June 5, 2010
Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine
Pacific Palisades
Everyone began the ceremony by first taking a peaceful walk around the lake.
Jordan liked having her picture taken.
Tim and I sat quietly while everything was prepared for the ceremony. Brother Vishawananda blessed our rings. When it was time to begin, the cameras were switched off.
It was a very serene day.
When Tim and I first began planning our wedding, we had a common thought: How can we get our multitude of relatives to put aside their little squabbles and needs for hijacking family gatherings for just 24 hours? The answer: we couldn't.
We took a very contemplative look at the list of people we were "supposed" to invite, the litany of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, each name also representing an ongoing dispute and entanglement with another name, and we sighed. Instead of being a day where we solemnized our relationship and invited our loved ones to partake of the love we felt for each other, it was shaping up to be a day of running between camps and putting out fires. That was not the tone we wanted to set for our marriage. Both being in our mid-forties, we felt it was time to acknowledge that some things were just not going to change, and it was time to move forward.
There were five wedding guests at out wedding, and seven at our reception lunch. Two of these people were our grandchildren, both under the age of four. The monastic who conducted the ceremony encouraged us to enjoy the event, even little Benjamin, who was verbally delighted by the sight of swans outside the window of the windmill chapel. Brother Vishawananda stated that even the sounds of a child laughing were part of the ceremony, part of the celebration of life.
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