My sister Anna and her wonderful wife Alana got married a few months ago. God bless them.
I had the honor of officiating their wedding and felt a call to share my speech with all of you. With their permission, the audio can be played at the top of this post, and here is the transcript:
On Love: The Speech Transcript:
Welcome, everyone.
Thank you for coming to witness this sacred occasion. I’m Anna’s brother, Jordan, and I’m honored to be leading this auspicious ceremony today.
I’ll first open with a prayer. I invite you to close your eyes and bow your heads.
Thank you, Life. Thank you so much.
Whatever you call it—whether you call it Nature, Universe, Life, God, Goddess, Love, Tao, Source, Brahman—many names that all point to the same thing: The One Force That Animates All Things.
We thank that Force now. We thank Life for allowing this moment to occur. Thank you for allowing Anna and Alana and all of these beautiful family and friends to come together for this co-creation, this celebration, this ceremony.
May this day serve the Highest Good, the Highest Joy, the Highest Love, and the Highest Music for Anna, for Alana, for everyone here, and for all beings on Earth and beyond. Amen.
Feel welcome to re-open your eyes.
I still remember the days when I was 4 years old and would call my sister Anna, “Bah-Klogleys.” I’m not sure why that was easier to say than, “Anna.”
I remember the days as kids when Anna and I would catch frogs in Stolley’s pond and make silly “Jungle Jim” videos with our cousin, Mike (“G’day, I’m Jungle Jim, and this is my partner, Bobby Safari”). I remember Anna and I playing on the trampoline with the neighborhood kids, and I remember how we’d always be cracking jokes together — often at our Mom and Dads’ expense.
Now, more than two decades later, I am so happy to be here to celebrate the marriage of Anna and Alana.
I remember when I first met Alana in Colorado a few years ago. I could feel her beautiful, caring heart and I saw how she ‘clicked’ with my fun-loving, big-hearted, beloved sister, Anna. I told Anna that I felt a chemistry between them, and Anna denied it at the time. She later told me she just didn’t want me to know their secret yet.
Having now shared plenty of gorgeous adventures with Anna and Alana in Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, Illinois, Germany, and the Azores islands of Portugal, I cannot say how heartwarming and joyful it is for me to see these two great, generous women coming together today to join their lives in love and sacred union.
On such an occasion, perhaps it is wise to ask ourselves…
What is love?
What is sacred union?
What does it mean to create a relationship truly rooted in love?
If you’ll allow me—and I guess you don’t really have a choice—I’ll now explore these questions for a few minutes…
The Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran spoke poetically of love when he wrote:
“The power to
Love is God's greatest gift to man,
For it never will be taken from the
Blessed one who loves.”
He also said:
“Darkness may hide the trees
and the flowers from the eyes
but it cannot hide
love from the soul.”
And to paraphrase Albus Dumbledore from J.K. Rowling’s famous Harry Potter series…
“Love is the most powerful form of magic.”
A loving bond of sacred union is one of the most profound human experiences. It is a mirror that continuously shows you everything you are not fully loving in your partner, and thus everything you are not fully loving in yourself. It is an invitation to become truly present and open-hearted, for it is only through heart-centered presence, deep listening, and true compassion, that a sacred union can thrive and blossom for a lifetime.
As American author Ursula K. Le Guin once put it:
“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.”
Marriage provides a sacred opportunity to show up every day to rediscover love, recreate love, choose love, and give love. An opportunity to practice being a space of loving presence every day—for one’s partner, for oneself, for one’s entire family, and for all of life.
As the Tibetan Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh put it:
“Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth... This is the real message of love.”
Thich Nhat Hanh understood that when we are guided to the path of love, in truth we are being guided Home to the essence of what we are.
The Persian mystic-poet Rumi understood this as well when he said:
“Love is our core, our nature, our essence, our origin, and our destiny. Love is inevitable.”
Beneath all our layers of wounding and confusion… Universal, unconditional love is what we are.
Marriage is an opportunity to remember and practice this, every day. As Rumi also said:
“Let your teacher be love itself.”
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Every time we are triggered or upset by our partner or any other human being, Life is showing us where our work lies. In that moment, Life is showing us exactly where we are still holding on to barriers to greater Love.
Such moments are opportunities to let ourselves feel whatever we are feeling, share our feelings honestly, and hold ourselves in a space of loving presence. This practice is not about making our feelings “wrong” in any way; it is about learning to feel our feelings fully and to bring love into all corners of our being—understanding that love is the final medicine that heals and harmonizes all things.
This is not always easy. It is often profoundly difficult. The Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke understood this when he wrote:
“For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
To truly show up for this work requires great courage and honesty. One must become a warrior of love. For in truth, what is asked of us is nothing less than to repeatedly strip ourselves naked and step into the fires of loving awareness.
