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davidkirk
Forum Admin
USA
456 Posts |
 Posted - January 29 2005 : 11:03:32 AM
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Template for a Commitment Ceremony
This is one of the most popular pages at GayRites.NET. We get so many requests for "More!" that we have added a new section to our bookstore. To visit the store, visit www.gayrites.net/astore.htm and select the "Wedding Vows" category. Take a look at our popular custom cake toppers, too! www.gayrites.net/toppers.htm
Provided courtesy of Reverend Rebecca Armstrong (www.revreb.com)
I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself?
Will you travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other
as long as we live?
Walt Whitman
Love knows no boundaries of race, class, age or gender - it is sad that our contemporary culture still insists upon seeing them. However, the yearning to consecrate true love in a ceremonial way is so deep and so natural, that no amount of societal disapproval can hold back the tide. The growing numbers of same-sex couples who are ritualizing their relationships with commitment ceremonies is an indication that we are moving towards that happy day when there will be no form of love "which dare not speak its name".
The ritual of a Commitment Ceremony fulfills both the deeply private need to feel more closely bonded with the beloved, and also satisfies the desire to share your joy with friends and family - to declare your love in a public forum and receive the embrace and support of your community. Becoming fully participatory and conscious of the inner meanings of the rituals you choose to use or discard at this important event, can set the tone for years to come. Creating new forms for the universal desire to share one's life with another, expands the minds and hearts of all who witness it, and ultimately overturns old prejudices and makes more room for the many faces of Love.
Both the Unitarian-Universalist Association of Congregations and the Humanist Society of Friends (the two religious organizations with which I am affiliated) have publicly announced their support of gay and lesbian marriages and encouraged their clergy to officiate at Commitment Ceremonies for same-sex couples. In many cities across the U.S.A. these long-term committed relationships are receiving official sanction in the form of legal rights extended to the partners. These rights often include health benefits, housing privileges, insurance coverage, etc. Check with your employer, university or city official to see if these new laws affect you. I keep a record of all commitment ceremonies I perform which may help in establishing the legitimacy of the relationship in the eyes of the law.
While nearly all of the readings from the weddings file on this website can be used for commitment ceremonies (some with slight modification) it is sometimes good to use words which were originally written from a man to a man, or from a woman to another woman. I have therefore included a section of special Gay & Lesbian Poetry.
The structure of a good ritual allows sufficient time and space for the emotions to be honored and for the psyche to make the transition from one place (that of being "single") to a new chosen place (that of being a member of a "couple"). This Ceremony Template suggests ways in which this can be gracefully and powerfully accomplished.
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. "Giordano Bruno 16th century heretic burned at the stake for teaching that the earth revolved around the sun
I have a deep commitment to support the rights of all persons to express the depth of their love in formal and legal engagement in the tradition of marriage. It is my belief that the current opinions against gay marriage are as unjust as the old anti-miscegenist laws in the southern states which prohibited marriage between persons of different races. The same principle which overturned those outmoded laws will eventually overturn today's laws against same-sex marriage, for we are forever moving towards greater recognition of the Soul's profound yearning for freedom and expression of its joys.
"The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to madate our own moral code." Supreme Justice Kennedy in the majority opinion which struck down anti-homosexuality laws in Texas
Template for a Ceremony
Setting the scene: the opening ambiance, the tone, color, mood.. What is the space that the guests will be in? (setting) What will they be looking at? (decorations/flowers) What will they be hearing? (pre-ceremonial music) Will the honored elders be ushered in and given special seating? Who will be greeting guests as they arrive? Will there be a guest book to sign? Something to carry into the ceremony? A printed Order-of-Service?
[These first four elements are in necessary order, though much personalizing can be done with them.]
Call to Attention:.. drawing the focus.. How will you alert guests that the ceremony is about to begin? Change of music/lighting/scenery/gong/bells/vocalist/entrance of minister/silence?
