These are the words we had read at our wedding. I love them.
I love that they were part of the day we started our marriage; I'm continually surprised by how often they come to mind and help shape the life we are creating together.
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“When over the years someone has seen you at your worst,
and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly,
it is a consummate experience.
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.
To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.
But to be fully known and truly loved is a lot like being loved by God.
It is what we need more than anything.
It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness,
and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
-from The Meaning of Marriage, by Timothy Keller
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“I might seem to be comparing something great and holy
with a minor and ordinary thing,
that is, love of God with mortal love.
But I just don’t see them as separate things at all.
If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch,
then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face
can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love.
I devoutly believe this to be true.
I remember in those days loving God for the very existence of love
and being grateful to God for the existence of gratitude…
I realized many things I am at a loss to express.
There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be,
because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable
of an embracing, incomprehensible reality.
It makes no sense at all,
because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal.
So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?”
from Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
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“...Watching him and watching myself in my memory now,
I know again what I knew before, but now I know more than that.
Now I know what we were trying to stand for, and what I believe we did stand for:
the possibility that among the world’s wars and sufferings
two people could love each other for a long time,
until death and beyond,
and could make a place for each other that would be a part of their love,
as their love for each other would be a way of loving their place.
This love would be one of the acts of the greater love that holds and cherishes all the world.
...And so I had put myself in [his] hands,
mindful also that he had put himself in mine.
We were each other's welcomer and each other's guest.
And so we had come to our place."
-from Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry
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"I thank my God every time I remember you,
always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all...
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound still more and more
in knowledge and depth of insight,
to the glory and praise of God.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.
Rather, in humility consider others more important than yourselves.
Each of you should look not only to your own interest but also to the interest of others.
In your relationships with one another,
let your attitude be the same as Christ Jesus,
who emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.
Always be full of joy in the Lord.
Let your gentle spirit be evident to all.
The Lord is near."
-excerpts from Philippians
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I miss this space! Maybe I will try to use it regularly again.
If you are interested: these days, for whatever reason, glimpses of my life are more often found here.
