Your Ceremony

Out of everything that goes to make up your wedding day, it will be the ceremony that you will most remember. For those couples who want their ceremonies to be expressions of the sacred reality of their love, we can be helpful. It is our privilege to help couples who want a spiritual expression of their love to be prominent in their wedding -- whether the bride and groom be Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, any other faith, or no particular faith. God has blessed you with the gift of love, and that overrides anything else, whether you are of different faiths, whether you have been married before, or other particular circumstances of your life. We are ministers and Catholic priests (united in a Christian recognition of God's love and unity in All That Is) who believe that we are here to be of service to everyone with our sacramental (i.e., "grace-filled") ceremonies.

For those of you who are Christians, part of the philosophy behind this Wedding Service is that there is only One Christian Church, and all Christians are members of it. We know that Jesus' message and service of love is not owned by only one denomination within this One Church, but by all. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are meant for ALL people of good heart. It is clear to us that God lives in all people, Christians and non-Christians. Divinity is within us all, and we are within divinity. God loves every human being completely and unequivocally.

We are also happy to be of service to those of you who do not consider yourselves Christian, but who hold that a spiritual reality (in any way that you see that to be) is important in your life. Many people are turned off by the institutional aspects of religion today (e.g., what you must do or must believe), and we can both understand and respect your feelings in this regard. We would be pleased to offer a spiritual/sacred ceremony that will reflect your same values. The one same God lives in you as in us, and loves us all without reservation. Should we do less?

The ceremony is often the part of the wedding to which the least thought is given, or it is the part the bride and groom presume is solely in the hands of the celebrant or the church. That doesn't have to be the case. Some couples want their weddings to only be simple legal ceremonies, in which case you will not want one of us as officiant, but should call a magistrate, judge, or justice of the peace. But many want it to also be an expression of the sacred reality of their love. If this is you, then one of us can be of service to you. We will officiate at a ceremony that can be sacred in a way you define sacred to be.

The first principle to remember is that the ceremony should feel comfortable to you, the bride and groom. You want your marriage ceremony to exude how you feel and to be relevant to your beliefs. Then, you will want to take into consideration the religious traditions of both of your families. If the bride and the groom are of different faiths, it is wise to be inclusive and considerate of the beliefs of both sides. In actuality, the core beliefs of most religions today are very similar and the areas of disagreement are relatively minor. Virtually everyone believes that love is the essence of God, and that God's primary command is that we become better, more loving, more compassionate, more caring people, and that we do this through our relationships with other people. A lot of ceremony can be built around these universal beliefs.

Certain churches and locations have many rules and restrictions; we have few. Some priests, ministers or rabbis are much more strict than others about what they will allow. We have ceremony workbooks that will let you pick and choose, and thus compose your own ceremony. Some religiously-conservative spiritual leaders will allow interfaith marriages only if both parties agree to bring up the children in their faith; we leave that up to the family itself. Some religions require permission to marry outside the faith or to have an interfaith ceremony; while we believe that love is paramount, that if "God is Love", then those "in love" are in God.

Our ceremonies range from about 20 minutes to about 30 minutes, depending upon what you choose to have in your own ceremony. We have found that if a ceremony goes 15 minutes or less, guests look around and think, "Was that it? All this for that? Was I snoozing?" If the ceremony goes 30 minutes or longer, guests begin to shuffle and dream of food and drink 20 to 30 minutes is a perfect length.

Some officiants spend very little time with the couple prior to the wedding day itself. Others have relatively extensive and structured marriage preparation sessions. We find that two sessions, the first about an hour in length, has always been sufficiently enriching, enjoyable (for both ourselves and the couple), and appreciated. If you want marriage preparation courses, which can often be wonderful, or counseling, there are specific places in most localities for them. We find that most people usually know each other very well (many live together already), and are ready for the marriage without any formal instructional preparation. Most couples appreciate the time we spend together before the wedding as being very beneficial. (At a second meeting, we go over the ceremony and details of the wedding day.)

When the atmosphere and words of your ceremony reflect the love you and your fiancé feel for each other, it will be a powerful launch into your new life together. To think that marriage is an arrival, a settling in to a life of love, is to miss what marriage is about. Life itself is the continuing quest for becoming a more loving person; marriage is the recognition of a soul-mate, a unique and trusting partner with whom we can best make that journey to greater love more happy, more successful and more beautiful. Marriage is the magnificent continuing passage into greater love; it is not the destination itself. A wedding ceremony that builds on the values of your past and looks to the future will speak eloquently to you both throughout your life together.

Occasionally, ministers of two different religions officiate. This can be nice, but you should be aware that this situation can often be distracting from you, the bride and groom, as the central focus of the wedding.

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Christian Faith / Non-Denominational

Christian + Other Religion Marriages

Catholic Sacramental

Our Catholic priests are all validly ordained by bishops with apostolic succession, and they witness the sacrament of marriage on behalf of the Catholic Church. Please remember that the "Catholic Church" is the people of God, the community of the faithful and the Body of Christ ... not just the "hierarchy" (reference Vatican Council II's Constitution on the Church). Moreover, Catholic theology has always held that the bride and groom are the "ministers" of this sacrament to each other.