Processional: entrance of the supporting and main characters in the sacred drama... Will there be traditional figures: the flower girls/boys (youthful innocence), ring bearer, attendants (those who literally and metaphorically "stand up" for you)? Is the couple leaving the bosom of their childhood families; hence the need for symbolic departure - "giving away" - or are they already independent adults, giving a graceful nod or embrace of appreciation to parents? Was there a significant person who brought the couple together? Music is the ideal container for gathering the joyful energies at this moment. Choose something that really has deep significance for you.
Welcome: the celebrant/minister gives voice to the unspoken energies- proclaiming this "time-out-of-time", dividing the sacred from the profane, opening the way for hearts and minds to be fully present and participatory, setting all at ease...
Setting Sacred Space: symbolic gesture, made tangible by making it visual - delineation of sacred space may take many forms: closing of the doors, lighting of the candles, spreading of the petals, ringing of the bell, laying of a circle of flowers, sprinkling the ground with water, salt or earth, calling in the four directions, invoking the spirits, etc.
[The next four elements can be re-arranged in many different ways, or added to, changed or deleted if desired]
The Word: readings of favorite poetry, literature, original verse, prayers, lyrics - sung or spoken - tributes from friends or family members. You may want several readings or songs interspersed with the following segments.
The Image: Centering metaphor of relationship made visible: Love as bringing of individual flame of life into shared Fire (lighting of unity candle); Partner for life's joys and sorrows (sharing of the wine, the bitter and the sweet); Companion for life's Journey (breaking the bread together); Binding of two souls (tying of the hands with golden cloth); the Harmony of two souls as one (joining in shared song); Commitment as Covenant (signing of names on parchment or in a holy book); Marriage as Building of shared life (stepping over a threshold or under a canopy or into a circle of ribbon, flowers); Sacred Union as the sowing of seed (planting seeds or special plants in shared container which friends and family can add water to)...
The Blessing: Sharing of thanks to and from the couple and their family and friends; offering of roses to the parents; exchanging of the First Gift; song of blessing from guests to couple; tribute to the ancestors, including family members recently departed whose memory is important to this occasion; kiss of Peace from Wedding Party to guests; offering to the land or the spirits; [If there are children from a former marriage, this is an ideal time to bring them forward for a special set of vows and acknowledgment of the new family they will become!]
The Reflection: a chance for the minister to reflect back to the couple the impressions gained about them during conversation; words of wisdom, challenge, encouragement.
[The last four elements work best - for dramatic reasons - if followed in this order, though variations can be done.]
The Vows: Fashioned by the couple to be most expressive of their own beliefs and aspirations (see website pages for ideas) Vows can be memorized and recited to each other; read from the minister's book; or repeated line by line after the minister.
The Rings: If rings (or some other permanent token) are exchanged, the minister can say a few words about the symbolism of the ring/token and its particular meaning for the couple; if rings are not exchanged, the couple join hands while the minister gives the benediction and pronouncement.
The Benediction: The benediction can be silent, or can be a prayer/poem which best expresses the hopes of the new couple, and the power they call upon (from within or without, natural or divinely transcendent) to grace their union..
The Pronouncement: The words of the pronouncement simply proclaim them to be beloved friends / life partners / true companions .. and the first married kiss then follows.
The Recessional: The energy which has been building throughout the service needs to be released in joy. This can be accomplished in many ways. There is a natural tendency for guests to want to burst into applause upon seeing the couple kiss - this is a fine ending; like a burst of thunder and rain as the clouds part. A similar outpouring of emotion can be channeled through the ringing of small bells and chimes (which each guest has been given at the beginning of the ceremony) or the blowing of bubbles, release of balloons, doves, butterflies, etc. or, the desire to applaud can be held at bay long enough for the minister (or someone else) to say: Will the guests please rise and welcome the new couple: ________ ! Then the cheering begins!
