moment, and all of the moments to come assembled in front of it in a long row, giving me reason to believe that this was a moment I had rescued from millions that rush out of sight into a darkness behind the eyes. In your eyes I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art & science. Maybe that's all that we need is to meet in the middle of impossibility standing at opposite poles equal partners in a mystery.
And yet, happiness in marriage is a wonder, but not a mystery.
A good marriage must be created. The little things are the big things. It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family. It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy. It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow. It is finding rooms for things of the spirit. It is a common search for the good and the beautiful. It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal, dependence is mutual and obligation is reciprocal. It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner. This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. My philosophy is kindness. This is my simple religion.