(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Was wandering round the second hand bookshops in town today, when I came across a little book of "Readings for your Wedding" (in English).

I think they'd been chosen, in many cases, by googling 'Love', because the section suggested for 'highlighting the spiritual aspect of your marriage' started off with a bit of Dante (on the beatific vision), before to proceeding to Walt Whitman (fair enough in one sense, but it's obviously queer and the book was published pre-civil partnerships), then to 'The Good Morrow' (OK, it's about the start of a relationship you mean to be permanent and important - but it's also about waking up after your first night together, and regardless of my love for Donne, and regardless of whether or not I might have slept with my hypothetical husband before marriage, I do not want it read in a situation where assembled hordes of elderly relatives are gathered, and I don't suppose they'd particularly want to contemplate my sex life either), before (passing over the usual suspects from the Prophet) concluding, crashingly, with Herbert's "Love bade me welcome."

Wrong sacrament, guys.

Comments

[lucullean.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA.

[tree_and_leaf]

I conceede that there are surprisingly few well known poems about marriage, but they could try actually reading what they've just cut-and-pasted!

[dreamer-marie.livejournal.com]

Oh, you never know with elderly relatives. Some of them really enjoy lurid tales of orgies and bacchanalia at weddings.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I have noticed before that they revel in the best man's speech / dirty jokes, while it's some of the younger ones who are looking a bit embarrassed.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The been there done that consideration applies. The idea of grannies being shocked because of ignorance is one of the most moronic ever developed by that highly moronic age, the twentieth century. Grannies may be shocked because they consider something wrong, but not because they had never heard of it. They could probably improve your knowledge.

[tree_and_leaf]

It's not so much a question of shock as embarrasment, I think, which generally does get less acute as you get older and aqcuire (a) a better knowledge of the world and (b) more perspective about your own importance/ how much people are actually bothered about what you do or don't do.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, but what about MY delicate sensibilities?

[telperion1.livejournal.com]

How odd! It sounds like a nice devotional reading, but not something I'd really want read at my wedding, elderly relatives and clergyman and so on being present.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think either Google or a quick flick through the Oxford Book of English verse while actually thinking about what you were going to have for lunch may be the only explanation!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Heck, when we were selecting readings for my sister's full-dress Catholic wedding (which took place in Trinita' dei Monti, the church on the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome - think of that), I was forced to explain that I could not really read a particularly exultant and first-person passage of the Song of Songs about my own sister. Traps are many....

Come to think of it, though, if the preacher were of the calibre of CS Lewis or Rowan Williams, he (or she in the CofE) could weave one Heck of a riff between marriage, Eucharist and divine presence, on the theme that "God is Love and everyone who loves knows God". The trouble is that only a preacher of that level could do it without falling into cheap cleverness.

[tree_and_leaf]

Come to think of it, though, if the preacher were of the calibre of CS Lewis or Rowan Williams, he (or she in the CofE) could weave one Heck of a riff between marriage, Eucharist and divine presence, on the theme that "God is Love and everyone who loves knows God". The trouble is that only a preacher of that level could do it without falling into cheap cleverness.

Very true. Or being vaguely embarassing. You'd have to be very good to manage it.

I sympathise re: the Song of Songs. It's bad enough in a college chapel with the choir pulling faces in a bid to make you crack and giggle, but the circumstances you describe are a good deal more embarassing.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, the second hit for 'Love bade me welcome' is from a wedding service planning site, where Vaughan Williams's setting of the poem is deemed appropriate for the signing of the register.

[tree_and_leaf]

*bashes head off wall*

It's a splendid poem. It's one of my absolute favourites. Vaughan Williams, again, is splendid. But it's got nothing to do with weddings.

I mean, if you want to make a general statement about theology or faith, great, but otherwise it's a rather strange choice.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

The trouble is, of course, that there's not much in the Bible about marriage that hasn't been appropriated by the misogynist camps, and pretty much everything else in existence is either too sexy, too soppy, irrelevant or just bad. Or all of the above. Or I've just pulled them to pieces in some seminar or other, and will always protest 'But what about the colonial overtones?' Gah.

[tree_and_leaf]

This is true. I think if I get married I'll just go with the third or other service readings from the lectionary!

Or I've just pulled them to pieces in some seminar or other, and will always protest 'But what about the colonial overtones?' Gah.

I suppose that means Donne's "Elegy to his mistress going to bed" is out, too? ;)

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

... erm, again with the elderly relatives? All the same, I think Donne is the one poet I'd probably let the less than politically correct allusions pass with. Slightly worried that I'm turning into Harriet Wimsey, though, what with getting married in gold and all!

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

And if you think the readings are bad you should try the hymns some couples choose for their weddings...

"Oh, for God's sake cut out the League of Nations!"

[tree_and_leaf]

I bet.

I haven't been to all that many weddings, but an amazingly high proportion of them had 'All things Bright and Beautiful' as the second hymn. I suppose this is what happens when people haven't been to church (except possibly at Christmas) since childhood, and fall back on their memories of school assemblies....

Re: "Oh, for God's sake cut out the League of Nations!"

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I must confess that should I ever marry I shall definitely be having "The Voice That Breathed Oe'r Eden".