[There may be postlude music as the guests leave the ceremony grounds and move towards the reception]
Gay & Lesbian Love Poetry
Toleration
Is it too much to ask
That I should be
Allowed to prove
God's gift of infinite variety
In human love?
I do not seek that
All should understand,
Much less forgive;
But surely heed man's
Commonsense command
"Live and let live"
And, if the Greatest Lover's
Mind divine
Further can move -
(Who had Himself all natures,
even mine,)
Love - and let love.
John Barford (1886-1935)
*** *** ***
Song of the Open Road
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
strong and content I travel the open road.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
Comrade, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Walt Whitman
*** *** ***
Love Poem by Rumi
"Lo, I am with you always" means
when you look for God
God is in the look of your eyes,
In the thought of looking,
Nearer to you than your self,
Or things that have happened to you.
The Moon
The full moon is inside of you.
There's no need to go outside.
A fig grows in the silence -
Let your speech become that fruit.
I need a mouth as wide as the sky
To say the nature of a True Person -
Language as large as longing.
The body is only a device
To calculate the astronomy of the spirit.
The truth is - God is speaking through this body.
Say yes -
Say, YES.
Jelaludin Rumi
*** *** ***
The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere - They’re in each other all along!
Jelaludin Rumi
*** *** ***
Chance
Strange that a single white iris
Given carelessly one slumbering spring midnight
Should be the first of love,
Yet life is written so.
If it had been a rose
I might have smiled and pinned it to my dress:
We should have said Good Night casually
And never met again.
But the white iris!
It looked so infinitely pure
In the thin green moonlight.
A thousand little purple things
That had trembled about me through the young years
Floated into a shape I seem always to have known
That I suddenly called Love!
The faint touch of your long fingers on mine wakened me.
I saw that your tumbled hair was bright with flame,
That your eyes were sapphire souls with
hungry stars in them,
And your lips were too near not to be kissed.
Life crouches at the knees of Chance
And takes what falls to her.
Elsa Gidlow
*** *** ***
I write, Honora, on the sparkling sand!—
The envious waves forbid the trace to stay:
Honora's name again adorns the strand!
Again the waters bear their prize away!
So Nature wrote her charms upon thy face,
The cheek's light bloom, the lip's envermeil'd dye,
And every gay, and every witching grace,
That Youth's warm hours, and Beauty's stores supply.
But Time's stern tide, with cold Oblivion's wave,
Shall soon dissolve each fair, each fading charm;
E'en Nature's self, so powerful, cannot save
Her own rich gifts from this o'erwhelming harm.
Love and the Muse can boast superior power,
Indelible the letters they shall frame;
They yield to no inevitable hour,
But will on lasting tablets write thy name
Anna Seward (18th century)
*** *** ***
It was deep April, and the morn
Shakespere was born;
The world was on us, pressing sore;
My love and I took hands and swore,
Against the world, to be
Poets and lovers evermore,
To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore,
To sing to Charon in his boat,
Heartening the timid souls afloat;
Of judgement never to take heed,
But to those fast-locked souls to speed,
Whoe never from Apollo fled,
Who spent no hour among the dead;
Continually
With them to dwell,
Indifferent to heaven and hell.
Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper
*** *** ***
Constancy
I love her with the seasons, with the winds,
As the stars worship, as anemones
Shudder in secret for the sun, as bees
Buzz round an open flower: in all kinds
My love is perfect, and in each she finds
Herself the goal: then why, intent to teaze
And rob her delicate spirit of its ease,
Hastes she to range me with inconstant minds?
If she should die, if I were left at large
On earth without her-I, on earth, the same
Quick mortal with a thousand cries, her spell
She fears would break. And I confront the charge
As sorrowing, and as careless of my fame
As Christ intact before the infidel.
Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper
*** *** ***
A Girl,
Her soul a deep-wave pearl
Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries;
A face flowered for heart's ease,
A brow's grace soft as seas
Seen through faint forest-trees:
A mouth, the lips apart,
Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the breeze
From her tempestuous heart.
Such: and our souls so knit,
I leave a page half-writ --
The work begun
Will be to heaven's conception done,
If she come to it.
Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper
*** *** ***
Absence
Sometimes I know the way
You walk, up over the bay;
It is a wind from that far sea
That blows the fragrance of your hair to me.
Or in this garden when the breeze
Touches my trees
To stir their dreaming shadows on the grass
I see you pass.
In sheltered beds, the heart of every rose
Serenely sleeps to-night. As shut as those
Your garded heart; as safe as they fomr the beat, beat
Of hooves that tread dropped roses in the street.
Turn never again
On these eyes blind with a wild rain
Your eyes; they were stars to me.--
There are things stars may not see.
But call, call, and though Christ stands
Still with scarred hands
Over my mouth, I must answer. So
I will come--He shall let me go!
Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper
*** *** ***
My Heart is Lame
My heart is lame with running after yours so fast
Such a long way,
Shall we walk slowly home, looking at all the things we passed
Perhaps to-day?
Home down the quiet evening roads under the quiet skies,
Not saying much,
You for a moment giving me your eyes
When you could bear my touch.
But not to-morrow. This has taken all my breath;
Then, though you look the same,
There may be something lovelier in Love's face in death
As your heart sees it, running back the way we came;
My heart is lame.
Charlotte Mew
*** *** ***
Decade
When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.
*** *** ***
In Excelsis
You -- you --
Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver;
Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies;
Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air.
The movement of your hands is the long, golden running of light from a rising sun;
It is the hopping of birds upon a garden-path.
As the perfume of jonquils, you come forth in the morning.
Young horses are not more sudden than your thoughts,
Your words are bees about a pear-tree,
Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red apples.
I drink your lips,
I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet.
My mouth is open,
As a new jar I am empty and open.
Like white water are you who fill the cup of my mouth,
Like a brook of water thronged with lilies.
You are frozen as the clouds,
You are far and sweet as the high clouds.
I dare to reach to you,
I dare to touch the rim of your brightness.
I leap beyond the winds,
I cry and shout,
For my throat is keen as is a sword
Sharpened on a hone of ivory.
My throat sings the joy of my eyes,
The rushing gladness of my love.
How has the rainbow fallen upon my heart?
How have I snared the seas to lie in my fingers
And caught the sky to be a cover for my head? How have you come to dwell with me,
Compassing me with the four circles of your mystic lightness,
So that I say "Glory! Glory!" and bow before you
As to a shrine?
Do I tease myself that morning is morning and a day after?
Do I think the air is a condescension,
The earth a politeness,
Heaven a boon deserving thanks?
So you -- air -- earth -- heaven --
I do not thank you,
I take you,
I live.
And those things which I say in consequence
Are rubies mortised in a gate of stone.
Amy Lowell
*** *** ***
You bound strong sandals on my feet,
You gave me bread and wine,
And sent me under sun and stars
For all the world was mine.
Oh, take the sandals off my feet,
You know not what you do;
For all the world is in your arms
My sun and stars are you.
Sara Teasdale (1911)
*** *** ***
Autumn Sonnet
If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(for love itself may need a time of sleep)
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure - if I can let you go.
May Sarton (1972)
*** *** ***
A friend calls us/ An old married couple
I flinch/ You don't mind
On rthe way home/ You ask why I got upset
We are something/ Like what she said
You say I say/ No
We aren't married
No one has blessed/ This union no one
Gave us kitcehn gadgets/ We bought our own blender
We built our common life/ In the space between the laws…
We walk easily/ Around our house
Into each other's language/ There is nothing
We cannot say together
Solid ground
Under our feet
We know this landscape
We have no choice
Of destination only the route
Is a mystery every day
A new map of the same territory
Alice Bloch
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