32 The Fray

For a friend when her cousin got married - a mix of various essays and prayers for partners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfIwu2aT4Oo

"To inspire each other to enact new themes of kindness, love, joy and sharing. To anticipate each others needs, listen to views and problems and fears and dreams. To never really know where the one ends and the other begins."

"To nurture and augment and to jointly leap into the fray of life."

"To have and to hold, to cherish and to uplift, in joy and in sorrow, to enmesh our lives, through pain and pleasure, through ourselves and our loved ones, forever and forever." - Partners, 27th Dec 2015

Then You bless us with friends as an extension of our families and we reach a new height. Just as we grow happy and grateful, You send a partner to us. A person with whom to build a home. To share life and watch it unfurl. To test our resolve and courage and forge the best in us. To help us when we falter, to give us purpose and to focus our character. To share future joys and sorrows.

And children You send, to make us learn responsibility. And to understand the bliss our parents knew when they raised us. Helpless to watch as they lead life in their own unique ways, laughing as they remind us of ourselves. Carrying our hopes forward a generation. - Gratitude, Sep 2011

Dearly Beloved,

We are gathered here today to solemnize the wedding of ___ and ___.

We can remember the immortal words of Kahlil Gibran - On Love, he says "if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night"

On Marriage, he says: "Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
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."

You both have chosen each other, to look out for, support and accept one another and enliven each other's lives. Now do it! Do it all together...

Think constantly of one another, strengthen the bond of love that can only grow to its full flourishing over a lifetime of sharing, loving & caring.

We spend whole lives dreaming of finding love and then are blessed to finally find such a one to spend a lifetime with.

Whatever you do, do with the best of intentions, with caring and gratitude and may you both be happy together the rest of your days.

Amen,
Friar Imran
(compiled August 2018 from 3 sources)