A Short Reflection on Love given at
Liana and Larry's Wedding, 24 June 2000

The tradition of wedding speeches has a long and somewhat inglorious history. The two main threads of such speeches are:

(1) they involve saying rude things about the bride and or groom

(2) they go on too long

The first of these I can promise you I won't bore you with. The second I will no doubt uphold but I hope you will not be bored in spite of that.

The reason I'm here at all is because of what Liana and I share. I cannot say a lot about Larry but after knowing Liana for 27 years and Larry for eight days I have a strong suspicion that he's in the same boat. That is, that what is special in my friendship with Liana is part of what has brought these two people together today to be married. Of that I'm certain and about that I'm deeply happy.

And that special thing is the matter of love, of which marriage is an expression, which may seem self-evident, but I would ask you to bear with me.

Now I'll share two quotes with you about marriage. The first is from Olaf Stapleton's book "Star Maker".

"I considered "past" with quiet interest and a kind of amused awe. How could I describe our relationships myself without either disparaging it or insulting it with tawdry decoration of sentimentality? For this how delicate balance of dependence and independents, is coolly critical, shrewdly ridiculing, but loving mutual contact, was surely a microcosm of true community, was after all in its simple style and actual living example of that higher goal which the world seeks."

This quote applies equally to any good friendship. Liana and I have what in my experience isain all too rare thing in friendships between men and women; a friendship that did not start as a failed attempt is another sort of relationship and which is never strayed into that area. To me that makes our friendship all the more precious because we are both hopeless romantics and we are both lovers. These ways of being in life are and have always been profoundly important to both of us. The way I see it these two things go hand in hand.

The second quote is from Madhi's and my wedding ceremony.

"Marriage is a reflection on the world of that sacred unity which underlies all life.

It is a meeting grown out of knowing one's essential aloneness; a meeting and a knowing of two people which, nevertheless, retains the core of mystery, and the seeds of a deeper unknown longing to be known.

Marriage is never complete, it is a promise remaining always to be fulfilled, in which each fulfilment is the seed of the new longing."

Here with you all at Larry and Liana's wedding I feel it is safe to assume that many of you are fellow travellers on the road of love. So a good few of you will readily relate to what I'm about to say. I also know this because I'm sure that many of you have been touched by Liana's loving friendship as I've been. Without Liana's loving friendship in what was the darkest hour of my life, in the abyss that lovers experiences in the failure of love, I doubt that I would stand here tonight, happily married and talking of love as I do. The very smallest gesture guided by an intuition born of the wisdom of love changed my life. The Liana suggested that I read a book by C. G. Jung and the whole direction of my life changed.

Two things, being lovers and hopeless romantics, stand out above all else for me about my friendship with Liana. I see Liana as a lover because I know that for her, no matter what concerns her in life, the quest for personal love has never diminished, never taken aback seat. And because of that no part of her life can ever be separated from love. No matter what Liana does love is there threaded through every endeavour. Real lovers can only do what they love, and love is a hard task mistress as the Prophet Muhammed knew when he said;

"the earth and the sand are burning. p to ut your face on the burning sand and on the earth of the road, since all those who are in the way of love must have the imprint on their face and the scar must be seen. Let the star of a hard be seen for by their scars unknown the ones who are in the way of love."
The Prophet Muhammed (Blessings Be Upon Him)

Real lovers are always hopeless romantics. They cannot be otherwise. A hopeless romantic is someone who just won't give up, who in spite of the pain, heartache and scars, is willing to pay the price of love. To be a hopeless romantic one has to be able to live with a broken heart and not lose faith in love.

It's a strange term, "hopeless romantic", because, of course, hopeless romantics never lose hope, no matter how hopeless the situation.

Hopeless romantics are inevitably hopeless idealist too. They deeply and passionately love the world and believe others must somewhere in themselves love the world in just that same way and so want it to be a better place.

Love is not a choice, it is a fate, a destiny and ultimately a vocation. We do not have love it has us. To quote C. G. Jung:

"I think you would do best to take the whole problem of love as a miraculum per gratum Dei (a miracle of Gods Grace) which nobody really understands. It is always a fate, whose ultimate roots we shall never written dig out. One shouldn't let oneself be upset by God's doings. The sublime nonsense or nonsensical sublimity of love may invite us to philosophical wonder. The symbolic form of love shrinks from nothing, least of all, sexual union. There is a 'real' partner only if you make him or her real."

These quotes from the Prophet Muhammed and C. G. Jung say something about the mystery that love is.

Love has been, and continues to be, confused with many things: sex, duty, commitment, security, desire, self-sacrifice and so on. It is none of these things and all of them, because it is an unameable, and unquenchable demand which can never be fulfilled and yet must be lived (served). To love is to lift the lid on Pandora's box. And I know Liana has been willing to do just that, which is what we must do because what lies hidden in the bottom of Pandora's box is HOPE…… in all its glory.

Love is the mysterious binding of the whole of creation to which Kathleen Raine refers in her poem:

Because I love There is an invisible way across the sky. Birds travel that way, the sun and Moon And all the star's travel that passed by night.

Because I love There is a river flowing will night long. Because I love All night long the river flows into my sleep, Ten thousand things are sleeping in my arms, And sleeping wake; and flowing out at rest.

No wonder we are terrified of it, scared by it and scarred by it when so much depends on love. But the scars of love are badges of honour, by which other lovers can know us as fellow travellers in the way of love. Most of us are afraid that the scars left by our initiations into the way of love with right and others of. We learn to hide from love. We shrink from that which we most need. But those scars are what we are to be known by. How can we find love if we hide our badges of identity.?

What I admire most about Liana is how she has come to wear those badges proudly. That Larry is here tonight tells me that he must se this about Liana too, for only when we wear our badges proudly can a love that matches our deepest yearnings find us.

So I'll finish by quoting C. G. Jung one last time:

"love 'bears all things' and 'and endures all things' (Corinthians 13:7). These words say all there is to be said: nothing can be added to them….. Being part a person cannot grasp the whole. He is at its mercy. She may assent to it, or rebel against it; but she is always caught up by and there enclosed within it. He is dependent upon it and is sustained by it Love is our light and our darkness, whose end we cannot see. 'Love ceases not - whether we speak with the tongues of angels or with scientific exactitude trace the life of the cell down to its uttermost source. We can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at our command, and still we will involve ourselves in endless self deceptions. If we possess a grain of wisdom we will lay down our arms and name the unknown by the more unknown- ignotium per ignotius - that is by the name of God. That is a confession of our subjection, of our imperfection, and our dependency; that same time the testimony to our freedom to choose between truth and error."
C. G. Jung, "Memories, Dreams, R and eflections."

Which is Jung's way of saying what John Lennon and Paul McCartney said;

"love is all there are is!"

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