Share on bsky
I want to boil down a combo of wisdom from various religions, spiritual traditions, wisdom traditions…great poets…and sweet caring mentors and friends of mine…all combined with something personal, direct, heartfelt, and perhaps even a little spontaneous (I love you, Kelsey).
So here’s what I’m working with: my writings in my first book, Things I would like to do with You, as well as my writings off the top of my head and heart.
Unlimited Friendliness, the Buddhist Wedding Poem.
Trungpa Rinpoche’s advice on weddings, from a Buddhist or Shambhala point of view.
Many wonderful poems for inspiration and wisdom, including: “…two-celled heart beating, with one full stroke, Life.” ~ Tennyson
Okay, here goes, a rough draft at least:
“I would like you to know that I am so grateful for my 50 years without you, searching for you, longing for you, dreaming of you, and growing into myself, the man you love. I was tired. And now we have met, and I am no longer merely me, I am we, I love you.
I am ready to kiss the heart of a woman brave enough to feel fear and give voice to it. In voicing our fears we introduce oxygen and in so doing give our fires life. And yet I shall fondly look back at those times of loneliness, for they delivered me to you. And as Rilke said of partnership in love,
“It is a question in marriage, not of tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of their solitude, and shows the other this [greatest] confidence. A [rigid] togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is [too often] a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of their fullest freedom and development.
But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!”
May our relationship teach us.
May we aim to awaken, instead of merely defending our confusion.
May our intention in love be to benefit all, and not merely to get what we want.
May our love life be gentle and honest, even when it can not be fun, or happy. True love is borne in correct intention.
I don’t want my idea of you. That’s too easy, and it isn’t real. I want you, faults and all.
And I want you to want me, faults and all, not any ideas you have about love.
You are not my dream girl. You are something more: you are real. You are of this world. You are my world. You are not a fantasy: you are here.
Love is something else entire: it is caring. It is arguing, but with curiosity—it is giving an inch when the other is certainly wrong—it is teasing, it is empathy, it is respect, it is admiration each morning.
And this, our love, is a limitless friendship lit by a wooden match with a white tip on its red tip. I am your match, and you are mine.
Relationships—love—is not fantasy, it is bricks and mortar. It is earth. But it is fantasy, too. It is heaven: dreams and hormones and the pleasure in biology and sudden laughter.
It is the rub between the two that creates sparks: earth, heaven, humans.
Read 10 Comments and Reply
Read 10 comments and reply