(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

[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!