Modern Marriage Ceremony

 

A Non‑Theistic Jueo‑Christian Ceremony

A Zen‑Unitarian‑Catholic‑American‑transcendentalist ceremony

The Tao of Marriage

The deepest intimacy with the beloved becomes possible when we have experienced intimacy with the self. Intimacy the the self means awakening to our true nature. Y The willingness to go deeper than love is itself a kind of love, a desire to meet the beloved beyond desire, in the darkness where there is not self, no other. For this meeting, a man and a woman must be whole enough in themselves to step out of themselves, into a place of mutual transformation. They are able to surrender everything they know, everything they love, with the abandon that a Master has at the hour of death. Transformation is a death. It is also a birth, and can be as painful as any physical birth. Painful or ecstatic, it requires a fundamental trust. "into your hand I commit my spirit."

A man and a woman who enter this depth of intimacy find themselves standing in the garden where Adam and Eve stood. All things are possible for them. The ancient Chinese sage Tzu‑ssu said, "for the mature person, infinite vastness of the universe." they have traced their love for each other back to the root of love, the radiant non‑self, the bodhisattva's serene compassion. Like the wedding ring, it has no beginning, no end.

Hass, Robert

Into the garden: a wedding anthology: Poetry and prose on love and marriage

edited by Robert Hass and Stephen Mitchell 1994