Many of our priests are members of the Catholic Diocese of one spirit (www.onespiritcatholic.com), a progressive group of Catholics (see "About Us", above). Many are former "canonical" Roman Catholic priests. Many come from other non-Roman Catholic churches, all of which have apostolic succession and valid sacraments. (Most current Roman Catholic priests and priests from some other Catholic rites have strict rules which greatly restrict what they can do, while our priests' do not have such stringent restrictions.) We also have other Christian ministers, and you can choose whichever you want, if you have a preference (we know you would like them all). All of them are happy to marry you, no matter what religion you may be.

The rules within the Catholic Church have changed radically and dramatically over the centuries, and so we profess recognition of freedom of conscience, which Christ practiced. We do not judge you for whatever you do, as Christ also never did. For every single human being, life is filled with blessings and difficulties, good choices and bad, and all lead us to becoming our better selves.

God never abandons us, and never loves us less, no matter what we do or who we are. For example, if God is love (as the gospels clearly state), then love of people who have been divorced is a gift from God ... and who would we be to think that we had to validate this free gift of God? We do not have or require "annulments." Over the years, the practices of many churches have become hardened, and no longer reflect the flexibility we think is gospel-based and very needed in our time. We believe that God cares less about which church file cabinet your papers are in (i.e., "Divorced With Annulment" or "Divorced Without Annulment"), and more about the love you have and are working to express in your daily life.

Another example: if God is love, and you love one another, aren't you supposed to show it? Sex is "sinful" if it does not enrich us but is used selfishly; it cannot be sinful if it expresses love, which is God. If you live together, you will never find us telling you that is sinful. We simply will not "judge!"

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Spiritual / not-"Religious"

The spirituality that Christ delivered came into a world that had its own knowledge and perspective. The message of Christ, who spoke in parables, was transmitted through the filters of people who knew only what and how they knew then. Up until just a couple of hundred years ago, we human beings had relatively little knowledge about how the physical universe, including our bodies, worked. So people in Western cultures just figured that "God did it," and presumed anything they did not understand was a "miracle."

As science learned more and more, Western people discovered that God does not directly intervene in daily occurrences. For example, when people, who had thought that God sat on a throne in "heaven" which was up above the sky, discovered that above the sky was a galaxy, and then billions more galaxies beyond that, they wondered where God went. When people who thought God created us as the final masterpiece in creation discovered that we are products of a continuing evolution, they often lost their belief in our special-ness. When people learned more of how our human consciousness worked, they saw fields of "natural" energy at work that they had previously attributed to God's direct intervention.

The spirituality of Christ was taken by the people following him and hung on the Roman and Greek world assumptions from pagan philosophy (largely Plato and Aristotle), a structural perspective that has collapsed over the last few centuries. For many, this realization has left them spiritually homeless. Some others are conservative Christians or fundamentalists who believe that the bible is the literal word of God, and are intolerant of those who don't see God as they do. As a result, there is currently great turmoil in society.

At the same time, science has discovered more about this wonderful universe within which we live. We know that the universe came into existence about 13.7 billion years ago, when the energy of Infinite Potential moved. Thus began an amazing evolutionary story, in which one cannot but see a Plan, a Purpose, in the leaps of possibility that pushed all this forward. And today, when science looks at atoms, it has discovered that beneath sub-atomic particles, the stuff of which all the physical universe is made is energy waves! So, this same Energy- Power- Intelligence- Spirit-Life that got everything going is the same Energy- Power- Intelligence- Spirit-Life that sustains it.

What we now think of as this "new" spirituality was actually the more pervasive spirituality of the early centuries of the church. Throughout Northern and Central Europe, and particularly in the British Isles where Celtic spirituality endured the longest, the generally-assumed perspective was that there was no division between God and the world. The world was infused with God, and it was good. These beautiful theologies and liturgies were gradually extinguished, however, by political decrees of the Roman emperors seeking unity throughout the empire, and by minor potentates seeking Rome's favor. There was nothing wrong with this competing theology or perspective; it just got edged out in the political maneuvering of the times.

In the Celtic spirituality and in other "native" spiritualities such as from Africa and Asia, whose latent embers have re-ignited as today's "New Age" spirituality, adherents do not see "God" as some external entity who has a checklist: those with enough good checks go to "heaven," and those with too many bad checks go to "hell." Rather, they see this Energy- Power- Intelligence- Spirit-Life (perhaps the word "God" is too limiting to this new perspective) as being the Ground of our Being, the Depth of our Humanity, the Connectedness we have with all life and with all creation and with each other. Humanity is not basically "sinners," but is primarily "Loved from the beginning!" When any of us see a sunset or a magnificent vista, when we are touched by the illness of a sick friend, when we hear of physical devastation in some part of the world and then are touched to hear of an outpouring of help and support, when we love our children or our parents or our friends - and particularly when we love that person whom we have chosen to be our spouse - it is in those times that we realize that feelings of love ARE the experience of God.

That is what spirituality is at its core. And we have a ceremony that expresses that.

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