The Affirmation Text
The affirmation we all signed was written by us and made beautiful by Lisa Engelbrecht. Please let her know if you need calligraphy work! Here's the text from it:
We believe in this world: the strength and beauty of this planet, the wildness and resiliency of its land and oceans, the unyielding web of interdependence that connects all things, the elemental mysteries of what we know, and the enigmatic complexity of the universe within and beyond us all.
We believe in the forces of love, wonder, creation, and communion. We believe that, taken together, they make up our greatest strengths as a species; and that our capacity, ability, and willingness to understand and engage these powers – individually and collectively – is essential to our humanity.
We believe in playfulness and the qualities of childhood that support a joyous and bold exploration of this life. We believe that all adventures must be undertaken with a mixture of determination and lightness; a willingness to throw oneself into something unknown, to experiment, to laugh, to ramble, and to discover newness in that which we know best.
We believe in this community: its vigor, passion, and generosity. We believe that our collective ability to trust and support each other, to challenge and inspire each other, to rally for and enliven each other is what makes this community thrive.
We believe in each other: as individuals and as partners. We believe in and value each other’s own approach to life and to loving; we believe that these distinct perspectives, in dialogue with each other, yield a partnership that is greater than the sum of its parts, one that is multi-dimensional and evolving, trusting and resilient.
We believe in this love: its ability to provide, to nourish, to transform, to connect, to inspire, and to create. We choose to grow this love together because it amplifies our strengths, and pushes us to give our best to the world, our community, each other, and ourselves. We believe in this love’s audaciousness, its playful tenderness, its deep passion, and its quiet courage. We trust it to shape the geography of our lives.
On this day, the 30th of December, 2010, we affirm our commitment to these beliefs and each other with the following statement:
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
We believe in this world: the strength and beauty of this planet, the wildness and resiliency of its land and oceans, the unyielding web of interdependence that connects all things, the elemental mysteries of what we know, and the enigmatic complexity of the universe within and beyond us all.
We believe in the forces of love, wonder, creation, and communion. We believe that, taken together, they make up our greatest strengths as a species; and that our capacity, ability, and willingness to understand and engage these powers – individually and collectively – is essential to our humanity.
We believe in playfulness and the qualities of childhood that support a joyous and bold exploration of this life. We believe that all adventures must be undertaken with a mixture of determination and lightness; a willingness to throw oneself into something unknown, to experiment, to laugh, to ramble, and to discover newness in that which we know best.
We believe in this community: its vigor, passion, and generosity. We believe that our collective ability to trust and support each other, to challenge and inspire each other, to rally for and enliven each other is what makes this community thrive.
We believe in each other: as individuals and as partners. We believe in and value each other’s own approach to life and to loving; we believe that these distinct perspectives, in dialogue with each other, yield a partnership that is greater than the sum of its parts, one that is multi-dimensional and evolving, trusting and resilient.
We believe in this love: its ability to provide, to nourish, to transform, to connect, to inspire, and to create. We choose to grow this love together because it amplifies our strengths, and pushes us to give our best to the world, our community, each other, and ourselves. We believe in this love’s audaciousness, its playful tenderness, its deep passion, and its quiet courage. We trust it to shape the geography of our lives.
On this day, the 30th of December, 2010, we affirm our commitment to these beliefs and each other with the following statement:
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
The Ceremony
Rick Spalding, our friend and chaplain at Williams College helped us design this ceremony and welcome everyone to the space. His words are here:
GREETING {Daniel & Jen}
INVOCATION
When we pour all the delight and laughter and madcap energy and gratitude that we’ve each brought with us into the little vessel of this piece of sacred time, there is no doubt that the cup of gladness will overflow, and joy will run out all over everything, pool on the floor of our lives and trickle down into places we wouldn’t have expected to be touched by this and splash on the faces of all our relationships and pour out over the doorsills and windowsills to water the earth which is so thirsty to believe that such goodness is possible, is real. We know it’s real – so real that we knew we had to be here, blizzard or no blizzard.
