Philosophy Wedding Readings: Plato, Gibran and William Penn
Plato’s other half, Gibran’s pillars and a Quaker’s plain advice: six readings that think about love rather than simply praise it, for couples who want ideas as well as feeling.
Most wedding readings praise love. The ones on this page try to explain it. Plato’s Aristophanes tells a myth about why we feel incomplete; Thomas à Kempis describes what love makes possible; William Penn gives practical advice on whom to marry; Kahlil Gibran, in three chapters of The Prophet (1923), considers love, marriage and friendship in turn. The span is enormous, from Athens in the fourth century BC to New York in the 1920s, but the readings share a tone: reflective, aphoristic, a little like hearing a wise elder think aloud.
That makes them good company in a ceremony with a more emotional reading, and a natural fit for a civil ceremony that wants substance without scripture. Two of them, à Kempis and Penn, come from Christian traditions and sit comfortably in church as well.
Choosing among them
For a civil or secular ceremony. Gibran’s On Marriage has probably been the most popular non-religious wedding reading of the past half-century. Its picture of a marriage as two pillars standing apart and holding up the same roof is wise, and a welcome counterweight to readings that insist two become one. The Symposium is the other strong secular choice.
For a church wedding. Thomas à Kempis’s Love Is a Great Thing, from The Imitation of Christ, has the stately rhythm of an older translation and says that love makes the heavy light.
For a Quaker connection or a sense of history. William Penn’s Never Marry but for Love, from Some Fruits of Solitude (1693), is plain-spoken, a little stern and entirely sensible. At about a hundred seconds, it needs a confident reader.
For a friend to read. On Friendship is Gibran’s chapter on friendship, not love, and a friend can read it as much about their bond with you as about the marriage.
Know what you are reading. In the Symposium, Aristophanes is a comic playwright, and his myth of round, double creatures split in two is half a joke; later in the dialogue, Socrates gives a different account of love altogether. The myth’s first humans also came in three kinds, male, female and mixed, so its “other half” belongs to every couple. Gibran’s Speak to Us of Love runs about three and a half minutes and warns that love wounds as well as crowns; many couples read only the final section, beginning “Love gives naught but itself.”
Reading aphorisms aloud
These texts are built from complete thoughts, one sentence at a time. Give each sentence room: a full pause between aphorisms lets guests take one in before the next arrives. Gibran’s English has a deliberately scriptural rhythm; say it plainly rather than intoning it like a sermon. Jowett’s Plato and the older translation of à Kempis have long sentences, so mark your breaths in advance.
Pairings
On Marriage with Anne Bradstreet’s To My Dear and Loving Husband. “If ever two were one” against “spaces in your togetherness”: a deliberate tension, and an interesting one.
Love Is a Great Thing with 1 Corinthians 13:1–13. A fifteenth-century meditation on what love does, beside Paul’s hymn to love, which it often recalls.
The Symposium with Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Sudden Light. Plato’s search for a missing half and Rossetti’s sense of having always known someone.
The Symposium
Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett
And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.
…
And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.
Love Is a Great Thing
Thomas à Kempis
Love is a great thing, yea, a great and thorough good,
By itself it makes that is heavy light;
And it bears evenly all that is uneven.
It carries a burden which is no burden; it will not be kept back by anything low and mean; it desires to be free from all wordly affections, and not to be entangled by any outward prosperity, or by any adversity subdued.
Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility. It is therefore able to undertake all things, and it completes many things, and warrants them to take effect, where he who does not love would faint and lie down.
Though weary, it is not tired; though pressed it is not straitened; though alarmed, it is not confounded; but as a living flame it forces itself upwards and securely passes through all.
Love is active and sincere, courageous, patient, faithful, prudent and manly.
Never Marry but for Love
William Penn
Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely. If love be not the chiefest motive, thou wilt soon grow weary of a married state and stray from thy promise, to search out thy pleasures in forbidden places…
Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love … As love ought to bring them together, so it is the best way to keep them well together.
A husband and wife that love and value one another show their children… that they should do so too. Others visibly lose authority in their families by their contempt of one another, and teach their children to be unnatural by their own examples.
Let not enjoyment lessen, but augment, affection; it being the basest of passions to like when we have not, what we slight when we possess.
Here it is we ought to search out our pleasure, where the field is large and full of variety, and of an enduring nature; sickness, poverty or disgrace being not able to shake it because it is not under the moving influences of worldly contingencies.
Nothing can be more entire and without reserve; nothing more zealous, affectionate and sincere; nothing more contented than such a couple, nor greater temporal felicity than to be one of them.
On Marriage, from The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran
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 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 a 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.
Speak to Us of Love, from The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran
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 fear 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.
On Friendship, from The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran
Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you with hold the “aye.” And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth; and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness. And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
