ADDITIONAL READINGS

Sample 1

We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.

It is also good to love, because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has ever been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.

That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love; it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far into life, is -- solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.

Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?); it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something, to become world, to become world for the sake of another person... it is the ultimate, it is perhaps that for which human lives are barely large enough.

- Rilke's "Letters To A Young Poet"

Sample 2

May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage should bring.

May life grant patience, tolerance and understanding.

May you always need one another – not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you to know your fullness. A mountain needs a valley to be complete; the valley does not make the valley less but more; and the valley is more a valley because it has a mountain towering over it. So let it be with you and you.

May you need one another - but not out of weakness.

May you want each other - but not out of lack.

May you entice one another - but not compel one another.

May you embrace one another - but not encircle one another.

May you succeed in all important ways with one another, and not fail in the little graces.

May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you" and take no notice of small faults if you have quarrels that push you apart,

May both of you hope to have good sense enough to take the first step back.

May you enter into the mystery which is the awareness of one another's presence - no more physical than spiritual; warm and near when you are side by side; and warm and near when you are in separate rooms or even distant cities.

May you have happiness, and may you find it making one another happy.

May you have love and may you find it in loving one another.

May the passing of time only enhance and accentuate this joyful sense of wonder on the journey you are beginning today.

Sample 3

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when with you.

I love you not only for what you have made of yourself,but for what you are making of me.

I love you for that part of me that you bring out.

I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish, frivolous and weak things that you cannot help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the light all the beautiful and radiant belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.

I love you for ignoring the possibilities of the fool and weakling in me, and for laying firm hold on the possibilities of good in me.

- Ray Croft

Sample 4

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends,.. Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

- 1 Corinthians 13 , 4 and 13

Or:

Love is slow to lose patience; it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive; it is neither anxious to impress, nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep an account of evil, or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good people when truth prevails.

Love knows no limit to its own endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.

In this life, we have three great lasting qualities – faith in each other, hope, and love. But the greatest of them is love.

- 1 Corinthians 13, tr. by J. B. Phillips

Sample 5

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness.

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup.

Give one another your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone, though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

- Kahlil Gibran, On Marriage