But we shouldn’t let all that joy confuse us about one thing: what we’ve come here to do is work. Community is work, promises are work, honesty and courage and integrity are work. Work can be joyful – nobody knows that better, nobody teaches or models that better, than these two. Work isn’t necessarily ever finished – though we get stronger as we do it over the long haul. The truest and best work takes time; and, the way we live these days, time is about the most precious thing we have to give to anything. This work, actually, is also timeless: it has the flavor of eternity about it, and all the wisdom of our forebears and all the hopes of our children are hovering even now around the edges of this circle – and the vast, unfathomable and unspeakably beautiful mystery of life towers over us as we gather to put ourselves to it.
And – I know we all know this, but this is the time for saying things that need not to be taken for granted, so here it is – this work matters. As joyful as it is, we can’t allow ourselves to forget that this world is at war with itself at this very moment. In places that feel very far away from this circle but that are actually very much closer than that, the violence of poverty and fear and of indifference and of materialism is doing its work. So part of the purpose of this work of ours that we’ve come here to do – this work of keeping commitments, building community, living with integrity – is to help heal those wounds in the heart of the human family. This work of ours has the power to change the shape and direction of the world. The commitment we have gathered around, to ratify and embrace, is part of the bedrock upon which all of us stand in this world. The trust that is at stake here is the trust on which we all depend – and (do I dare say it?) the love that is so visible and tangible here is part of the Love that inspires life itself, the Love that gives birth to this beautiful world all over again in every moment of time.
Community is the native environment of the human spirit – the wind beneath the wings of our dreams – the sound of all our hopes singing together – the whole that is greater even than the sum of all the parts of us. What happens here will change all of our lives: if it works, none of us will leave this place unscathed by integrity or unmarked by joy.
So let us pool our insight – our wit and wisdom – our stories – our laughter and, maybe, our tears – our dreams (of course) and our memories – until the cup of this little piece of time overflows. Let us tap the pungent sweetness of the towering mystery of life like the farmers tap the maple trees in these woods, and boil it down to the utter ecstatic sweetness of life together.
What you choose to say, as an offering, doesn’t have to be about Jen and Daniel – it might be because of them – or with them – or in spite of them – or through them.
[We’re going to use a microphone, not to amplify but to record – so that none of these precious words are lost. When you’ve said what you have to say, just look for someone who’s waiting, and hand the microphone to them. And, by the way – if you’re too shy to speak in front of everybody (then how did you get to be friends with these two???), or if later on you remember something you wish you’d said, we’re setting up a StoryCorps booth right here by the fire so that you can record whatever you want, either right after the ceremony or this afternoon, after the meal.]
So – who will be the first to pour out a gift of words into the overflowing vessel of this time?
OFFERINGS {the Community}
REFLECTIONS
There are various ways of caring for the future.
- There is the way of preparation: gathering in whatever you can against the certain cold of coming winter.
- There is the way of organization: gathering up a thousand details against the ever-present chaos that swirls just beyond the edge of all our best-laid plans.
- There is the way of distraction: gathering all the compelling claims on our attention right now, and building a hedge with them, to hold the future out of the present as long as possible.
- There is even the way of trepidation: gathering together all the uncertainties and the doubts and the possible catastrophes that might lurk in the time ahead, and hunkering down to expect the worst, willing to be pleasantly surprised.
Each of these ways of caring for the future has its practicality. Winter will come, chaos is near, the present moment is compelling, and disasters are possible.
But each of these ways of caring for the future treats the future as though it were an adversary.
What if, instead, the future were one of the greatest of all imaginable gifts to us? What if we were to practice believing that neither winter, nor chaos, nor distraction, nor catastrophe, nor powers and principalities, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation would be able to separate us from the Love at the center of the universe - a love that is waiting to receive us with an embrace as though we were long-lost, beloved children? How would we care for the future then?
I think this is what practicing such a kind of caring for the future would look like.
