On Marriage
Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
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.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
5 comments:
So beautiful.
my dad has used that passage when marrying folks before - are you using that in your wedding? I love the excerpt on children as well - it really rings true for me and I hope when I have one I can truly follow it.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
(too long to post the whole thing! but it is how I want to approach children - too easy to get caught up in thinking they will give me something, when its all about giving them everything.)
Yeah, when we talked to your dad a while ago, he mentioned that he used The Prophet when he marries people... we haven't talked about specifics yet, but I'm guessing this will be in there. :)
lauren! This was a reading at my wedding last summer-- I love that you posted it! I had a lot of concerns about the convention of marriage, and wanted to make ours into something that suited us, aside from many of the traditional thoughts on marriage-- like ultimate togetherness and completing one another. I think women today are sometimes afraid of losing themselves in marriage, since it is not a necessity for financial/land ownership reasons like it was years ago--There have to be new & updated reasons for women to commit themselves to someone else like that. I think Gibran's words really speak to that; don't you?
Pema Chodron: I haven't read her yet, but the friend who gave me the "Working With Anger" Buddhism book has been talking about her a lot! I'll put her on my list for sure!
I think I have some reading catching up to do! Seems like your life has gotten extra interesting recently???
Faye -- so this time I came up with INFJ. It's funny, every time I take a Myers-Briggs-esque test, I *always* score IN. The other two categories flip around.... sometimes I score INFP, sometimes INTJ, etc. And you?? :)
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