Saturday, September 18, 2010

I Do

I would say Djinn and Richard's wedding went off smoothly, and pretty much as planned, and the general consensus was that it was a wonderful event, filled with a great outpouring of love.
The afternoon was quite busy - my main issues were first that Paul was away all day, so I couldn't fine tune the script or check a few details about placement of objects on the wedding table, and also that I couldn't for the life of me find a matching pair of candle holders for the bride and groom, who carry tapers to the altar, light them from the altar candle, then jointly light a candle on the wedding table. So we did it with non-matching holders, and of course it was fine. We also went with the script as was, though when Paul sat down he just started extemporising, with an Irish brogue for good measure, and this set the tone for the ceremony, warm and informal, 'charming', as Djinn's father put it in his speech afterwards.
I got lucky with my speech - I was sitting in the lounge having my mid-morning coffee and toast, reading the cartoons in the paper (a favourite activity combination), and I read my horoscope for the day:
"LIBRA (September 22-October 22): A friend of yours stands on the brink of a huge life decision. You know what it's like to freeze on the spot. Give him/her that final push over the threshold".
So I had a great introduction handed to me by the universe - even though of course Djinn and Richard needed no pushing from anyone...  I also mentioned that Richard and I had gone out for a Zen Center version of a bachelor party the night before - where a total of three drinks were consumed, two of them by me, and that having gone to bed, I had not been able to sleep right away, but while I was lying there, a thought came to me - I had been musing on couples at Tassajara, which is a place where people go to study the self. Now, as Dogen says, in a phrase most people at Zen Center know, to study the self is to forget the self. It occurred to me that when you forget the self, there is more room for love to enter. And, as everyone agrees, and many people expressed eloquently both during the ceremony and afterwards, Djinn and Richard both manifest a wonderful selfless love.
I wore a third hat during the proceedings, as well as being ino and best man, that of photographer, and here are three of my favourite pictures: Djinn, Paul and Richard in the courtyard after the ceremony; Djinn getting a hug from Myo, and the happy couple cutting the pavlova, which was a centrepiece of an abundant spread of food (Jeffrey and Dana, among many others, surpassed themselves creating this - in fact almost everyone at City Center helped to create the event, and to clear it up afterwards, which is a wonderful part of living in community).

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