Invoking the Invocation: a wedding officiant breaks her writer’s block
When Vivek and Darren asked me to officiate their wedding ceremony, I leapt at the chance. I was so happy for them, and it felt immediately right to say, ‘yes, I will, and gladly.’
What I did not anticipate was that my own persistent disappointments in love had muddied the wellspring my heart looked to draw from to write my invocation. It seemed I had so long stepped out of love of the romantic sort, I hardly knew how to speak of it. Very recently, I had come up against dead-end after dead-end when attempting to write a love song; that deadness became the lyric for the love song. And here I was again, in difficulty.
As officiant, I had other duties, of course, assisting the coordination of the many ceremonial participants, all of them friends of the couple, all of them foundational to the rituals of the day. This wedding was to be a non-denominational, richly multi-cultural celebration of a sacred union. I was not alone. So, I was happily engaged elsewhere in the garden.
But that pesky invocation. What was I to do? It’s not my bag to quote other, better writers at times like these. Especially for a wedding, the pitfalls of the twee and the trite are dangerous and many. Also — I am too proud.
In the end, I dragged myself through poems and writings of mine from periods where I was more readily connected to my heart. I found my former self surprising and helpful. These works became the inspiration for my invocation, pulling my spirit closer to the loving condition of my dear friends, whose nuptials I was to guide on their most especial day. The lock slipped, and the thoughts and words flew, bird by bird.
Darren’s and Vivek’s wedding was the wedding of the season. There could have been no finer version of it. It was the nonpareil.
And it was a profound honor to speak of them, for them, to them, and to their many friends and family members, here in Berkeley, in India, and in so many other homelands; to touch — in my way — the far-flung regions of the heart.
Like this:
Epithalamium for Darren and Vivek / 5.28.2023
Beloveds. Good gentle people, families, friends, the bewildered plus-ones ….
Thank you for coming.
Aiaz and Ruby, Zain and Zara, thank you for opening your home to us this day, and your garden. We stand in your grace.
To our ushers; to those who made the mehendi celebration for the wedding party yesterday; to those who brought and arranged today’s flowers, Deomati and Laura and Belle Star; to Enrique and Ruby who have been bringing this garden to its full burgeoning for forever; to José and his cohort who built the very deck we are standing on; to the good hearts who prepared today’s food; to Maria and her team who will lead the clean-up once we’ve all gone home; to Kate and David who later today will host the cake-cutting and champagne-toast at their home; to Raj who is helping our precious Sister, the great singer, Ritaji, with audio; to Omri and Linnea who are photographing our moments today; and to Natasha, who is broadcasting this ceremony abroad — we give our gratitude.
For everyone who is here by the grace of GoogleMeet, thank you for your loving attention and presence.
For those who are here in spirit, or indeed are here as spirits yourselves, we feel your love, and gratefully accept your blessings.
Brothers and Sisters of the ceremonial party, thank you for elevating this sacred moment, for creating and embodying our rituals, for holding this marriage in love.
To Darren and Vivek — thank you for inviting us. How fortunate we are to be here. What a day for a wedding. We’ve all of us shown up to honor you. To see you wed one another. We give you our witness. We love you.
We’ve brushed our teeth, put on our Sunday bests. We’ve mingled, and chatted, and laughed, and hugged.
And we’ve also covered-up our hang-overs and bad tempers with mukhwas and perfumes. Our irritation with that aunt, that brother-in-law, an ex, the sullen niece, all our petty feuds and grievances and every care not of this magic hour we’ve swept behind smiles and sweet-talk. Things like, ‘You’re looking well,’ ‘what a beautiful dress,’ and ‘so good to see you again!’
And we mean it. We mean it.
Our best selves have magically arrived here today, to bear witness, bless, and bow before our precious friends, our darlings, these brave, beloved, loving fighters.
We’re happy.
Darren and Vivek are in love.
Knowing they are in love, we naturally want to support and affirm the step they are taking today to marry. Feeling their tenderness, their vulnerability in love, we may want to protect them also. We’d like to feel they are protected. Perhaps we picture marriage as a culmination, a destination, a safe place for two people to live inside and grow old together, unchallenged, unbothered, the heart transformed into a sudden building that can never be disturbed.
But the heart is not a building. The heart’s not a house that can be secured. Somewhere always a tile gets chipped, a latch breaks and a door flies open. Don’t fix it.
You hear a windowpane crack — don’t send for the glazier. Go on and let the wind try its teeth on the dining room curtains. Put down your sewing kit. Make no repairs. The heart’s not a house that can be secured.
Let the ceiling fall in. Let its long timbers tumble and marry the rain. Let the termites unhinge the paint from the walls. Let the bats roost in wardrobes. And that loud conflagration of birds consuming the mantel? Let them crowd the tea-cups also and sing in the shower-stall also and swing from the chandeliers also.
And You Lovers, Darren and Vivek, you on your broad raft of dreams — let the bed capsize. Let her sink her neat, checkered sheets in a blood-bath of poppy and roses. Let her canopies drown in bramble, in vine.
Can you hear the owl flying up the staircase behind you? Waking the dust in a bright splash of wings? Knocking your pictures and portraits down from the long halls of your lives?
The heart’s not a house that can be secured. So, Lovers, let go your brooms and pick up your hammers. Drop the walls like slow thunder. Let the wind blow love through your hearts as if they will never break.
Let your hearts be luminous and fragile, reckless and certain, radical and fresh. No longer stacks and piles of rooms, no longer a fixed architecture, but territories, one after another, opening wide, alive with weather, with landscapes to ramble and inhale, every border a ribbon slashed free with the sweet blade of a kiss.
Let the heart be what it is: a frontier. a tender land to be roamed and planted and loved. Let it make you bigger.
Don’t be tight with it. Let the vagrants come. Make them welcome. Look around — we are already here — your loving vagrants and trespassers, all your favorite criminals. Go on and let us loot all we can. Let us light up your hearths with the bones of old tables and chairs. Don’t call the fire department.
Let your hearts burn. Let them burn brightly. Chase the light all the way down to the shore, all the way down to the Bay, to the water, where You Lovers can stand holding hands, the little waves blowing kisses at your bare feet. You, Darren and Vivek, newly-wed, looking deeply into one another’s eyes, and also peering way out at your horizons, out to sea, scanning for the next storm, the next bird, a message in a bottle ….. a sunrise.
What will you find together in your wild, beautiful hearts, joined and refreshed in this new marvel, this shared life?
As for the rest of us gathered — even on this cool, silvery day — we’re sunbathing in your love. Heaven is here. We stand in it for you, we cheer for you, we say, ‘we do!’
Friends, precious beings of all gardens, here, abroad, and in spirit — We are all wedded here today. All of us, made whole and true.
Risking everything, sparing nothing.
We hold Darren and Vivek in our fond, sacred, energizing regard. Let us keep loving these two men then. Let us love them into their true hearts, new worlds, new lands, into oceans.
Darren and Vivek, step forward, my loves. Together now. Make yourselves one.
©2023 Amanda Moody, all rights reserved.