The words of commitment and affirmation – the wild-eyed playfulness and the overt audacity of public full frontal dreaming – the willingness to move to the places that hunger the most for dreams, and are the readiest to dream them – and the willingness to drop everything when the alarm goes off and rush to the place where life and livelihood are in danger – these are what caring for the future looks like. The quality of light in the air and the quality of lump in the throat and the quality of laugh in the belly – the words and the holy silence around them and the holier silence within them – the flashing of all these eyes and the leaping of all these hearts – are a way of believing this future into being.
This partnership, this family, this atomic fusion of souls, is an act of subversion. It serves notice to all the brooding shadows of worry that a pool of outrageous light is even now being readied to be poured out over them. This is a conspiracy being plotted, and this is one of its leading edges.
And all of us are implicated in the plot: I’m sorry if you thought you were coming here innocently and would be able to leave quietly, to slip back out into the crowd of the world unobtrusively or anonymously. If it’s true that “the most radical thing we can do is to introduce people to each other,” then this is a revolution – and these two are among its most flagrant perpetrators. And we are all co-conspirators, collaborators in believing into being a future in which such love as this shall warm even the ice and stone of hearts wintered by despair, poverty, violence, prejudice, greed – or just dream-less-ness.
Daniel and Jen –
- May you be, together, a way of caring for the future in which such partnership as this shall be a model for a new order of things to banish the chaos of disconnection.
- May you be, together, a way of caring for the future in which such ways of being alive as this shall give us confidence enough to always have ready an embrace for whatever will come, and love it toward wholeness.
- May you be, each of you, a way of caring for the future in which such spiritual strength as this shall enable us to hold high the beacon of our integrity in the midst of all tribulation and calamity.
- And may you, by giving us this day to remember, and by opening your hearts to be for us all part of the meaning of home, help us to make a just and joyful memory of the future – and call that memory, hope.
AFFIRMATION {Daniel & Jen}
SILENCE
- I’ve always heard that it’s the silence around the sacred “om” that makes it holy.
- Maybe it is the deep silence around these words of commitment, the silence in the marrow of this community, that hallows it. Silence is work, too – not easy work, for some of us; and being able to keep silence, to hold silence carefully when it is entrusted to you, is a skill that would probably help the world a lot if more of us practiced it more diligently.
- We’re going to keep a few moments of silence now – to give ourselves room to hold all these things we’ve seen and heard and felt: to hold them close, to hold them dear. After those few moments, I’ll invite us to stand together – and it will be time to let our words of commitment flower out of the silence. We’ll use the same words that Daniel and Jen have used – the words of e.e. cummings that you have printed, a line or two under the word “Resonance.” This is how we’ll manage to all say them together: when my hands come together, we’ll speak the words, “i carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”. And when we say those words, all with our different voices and all with one voice, they’ll mean – so many different things.
So – first - let us wrap that silence around us now, like the beauty of winter. Let us listen as that silence wells up from the deepest places within us. Let us feel the life-giving soil beneath us – and the sustaining air around us – and the healing light upon us. Let us feel the earth turning toward the future. Let us allow that silence to burnish our joy; let it be the wind beneath the wings of our hopes – for Jen and Daniel, for all of us together, and for the world.
RESONANCE {the Community stands}
- I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)
BLESSING
So be it!
We are woven together.
So is your life together part of all our lives – part of the life of the world – one of its best, most madcap and joyful parts.
The world carries your commitment in its heart.
So let us take all the overflowing joy of this little vessel of time, let us carry it out into a world so thirsty to believe this is possible – and let us show the world how real love is, how courageous commitment can be, how ready we are for the work of community, how wild and playful and healing are our dreams for what this world could be.
SING!
