(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

[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.