The script, vows, and poem from The Stars Are Right

BLOT: (02 Nov 2014 - 07:25:51 PM)

The script, vows, and poem from The Stars Are Right

There came a point relatively late in the planning stages for The Stars Are Right where Sarah and I were unsure of what the script might be. In a traditional wedding, an officiant—most likely a priest or pastor—reads a very standard spiel about man and woman and how God made them separate so they long to come together and then has some notes about how the woman is subservient to the man, at least on paper, and et cetera. Sarah and I wanted none of that, generally, and instead wanted one that focused on a theme I had in mind, that in the cosmic scheme of things there is a billions to one chance that two people could ever meet much less meet in such a way as to fall in love, and yet it happens all the time and we celebrate it, even if it does nothing to impact a distant star or a planet whose surface is coated in dust piles of solid oxygen. There is a disjunct between us and our ideals, and that is beautiful. That was the theme I stuck with in writing the script and Sarah and I stuck with while writing our vows.

We also wanted to avoid needless affirmation of traditional gender roles. We kept in a bit where Sarah's dad walked her down the aisle, but we wanted to avoid the phrase, "Giving her away".

Credit where credit is due, first, I'm not sure if I would have been able to do anything had Sarah not sent me this link: NonReligiousWeddings.com's vow renewal script. While we used very little of the actual wording of that—the paragraph beginning "We are not..." contains an obvious paraphrase from it—it helped to give me ideas and to give me an anchor. It might be a resource of which you can take advantage, too. In a similar light, if this helps any of you in any way, take it freely. Forging a new ceremony can be hard, as I've learned.

Start of Ceremony, after music ceases

Carl Wilson Ridout, will you present Sarah Lindsey Bolden to William Doug Bolden?

[Carl presents Sarah to Doug]

Sarah and Doug, will you remove your masks? [note, we wore masks during the march]

[Doug and Sarah remove their mask and hand them off]

Friends, family, loved ones...

We are not gathered today to wed Sarah and Doug, because no one here has the power to do that more than they have done themselves through ten years of dedication and love and care. Instead, we are here to celebrate their love, to honor and respect and share in their love, because ten years is this amazingly long time, and just the blink of an eye.

It is significant that they chose to have it here, in the planetarium, for two reasons. First, many of their first memories together were spent watching the stars, together, and talking about their wonder and their significance. They met in a class because they shared a love of space and a love of science. One tiny coincidence, practically an accident of paperwork and school requirements, and yet here we are today.

Secondly, we are here in a place where stars and the cosmos are celebrated and studied and discussed to take a moment and to put ourselves in the scheme of things. In the vastness of space, the great shining beige Universe, there is little as small as two people in love for a mere decade. And yet, here before you, we all celebrate this shout into the void, this bright light shining out.

Up there, in the sky, are more stars than a human has hours, and down here, we are happy, because the great machine in the starry dynamo of the night turns and this is how it should be.

Before they exchange their vows and sentiments, they have asked me to read a paragraph from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot:

Now Sarah and Doug will share their own sentiments.

Sarah's Vows

My wonderful, beautiful husband,

When we first met, you were just the quiet guy in class that laughed at jokes no one seemed to be making. Now after eleven years together, ten in marriage, I still don't understand half the things you laugh at, but your laughter always makes me happy. I love you. I love you as a best friend. I love you as a lover. I love you as a husband. I've loved you since our first accidental kiss in the park. And, as impossible as it is sometimes for me to believe, this enormous love I have for you has continued to grow and blossom as the years go by. A true infinity. I look forward to our love and life together progressing and changing as we continue to experience this infinity in our short, finite lives.

As we rededicate our love for one another, this time in front of our dear friends and family, I'd like to make these vows to you...

I vow to put in the hard work necessary to nurture our love for the present and the future because all relationships require hard work as well as chemistry to be successful, and I will gladly work hard for our happiness together.

I also vow to live in the present and to fully enjoy our relationship as it is now. While maintaining that present-mindedness, I also vow to help us plan for a good future together...one that does so without sacrificing our present happiness "for the future is no place to put [our] better days."

As I think everyone here today knows, one of the reasons I am promising to live more in the present is that at heart I am a planner and a worrywart. These are traits that can be tiring for me to deal with at times, so I know they are trying for you. Thank you for being patient with me and helping me to refocus on what is important these past ten years. I vow to learn to be more patient in return. To do what is right for us. To do things at our own pace. To not worry about what society expects or wants from us. Because if nothing else is obvious today, it is that we are wonderfully weird, and everyone is happiest when we can express ourselves authentically. So, let us forget the societal expectations everyone says will make us happy, for it is too early to analyze the data to see if we are part of the statistical norm or an outlier. Personally, I hope we are an outlier.