Ain’t no mountain high enough…
GREETING {Daniel & Jen}
INVOCATION
When we pour all the delight and laughter and madcap energy and gratitude that we’ve each brought with us into the little vessel of this piece of sacred time, there is no doubt that the cup of gladness will overflow, and joy will run out all over everything, pool on the floor of our lives and trickle down into places we wouldn’t have expected to be touched by this and splash on the faces of all our relationships and pour out over the doorsills and windowsills to water the earth which is so thirsty to believe that such goodness is possible, is real. We know it’s real – so real that we knew we had to be here, blizzard or no blizzard.
But we shouldn’t let all that joy confuse us about one thing: what we’ve come here to do is work. Community is work, promises are work, honesty and courage and integrity are work. Work can be joyful – nobody knows that better, nobody teaches or models that better, than these two. Work isn’t necessarily ever finished – though we get stronger as we do it over the long haul. The truest and best work takes time; and, the way we live these days, time is about the most precious thing we have to give to anything. This work, actually, is also timeless: it has the flavor of eternity about it, and all the wisdom of our forebears and all the hopes of our children are hovering even now around the edges of this circle – and the vast, unfathomable and unspeakably beautiful mystery of life towers over us as we gather to put ourselves to it.
And – I know we all know this, but this is the time for saying things that need not to be taken for granted, so here it is – this work matters. As joyful as it is, we can’t allow ourselves to forget that this world is at war with itself at this very moment. In places that feel very far away from this circle but that are actually very much closer than that, the violence of poverty and fear and of indifference and of materialism is doing its work. So part of the purpose of this work of ours that we’ve come here to do – this work of keeping commitments, building community, living with integrity – is to help heal those wounds in the heart of the human family. This work of ours has the power to change the shape and direction of the world. The commitment we have gathered around, to ratify and embrace, is part of the bedrock upon which all of us stand in this world. The trust that is at stake here is the trust on which we all depend – and (do I dare say it?) the love that is so visible and tangible here is part of the Love that inspires life itself, the Love that gives birth to this beautiful world all over again in every moment of time.
Community is the native environment of the human spirit – the wind beneath the wings of our dreams – the sound of all our hopes singing together – the whole that is greater even than the sum of all the parts of us. What happens here will change all of our lives: if it works, none of us will leave this place unscathed by integrity or unmarked by joy.
So let us pool our insight – our wit and wisdom – our stories – our laughter and, maybe, our tears – our dreams (of course) and our memories – until the cup of this little piece of time overflows. Let us tap the pungent sweetness of the towering mystery of life like the farmers tap the maple trees in these woods, and boil it down to the utter ecstatic sweetness of life together.
What you choose to say, as an offering, doesn’t have to be about Jen and Daniel – it might be because of them – or with them – or in spite of them – or through them.
[We’re going to use a microphone, not to amplify but to record – so that none of these precious words are lost. When you’ve said what you have to say, just look for someone who’s waiting, and hand the microphone to them. And, by the way – if you’re too shy to speak in front of everybody (then how did you get to be friends with these two???), or if later on you remember something you wish you’d said, we’re setting up a StoryCorps booth right here by the fire so that you can record whatever you want, either right after the ceremony or this afternoon, after the meal.]
So – who will be the first to pour out a gift of words into the overflowing vessel of this time?
OFFERINGS {the Community}
REFLECTIONS
There are various ways of caring for the future.
- There is the way of preparation: gathering in whatever you can against the certain cold of coming winter.
- There is the way of organization: gathering up a thousand details against the ever-present chaos that swirls just beyond the edge of all our best-laid plans.
- There is the way of distraction: gathering all the compelling claims on our attention right now, and building a hedge with them, to hold the future out of the present as long as possible.
- There is even the way of trepidation: gathering together all the uncertainties and the doubts and the possible catastrophes that might lurk in the time ahead, and hunkering down to expect the worst, willing to be pleasantly surprised.
Each of these ways of caring for the future has its practicality. Winter will come, chaos is near, the present moment is compelling, and disasters are possible.
But each of these ways of caring for the future treats the future as though it were an adversary.