This fire does not burn what we truly are; it simply burns away everything that is not love. It burns away all the judgments, identities, belief systems, defense mechanisms, and other barriers to love that we have erected within ourselves. We are invited to let go of everything that is not loving presence.
In the realm of relationship, this means letting go of our wishes and expectations for our partner to be anything other than what they actually are. It means letting go of our desire to force them into a certain shape, giving them space to blossom freely, and simply loving them as they are.
Rilke understood this when he wrote:
“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
What Rilke is saying here is that two people cannot become one. No matter how close they become, they will each remain a unique universe unto themselves. As such, in a truly loving marriage, they must learn to love the inevitable space between them. They must give one another the space to be whole and free as individuals.
Kahlil Gibran understood this as well when he wrote the following poem, titled, ‘On Marriage’:
“Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, master?
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of the lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
Gibran clearly understood the wisdom of space in relationship and marriage.
And furthermore, he understood the purpose of love. I’ll now read you a final poem of his, called ‘On Love,’ which I feel beautifully summarizes and complements our contemplations up to this point. For this poem, I invite you to close your eyes as you listen, to really drink in these words:
“Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your heart you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”
Feel welcome now to re-open your eyes.
As Gibran suggests in that final poem, love is no joke.
To truly open our hearts to love, is to repeatedly die and be reborn.
With each death and rebirth, love burns away more of who we thought we were…
So that our souls’ true radiance can increasingly shine forth.
Love grinds away all our arrogance and all the ways we close ourselves off…
So that we may gradually open our hearts, to remember our true nature:
Pure, all-embracing openness toward all of existence.
Universal, unconditional acceptance toward all of life.
Love.
Love.
Love!
It is indeed the highest task, the ultimate practice, and the greatest gift.
And how marvelous, the way Alana and Anna love each other.
They love with such deep affection and coziness…
Such enjoyment and whimsy…
Such playfulness and adventurousness…
Such tenderness, presence, and care…
Such patience, such grace…
Such loyalty and dedication in truly showing up for each other…
Such great love for their families and friends, and for their cats and dogs and for all animals…
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that it is a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages, and to me it’s obvious that this won’t be an issue for Alana and Anna, who are clearly the best of friends.
And more than friends, they are a truly loving team…
In the face of unexpected travel debacles, animals getting sick and needing surgery, and other trials of life, I have witnessed Alana and Anna maintain a spirit of poise, determination, and above all, a team spirit that says, “We’re here for each other no matter what, we are in this together, and together we will find our way through.”
I imagine I can speak for all of us here when I say that their love is an inspiration.
To see the way they are together, gives me great confidence that their love will only continue to deepen and blossom, through life’s inevitable peaks and valleys, in the many years and decades to come.
——
As Anna and Alana step into marriage, we ask that all of you, family and friends, continue to show your support, just as you have done by being here today.
The gifts of marriage are among the most precious jewels in the human experience, yet it is not always an easy path. The support of a loving community can make all the difference.
We know that Anna and Alana have it within them to reap all the fruits and fulfillments that marriage will bring them.
Do you, family and friends, agree to support them on this epic journey?
(We do.)
——
Beautiful.
As Anna and Alana exchange their vows today, they do so from a place of true love, care, and commitment. They approach this moment with the greatest of sincerity, viewing it as an opportunity to demonstrate their faith in their love and in their future, for all of us to witness.
Let’s begin.
Do you Anna, take this woman Alana into your heart, to be your wife, to have and to hold, to comfort and to honor and to laugh with and to love, in sickness and in health, in good times and woe, for richer or for poorer, through all of life’s peaks and valleys, for as long as you both shall live?
(I do.)
And do you Alana, take this woman Anna into your heart, to be your wife, to have and to hold, to love and to comfort and to honor, in sickness and in health, in good times and woe, for richer or for poorer, through all of life’s peaks and valleys, for as long as you both shall live?
(I do.)
——
Beautiful.
Anna and Alana have chosen to write personalized vows for one another as well.
At this time, I invite each of them to present their vows to the other, and then to place the wedding rings upon each others’ hands.
The ring is symbolic of lasting devotion and commitment. As you place the ring on your partner’s finger, I invite you to feel in your heart the great love and trust in one another that has brought you to this point today.
Please proceed now with your vows.
(Anna and Alana do their thing.)
——
Beautiful.
Well, then, everyone…
By the Power vested in me by the One Force that animates all things, I now pronounce the two of you bonded in love, in the sacred union of marriage.
I am so truly happy, everyone, to present to you, Anna and Alana Bendler-Bates.
You may now kiss the bride(s).
Cheers to Love,
Jordan
On Love: A Speech I Gave at My Sister’s Wedding