You've done such a great job being there for me especially when I was unwell, and there is nothing I can do to thank you enough for your love and dedication during those times. I'm sorry that I put you through all of that, and I promise to always try and take care of myself as well as us so that I don't put you through those trials again. If, despite my best efforts, I do become sick again I rest easy in the knowledge that you will be there to help me. I know I have not always done as well taking care of you in return, but I vow to continue to improve until I can be a good nurse to you when you are ill. Because in every marriage there are good days as well as bad days, and while it is easy to be there for the good days, I also vow to continue to be there during the bad days. To be with you when things are tough. Hopefully, the patience that I vowed to work on will help with that. I do not, however, promise to nag you less because that is one thing I found I am naturally good at, and it seems to be the only way to get you to go to the doctor to make sure you stay healthy. I am perfectly comfortable in this role, and will continue as long as it is productive in helping you take care of yourself.

I also vow to continue our practice of individual togetherness. I thank you for encouraging me to pursue my own interests and cultivate friendships outside of us because our marriage gets stronger as we independently become strong. Your support amazes and inspires me to be a better person. So I also vow to always be there to support you and help you grow as a person, so together our love can shine ever more brightly as we shout into the void until our voices give out. Perhaps one day the universe will reply.

Finally, I am happy that we are able to express our love and sentiments to each other in witness to our dear friends and family. The universe would be a cold and lonely place without them. This universe that is massive and beautiful and uncaring of our wants and needs...we are so tiny and so insignificant in comparison. What we do today and in our lifetimes will mean so little to the universe at the end. But we are all here, and we all love each other and care for each other anyway. It is the fact we are insignificant that makes you, our love, and our friends and families even more important. Choosing to invest and care and love despite the meaninglessness of it all the more precious. You are my infinitesimal infinity inside this cosmos' infinity. I love you. Thank you for our very own infinity.

Doug's Vows, the poem, "Et Cetera"

I am the bones of stars, born dying.

I am the grandchild of bacteria, clinging to the thin scab covering a scalding wound running at 7 point 0 times ten to the fifth miles per hour around a middle-aged star glorious through unimpressive on a galactic scale.

I see space, and I conceive infinity.

I breathe moments, and I speak eternity.

I am thrust through several points, an unwitting traveler in time, my own microcosm incomplete.

I stand atop a mountain, a trillion light years tall.

I swim at the bottom of a sea, a trillion light years deep.

Just another of the Million-Billion Dougs, my many Feynman cousins, legion and disparate, adrift.

Adrift, brilliantly awake aloud in the Universe,

Brightly asleep like MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, unable to hold my eyes open in a dawn of a distance inconceivable even though it is constantly painted across all the windows of this myriad dream.

All those Million-Billion:

Some have died and some have thrived,

And there but for the grace of god go I.

Because for all my wonder, alive and aware of all those indefinite, unique, beautiful moments, witness to the splendor,

I

am not.

I am nothing,

Made nothing by being a We.

I have been alive, to date, thirteen-thousand, six-hundred and sixty-three days, but I have been ME for ten years. Three-thousand, six-hundred, and fifty-two days, thanks to the miracle of two leap-years.

Ten years. In ten years I have gained

myself my color my direction my wife

MY WIFE! Let me introduce my wife. The warmth I gladly hold, the truth I gladly face, the laughter I gladly play through jokes, the tears I embrace even when I am unsure of them.

She is brilliant. She is beautiful. She is kind.

She is silly. She is cute. She is crazy. She is mine.

Faith, hope, and love. As they say, these three remain. So let us tend to these three.

Sarah Lindsey Bolden, I vow to have FAITH in you, and in what you can do, for ten years more, and twenty years after that, and thirty years after that, and et cetera.

Sarah Lindsey Bolden, I vow to always HOPE for the best in our marriage and to expect only even more impossible things in our next decade, and in the decade after that, and in the decade after that, et cetera.

The greatest is LOVE, they also say, and with that I can agree, so let's end, here, a billion year journey a million miles in the making, with this, simply...

Sarah Lindsey Bolden, I vow to LOVE you more than books. Et cetera.

"Officiant" Conclusion

Sarah and Doug, you have already said "I do", but let us again exchange the rings, and by doing so re-affirm the strength of those words you shared those many years ago.

[rings are exchanged]

Doug and Sarah, it is my pleasure to affirm that you are husband and wife, and to wish you many more decades before you. For the rest, there is one last quote they have asked me to share [from Vonnegut], and it is this:

Good day. Good night. Good luck. And Good life.

May we have the lights back up and all who wish may come forward in celebration. [END]

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: November 2014