What if, instead, the future were one of the greatest of all imaginable gifts to us? What if we were to practice believing that neither winter, nor chaos, nor distraction, nor catastrophe, nor powers and principalities, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation would be able to separate us from the Love at the center of the universe - a love that is waiting to receive us with an embrace as though we were long-lost, beloved children? How would we care for the future then?
I think this is what practicing such a kind of caring for the future would look like.
The words of commitment and affirmation – the wild-eyed playfulness and the overt audacity of public full frontal dreaming – the willingness to move to the places that hunger the most for dreams, and are the readiest to dream them – and the willingness to drop everything when the alarm goes off and rush to the place where life and livelihood are in danger – these are what caring for the future looks like. The quality of light in the air and the quality of lump in the throat and the quality of laugh in the belly – the words and the holy silence around them and the holier silence within them – the flashing of all these eyes and the leaping of all these hearts – are a way of believing this future into being.
This partnership, this family, this atomic fusion of souls, is an act of subversion. It serves notice to all the brooding shadows of worry that a pool of outrageous light is even now being readied to be poured out over them. This is a conspiracy being plotted, and this is one of its leading edges.
And all of us are implicated in the plot: I’m sorry if you thought you were coming here innocently and would be able to leave quietly, to slip back out into the crowd of the world unobtrusively or anonymously. If it’s true that “the most radical thing we can do is to introduce people to each other,” then this is a revolution – and these two are among its most flagrant perpetrators. And we are all co-conspirators, collaborators in believing into being a future in which such love as this shall warm even the ice and stone of hearts wintered by despair, poverty, violence, prejudice, greed – or just dream-less-ness.
Daniel and Jen –
- May you be, together, a way of caring for the future in which such partnership as this shall be a model for a new order of things to banish the chaos of disconnection.
- May you be, together, a way of caring for the future in which such ways of being alive as this shall give us confidence enough to always have ready an embrace for whatever will come, and love it toward wholeness.
- May you be, each of you, a way of caring for the future in which such spiritual strength as this shall enable us to hold high the beacon of our integrity in the midst of all tribulation and calamity.
- And may you, by giving us this day to remember, and by opening your hearts to be for us all part of the meaning of home, help us to make a just and joyful memory of the future – and call that memory, hope.
AFFIRMATION {Daniel & Jen}
SILENCE
- I’ve always heard that it’s the silence around the sacred “om” that makes it holy.
- Maybe it is the deep silence around these words of commitment, the silence in the marrow of this community, that hallows it. Silence is work, too – not easy work, for some of us; and being able to keep silence, to hold silence carefully when it is entrusted to you, is a skill that would probably help the world a lot if more of us practiced it more diligently.
- We’re going to keep a few moments of silence now – to give ourselves room to hold all these things we’ve seen and heard and felt: to hold them close, to hold them dear. After those few moments, I’ll invite us to stand together – and it will be time to let our words of commitment flower out of the silence. We’ll use the same words that Daniel and Jen have used – the words of e.e. cummings that you have printed, a line or two under the word “Resonance.” This is how we’ll manage to all say them together: when my hands come together, we’ll speak the words, “i carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”. And when we say those words, all with our different voices and all with one voice, they’ll mean – so many different things.
So – first - let us wrap that silence around us now, like the beauty of winter. Let us listen as that silence wells up from the deepest places within us. Let us feel the life-giving soil beneath us – and the sustaining air around us – and the healing light upon us. Let us feel the earth turning toward the future. Let us allow that silence to burnish our joy; let it be the wind beneath the wings of our hopes – for Jen and Daniel, for all of us together, and for the world.
RESONANCE {the Community stands}
- I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)
BLESSING
So be it!
We are woven together.
So is your life together part of all our lives – part of the life of the world – one of its best, most madcap and joyful parts.
The world carries your commitment in its heart.
So let us take all the overflowing joy of this little vessel of time, let us carry it out into a world so thirsty to believe this is possible – and let us show the world how real love is, how courageous commitment can be, how ready we are for the work of community, how wild and playful and healing are our dreams for what this world could be.
SING!
Ain’t no mountain high enough…