Tiffany intended to use these passages at our wedding in July 2005.
from The Invitation
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
IT DOESN'T INTEREST ME WHAT YOU DO
FOR A LIVING. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of
meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you
are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your
dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets
are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your
own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled
and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with
joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill
you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to
be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story
you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be
true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your
own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty,
even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from
its presence.
I want to know if you can live with
failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to
the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"
It doesn't interest me to know where
you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the
night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to
be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know
or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of
the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what
or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the
inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
excerpted from A Gift From the Sea
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
One recognizes the truth of Saint Exupery’s line: Love does not consist in
gazing at each other. But in looking outward together in the same direction. For
in fact, man and woman are not only looking outward in the same direction, they
are working outward. Here one forms ties, roots, a firm base . . . . Here one
makes oneself part of the community of men, of human society. Here the bonds of
marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes
actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and
strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love.
Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion
and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of
loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of
memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web
of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language too,
a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and
mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown
exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living
side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is
woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself.