Marriage Service

Received an e-mail from the Rev'd who is conducting our service with definite confirmation of the time and date and location of the service. I started reading the marriage service on the Church of England website and felt myself becoming slightly emotional. It all seems a bit more real now and I am looking forward to it so much. I cannot wait for our forever to start officially.

We now have to choose hymns and readings and prayers and organ music. We have asked a very good friend of ours from university to play her 'cello during the signing of the register and co-incidentally she e-mailed me about an hour after the chaplain to suggest a piece that she could play.

I rather like this reading from Song of Solomon 2.10-13; 8.6,7:-

"My beloved speaks and says to me: 'Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs,and the vines are in blossom;they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

'Set me as a seal upon your heart,as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire,a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love,neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of one's house, it would be utterly scorned."

but I have no idea whether M likes it or not. We are also allowed to have a non-biblical reading I believe. I very much like this passage from Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway:-

"At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together."

But there is plenty more time to fall in love with some other readings...

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